Merit or Marketing?

Is it merit or marketing when it comes to the Academy Awards. I haven’t seen a lot of the films up this year, but regardless of that, I can say without any pause or doubt that it is not merit and it is marketing.

This is not to say the people nominated are not talented or deserving. They might be. But that’s not why they are there or why they ultimately win.

I tell this story all the time but I’m going to tell it again now.

When my first feature came out and I was working with a PR person, he told me the story of a studio he worked for that was a smaller studio that was getting well known but could not compete with bigger studios. When he said “compete”, he didn’t mean with talented filmmakers and great films…oh no, he meant they couldn’t compete with the marketing budgets. He said, “Our company sent out beautiful pens to all the people voting on the nominees for Academy Awards with a kind note asking that they consider our filmmakers, actors, films, etc. but we soon learned that bigger studios flew these same people first class to wineries and offered them private dinners with celebrities. They spent millions of dollars to make sure they won these awards. Literally, they had people who’s sole job it was to market the films and run these events to make sure the awards came in. We couldn’t afford that. So we failed at getting awards and eventually the company went under.”

You see awards equals more viewership. More viewership equals more distribution. This all means more money.

This is the beast that feeds itself.

My hope is one day, someone will do something crazy and take a film that has earned Razzies and market the crap out of it to earn it Academy Awards as well. This should be the challenge. Because it’s not a competition of talent. It’s of politics, schmoozing and great marketing. So if you can get a terrible film with terrible performances to win the award, then you are king, queen and ultimate Academy winner!

It’s a strategic think tank of business people and not a pool of artists putting themselves forward and letting the chips fall where they may.

I see people get really invested in these awards. They get really invested in who they want to win. They are crushed when their person is “wronged” and “robbed,” but they are not “wronged” or “robbed.” Someone else simply had better marketing people and negotiators and more money behind those efforts.

You see it all the time with distribution packages at film markets. Okay, we will let you distribute this film for us, if you also distribute these other four. Talent and merit? Nonsense, negotiating skills, crafty maneuvers and wheeling and dealing. “Oh, you want this actor for your film, no problem, but you also need to hire this other actor who is also with our agency.”

Films are packaged before they are even shot. There is a long term marketing plan that has more money put into it than the movie itself. I am not exaggerating. This is the truth.

The Academy Awards are high stakes, but they are high stakes for business, not for artistry.

So when the results are known, look back and think “Which articles came out about this film?” “What was the social media like?” and “How many talk shows did so and so appear on.” and you’ll see for yourself. It’s there, but just to warn you, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. So decide what you want to do. Live in the fantasy of winning actually meaning something or remember that in the sixth grade when that girl one the class president spot, it wasn’t about merit or ability, it was about the free lollipops she gave out and her winning smile.

The silver lining is those lollipops will eventually rot her teeth…