When Michael Moore calls you at home at 10pm to discuss what you've been posting on Twitter, well, let's just say it can be a strange capper to the day. What I'd been tweeting were mildly upset and strongly snarky mini-commentaries on some new rules that the documentary branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are planning to adopt in order to govern the selection process. And Moore proposed the changes. Based on the best information we had at the time (sounds like we were invading Iraq), two short articles from The New York Times (now it really sounds like it), the rules changes looked to be a blow for independent filmmakers and the news immediately angered a lot of people.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a huge amount of personal respect for Michael Moore, not only because he is the guy who made Roger & Me, but also because of some personal experiences I have had with the man where he has shown me exceptional kindness and hospitality while showing himself to be a gracious, charitable person who really cares about people--which I've noticed first hand in his concern for documentary filmmakers and their work.
Enough on that. I mention my affection for Mike so that you understand my confusion when I read that he not only supported these changes to the Oscar qualifying rules, but conceived of them. I just couldn't believe it. I was disappointed with Mike's support and I tweeted as much, never really expecting him to see my tweets among the sea of his 900,000+ followers. But, he did see them, somehow, and he called me up to talk about my concerns. I will be relating the details of this conversation with Mike on a few separate film podcasts in the coming week (since that's my normal medium), but I wanted to do a write up here as well to help me organize my thoughts around the topic and to try my hand at some journalistic writing. The long and short of it is, we didn't really understand the rules before or how they've changed.
Oscar Talk with Michael Moore
Frustration at the Oscars selection process is a common sensation for most of us. Michael Moore told me in a telephone conversation late last night that the nomination process has been broken for a long time. "The Thin Blue Line and Roger & Me were my first experiences with it," he said. "Year after year we were seeing some of the best and most popular documentaries being overlooked, with never a nomination for Errol Morris, never a nomination for Werner Herzog, never a nomination for the Up series… This year it is Senna and Steve James' The Interrupters." Moore says this disconnect between the public and the Academy was largely due to some non-sensical "byzantine" rules that have frustrated him for twenty years.
The Academy had planned to announce changes to the process this week that would affect next year's nominations, but as the story broke early on Deadline.com and in The New York Times, the focus Moore had hoped for--that these changes would benefit filmmakers--was lost on the majority of us. Instead, the major changes with many of the new rules went undiscussed as uproar from documentary filmmakers grew about one of the new rules in particular and headlines like this one from Entertainment Weekly didn't help: "Oscars to snub documentaries lacking NY Times or LA Times reviews."
So what kind of changes are we talking about here? Moore said that "these are radical changes that have been needed for a long time." A lot of it sounds very "inside baseball" on the surface, but the details are actually very important to the selection process, so let me try to break down some of the main points.
1) The documentary shortlist and final nominees will be determined by a vote from the entire documentary branch.
How does this differ from what we've seen before? Previously the branch was split up into committees. Each committee would receive a maximum of 10 films for review. They would rate the films, submit their scores, and the the highest ranking films would make the shortlist.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right?
But, Moore gave me an example that shows why this system is so flawed. "Let's say, for example, that I am a big fan of Inside Job and that would normally get my vote." Moore said. "Well, I'm in a committee and my committee gets 7 films for review, but Inside Job isn't one of them. That means I don't get to give my score for Inside Job at all--even if it was my favorite film of the year. Meanwhile, the committee who gets Inside Job might have a member or two who disagree with the film's politics and so they give it the lowest possible score. That alone is enough to keep a film off the shortlist. Under the old rules, one or two people can torpedo your film."
So, with the new changes, everyone in the doc branch gets to vote on every film. Huge improvement, right? Already you can see films from Hoop Dreams to Grizzly Man getting their deserved recognition.
But how will they facilitate screening so many more films than they did before?
2) The Academy will begin sending out screeners for every film throughout the year.
This is a two-parter.
First, small films don't need to worry about budgeting to get their film out to Academy members anymore because the Academy is going to take care of that for them--a process that will be further simplified when they start streaming the films for Academy members next year. This "evens the playing field" for low budget films and filmmakers who previously had to "compete with Harvey" as Moore put it.
