Hollywood patriots target Oscar Brits
March 10, 2002

John Harlow

SOME of Britain’s top actresses are set to lose out at the Oscar ceremony this year because America has been gripped by patriotic fervour and wants to reward its own stars.

Oscar-nominated performers such as Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench could be passed over because giving them gold-plated statuettes this year might be regarded as unpatriotic by American film fans scarred by last year’s terrorist attacks.

British men, by contrast, have been largely ignored by the Hollywood spin doctors behind the campaign. Sir Ian McKellen, who has been nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, is believed to be unassailable.

The 5,000 voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who return their postal ballots next week for the most widely viewed awards ceremony in the world, are being wooed by teams of highly paid academics, studio bosses and marketeers. One studio economist estimated that £50m is spent on advertising, screenings and parties in the 12 weeks before the Oscars.

Over the past few days promoters have broken cover with a technique known as “ring o’ roses” — phoning up old friends. A retired British director resident in Los Angeles said last week that he would complain after he was phoned at 11pm by a former studio executive who spent 20 minutes being rude about Gosford Park, a story of 1930s British life nominated for best film.

“He had forgotten I was a Londoner as he dismissed Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren as ‘Little Englanders’ and worse,” said the director, who asked not to be named.

Another victim of whisperers is the Durham-born director Ridley Scott, whose film Black Hawk Down was welcomed by the White House as an endorsement for the Afghan war.

Two months later, however, Oscar voters are worried by its overt warning about Americans underestimating Arab enemies. “Now we have American soldiers falling out of helicopters to be slaughtered on the ground, both in the film and on television news, it has become a bit too tough for us to deal with. It does not help that Black Hawk Down was made by a foreigner,” said one.

Studio insiders say this Oscar race is the most jingoistic since 1960 when John Wayne, promoting his self-financed western The Alamo, declared that a vote for rivals such as Sons and Lovers, based on the DH Lawrence novel, and The Apartment, a sex comedy by Austrian-born director Billy Wilder, was a vote for “debauched foreign liberalism”. The Apartment swept the board.

Today the Hollywood spin doctors are more subtle and effective. They include renowned promoters such as Tony Angellotti, who helped turn the little New York film-distribution firm of Miramax into a regular Oscar winner.

His most famous coup was swinging victory for Shakespeare in Love over Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan in 1999 by charming voters in neglected enclaves such as a retired actors’ home.

Oscar nominees receive “rule books”, vetted by psychologists who recommend key phrases to be repeated during interviews for maximum effect.

This year’s magic word, admitted one insider, is “American”. Tom Wilkinson has been nominated for his role as a Maine doctor in the revenge thriller In the Bedroom, which is being promoted to voters as “a film for an angry America”.

A Beautiful Mind has already fallen victim to a whispering campaign, with the media alerted to unpalatable facts left out of the film version of the life of the schizophrenic mathematician John Nash. These include reports that the real Nash was anti-semitic. Homosexual voters have been stirred up by the exorcising of Nash’s bisexuality from the movie.

Overt polling of Oscar voters is banned by the academy, which shrouds voting lists in secrecy. However, the results of a sophisticated focus group analysis run by a leading studio that claims an 80% accuracy rate in predicting winners suggests The Lord of the Rings, based on the saga by JRR Tolkien, is set to win best picture.

This may, however, be an exception. Dade Hayes, veteran columnist with the Hollywood trade paper, Variety, said: “The mood is against the British. The films are too small and the events in the world too big. British actors are deeply respected, but this is not their year.”

• Judi Dench has said she will take a break from cinema after a period of non-stop film- making following the death of her husband Michael Williams last year. In the past year she has worked on Iris and The Shipping News among other projects. She said on the BBC’s Parkinson: “Now I’m going to have a bit of a rest and come face-to-face with it all.” She did not say how long the break might be.

Source: The Sunday Times