Second, by spreading the screeners out throughout the year, branch members will have much more time to see and score the films. About 15 films will arrive each quarter, rather than having them all crammed in at the end of the year.
3) The full Academy will vote for best documentary.
Moore says that this change will make winning the award more meaningful than in the past, when best documentary was awarded by only those members of the documentary branch who went to the required theater screenings. "When you're standing up there thanking the Academy, you're really thanking about 200 people, not the thousands of Academy members." Again, this will be made easier by providing screeners to Academy voters whereas it was necessary to view all the films in a theater at a scheduled time in order to vote.
4) Films will need to be reviewed by The New York Times or LA Times in order to qualify (this is the one sparking all the controversy and I will get back to explaining the details in a moment).
Moore says that he has been actively fighting for the new changes for the last two years and was excitedly anticipating the reaction from the documentary community.
But when the story broke in the New York Times this weekend, the coverage wasn't at all what he'd expected. Rather than focusing on the tremendous progress Moore envisioned, the story focused in on the the New York Times / LA Times qualifier rule in a way that didn't adequately express the reasoning behind the change. From the New York Times:
"In a move to trim the number of documentaries submitted annually for Oscar consideration, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is poised to require a movie review from The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times to qualify a documentary feature for the Academy Awards."
[…]
"But the rule might diminish the prospects of those who make smaller and less prominent movies; these filmmakers have often qualified their documentaries without the kind of commercial release that typically leads to reviews by the two news organizations."
Pretty quickly after that, the message boards began to light up with outraged reactions from independent filmmakers with anonymous online calls to "Boycott the Oscars" and "Occupy the Academy." One Facebook thread I saw had comments ranging from "Bewildering" to "Horrifying" with the mean landing in the range of "Ridiculous." It seemed like such a strange addition to the rules, especially considering the current state of the newspaper industry. I wasn't above chiming in "So, when The New York Times goes under and all we are left with is blogs, does it switch over to a review by Jeffrey Wells or Perez Hilton?"
Doc filmmaker Don Argott, whose latest film, The Atomic States of America, will premiere at Sundance later this month, typified the common understanding of this news when he posted on that same thread "These are times when the rules should be changing in favor of making the process more inclusive not more exclusive. It would be like the academy saying that in order for a film to qualify it has to originate on 35mm film. All this does is ensures that the most popular films will get nominated." And I think Argott is right.
But, according to Moore, it was the reporting of the new rules, not the rules themselves, that missed the mark.
So, what are the details?
Yes, only those documentaries that receive a review by The New York Times or LA Times will qualify for Oscar consideration. The reports are true, but the intention and consequences are both widely misunderstood, according to Moore.
See, documentaries already have to screen for a week in New York or LA to qualify for the Oscars and The New York Times has a policy in place of reviewing every film that screens commercially in Manhattan for at least a week. If the New York Times ever changes its policy, the Academy will change its policy too. Cool?
Not exactly. The first problem is, we all know that doesn't happen. Indie films have been four-walling New York and LA forever, often without ever garnering a major review. Not to worry, says Moore. The Academy is also instituting a very liberal appeals policy: if films receive a one-week commercial release in an area that either newspaper covers, but are not reviewed, filmmakers can provide evidence of the screening and have this portion of the qualification waived.
So, then, what's the point? Why even add this annoying stipulation? This is where intention comes into play and it is something that hasn't been covered well in any of the reports so far. The important thing is that, even though there may be some fallout for independent filmmakers who can't find a theater they can afford within the coverage zones of the two newspapers, the target of this new rule is the television networks. And by pushing television networks to make a clear choice between a theatrical and television premiere, indie filmmakers who envisioned a theatrical release for their film but were only offered television deals could benefit.
Huh? I know, I was right there with you.
Now, we're all used to seeing a film that got picked up for television distribution, but not theatrical distribution, four-walling a theater to qualify for the Oscars. That's how it's done! But, the dirty little secret that most of us don't know (at least Moore had to explain it to me like I was a small child) is that the reason these films are only getting one-week runs in small, out-of-the way theaters not covered by the New York Times and LA Times is precisely because the television networks don't want these films to be reviewed by a major news outlet. They are intentionally hiding these screenings! See, they want the recognition of the Academy, but they don't actually want to be considered theatrical films because they are saving up their big push for the television premiere and a nice big review by a television critic.
Now, Moore is putting his foot down and claiming the Oscars for theatrical films. "Those are TV movies, and there is nothing wrong with them, but the Oscars are about rewarding theatrical films. TV movies have their own awards. They are called The Emmys and they are great. I have one. But you don't see The King's Speech winning an Oscar and then going to air on HBO with the hope of getting into the Emmy pool." Moore says this isn't an attack, just a clarification. "They have been following the letter of the law for a long time but have lost track of the spirit of the law. This rule brings the letter of the law inline with the spirit."
And that's understandable to me, but I have a hard time getting past the reality that this will essentially cut the number of qualifying films in half, and while a good portion of those will be these "TV movies" a good portion of them will also be indies.
I think of my friend Tyler Measom's film Sons of Perdition which premiered at Tribeca and was purchased by OWN (before anyone knew what that was going to be). Tyler had no intention of his film being relegated to "TV movie." They just couldn't sell the theatrical rights. So, what did Tyler do? He and his co-director, Jennilyn Merten, picked themselves up from their woes and they did what independent filmmakers do, they started booking theaters themselves in regions where they knew it would do well. And they proved that their film, though OWN'd (sorry) by Oprah, was indeed a theatrical film. Unfortunately that wouldn't matter under the new rules because their one week run in New York was in Brooklyn, and so out of the New York Times film review coverage area (although, in their case they got their NYT review later anyway, because of Oprah).
"It is unfortunate that this may affect some smaller films, but the honest truth is that they aren't really theatrical films," Moore says. "I wrote a song, but it's not going to be nominated for a Grammy unless I release it on iTunes. I can have a novel on my computer, but it isn't eligible for a National Book Award until it has run through a printing press." I get the message, but it's a tough love kind of message.
I apologize for bringing myself into this, but just for a concrete example, my last film, which screened at Moore's Traverse City Film Festival, by the way, was always intended to screen theatrically but, being that it deals with issues deep within Mormon culture, it plays best to audiences in Utah. We've done okay for ourselves on the festival circuit and have found many different regional audiences that were interested in the film since our premiere at TIFF, but I'm not sure we wouldn't lose the shirts on our backs after a week-long run in Manhattan. One of my upcoming projects is focused on issues in Native American communities. While I hope it breaks out to larger audiences, I know for a fact that the primary interest in our film is going to be in towns like Shiprock New Mexico, not wedged between a food court and cell phone store in Los Angeles.
Moore acknowledges the problem, but says it is a problem of distribution. "The real question here is, how do we get these smaller films distributed in theaters?" It's not a question he takes lightly. "It's on the top of my to-do list for 2012," Moore says. And he went on to say that when he "blew the doors off of the multiplexes" with Bowling For Columbine, he didn't just do it for him. The man wants to see good documentaries screening in theaters and you get the clear feeling that he doesn't want to see them relegated back to TV alone.
"This isn't sticking it to the the televisions networks. We all appreciate the support they give documentaries," he says. And some of the networks are supporting docs in a way that Moore would like to see more of. "The History Channel, for example, decided it benefitted them to give Werner Herzog's film a significant theatrical run"--betting that theatrical reviews and Academy attention would be worth more than trying to make it appear as though their initial TV outing is the exclusive premier of the film.
My major takeaway from my conversation with Moore last night is that he is sincerely trying to make changes that favor filmmakers. He cares about the films and he cares about the form of documentary filmmaking specifically. I hope that this piece helps shed a little light on what was going on yesterday. Though I am am sure there will continue to be much debate over the New York Times / LA Times qualifier (and believe me, I get it), I think we can all likely agree that the other changes are major improvements to the process and so I think it is reasonable to give Moore's plan the benefit of the doubt and see how it works out next year. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised when we find that all of our favorite docs have been short-listed. That, or maybe we will find different things to complain about.
