While the nominees (and perceived snubs) in acting and directing will get the most digital ink in Academy Awards coverage, we at CraveOnline would like your attention for some of the “smaller” categories. Funny enough, our selected categories to comb through have had the most rule changes, the most committees, and nowadays, the most tweets of “who was that dude with the hair?” and “who was that homeless girl?”
Okay, okay. I’m going against the intro here by choosing – for the final 2014 installment of The Other Oscars – to focus on the biggest prize of them all: Best Picture. But hear me out, there are plenty of twists and turns in this category, similar to all the other “smaller ones”: who used to be awarded, who gets left out in the nomination process, etc. In fact, the Academy has actually changed rules to rush the final curtain by having fewer people awarded, and thus, not wasting our time thanking their tots.
Up until 1950 the Best Picture Academy Award, under various other names, was given to the head of the production company that made the film. As increasingly more than one film company became involved in the making of a film the award shifted to all credited producers being nominated.
But Shakespeare in Love changed that.
Some people were upset that that film won over the perceived favorite Saving Private Ryan. Oscar was upset that five people were awarded and all of them spoke, dragging an already long Oscar cast a little bit longer.
Let’s look at the culprits winners.
Edward Zwick, director of Glory and Legends of the Fall had a previous version of this film set up at Universal. Julia Roberts was already cast as Viola (which Gwyneth Paltrow would later win a Best Actress Oscar for), but she had a casting approval clause in her contract. She wanted Daniel Day-Lewis. Sets were being constructed when Day-Lewis passed on the role, electing to take time off from acting instead. As they looked for a Roberts-approved William Shakespeare, schedules didn’t align for this star-crossed-lovers tale and Universal lost Roberts and thereby lost interest.
The rights to the script still belonged to Zwick’s production company, Bedford Falls (which in addition to producing Zwick’s features also produced TV’s “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething”), however, when Miramax came aboard to distribute, that, of course, meant that Harvey Weinstein was the all-hands-on-deck producer who wanted to start from scratch. Weinstein chose not to have Zwick direct, but Zwick received a producer credit for all the work that was done on the never-shot Julia Roberts version.
Weinstein brought John Madden aboard to direct, whom he’d just worked with on Mrs. Brown. Weinstein also hired Tom Stoppard to re-write Marc Norman’s script. Stoppard, who had already written the Shakespeare revisionist Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead play, added numerous historical flourishes, such as working in the Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett) and John Webster (Joe Roberts) characters.
Norman, who spent two years on the Zwick script, received both a script credit and a producer credit. The other two Oscar winning producers for Shakespeare in Love were David Parfitt (who later was the chairman of BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television) and Donna Gigliotti (who was, in 1999, only the second woman to win as a producer; three more women have won since).
Shakespeare in Love was the largest group of producers awarded Best Picture.
This year 12 Years a Slave could join the club if it wins, as 12 Years has five nominated producers. However, the difference is that there are seven credited producers on 12 Years a Slave and there’s now a process to determine who should be awarded producer nominations.
Since Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture, the Academy has adopted an arbitration process to determine who should receive the nomination and award for Best Picture. In 1999 it was capped at three submissions; the rule was largely implemented to not overwhelm the stage with victors. But it also was a response to modern filmmaking, which largely involves multiple production companies to produce a project and multiple executive producers to fund a film.
These days, to make a modestly budgeted mid-tier film, it takes a lot of people. Studios have an interest in the micro scale film for a quick profit and the tentpole mega-movie. They’ve largely left the middle film to be funded by private companies with smaller risk to themselves to purchase distribution rights later.
The most absurd example of this effect is that 41 producers were credited for Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
So, to whittle down producers who can receive the ultimate prize for their work, the Producers Guild of America and the Academy have created an oversight committee to essentially verify who has worked on the film the longest through various stages of pre-production, production and post-production.
To nominate more than three producers, proof of producer input has to be given throughout the entire process of making the film. This only applies to the “produced by” credit, which the PGA has been attempting to clean up to give it the respect it deserves. They feel they’ve been losing some respect ever since the 1988 Writer’s Guild agreement that gave writers the second to last credit in a film (whereas “produced by” had previously always come just before “directed by”). Also “produced by” credits became longer and longer. An anonymous PGA nominated producer once told me, “At the end of the film, they start handing out producer credits like candy to keep everyone happy.”
If 12 Years a Slave does win and five producers accept the award, it will be because of a rule change that followed the controversy from Little Miss Sunshine’s Best Picture nomination. Wait you didn’t hear about that? Well, two producers were denied a nomination by the no-more-than-three rule (if only they’d cap sequels, too, right?).
Little Miss Sunshine had five credited producers. The Producers Guild of America gave all five their award. But Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger were not nominated for an Academy Award due to the three-cap rule. Lynda Obst, who was a part of the Academy Award producer committee stated, “five people don’t make a movie.”
But Yerxa and Berger found the script (which launched Michael Arndt’s career and won him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar). They also introduced Arndt to the other eventual producers and directors, Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris, of Little Miss Sunshine. Yerxa and Berger also hired some of the crew, aided with rewrites (including a new ending) and helped get the film into the Sundance Film Festival, where it eventually sold for the most money ever at the indie festival. After the other three producers (Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf and David T. Friendly) stepped to the stage with Arndt to accept Best Original Screenplay, the rule was changed the next year. Now “extraordinary circumstances” – where more than three producers made a film – could be reviewed.
Since 2007, the year of the most recent rule change, nine films have nominated four or more individuals. So, indeed, in the current film landscape certain films do take more than three people to get made.
One of the nominated films this year was Nebraska. Who were the two sole recipients for the nomination for that film? Yerxa and Berger.
How many producers will get on stage at the end of the ceremony this year?
The “Extraordinary Circumstances” 2013 Best Picture Nominees:
12 Years a Slave
Credited producers: SEVEN; the two who failed to receive a nomination are Bill Pohland (who was nominated for The Tree of Life) and Arnon Milchan (who runs New Regency Enterprises, and recently confessed that his leap from Israeli fertilizer manufacturer to Hollywood mega-mogul also included some spy games and weapon dealings in between.).
The Wolf of Wall Street
Nominees: FOUR; Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joey McFarland and Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Credited producers: FIVE; Riza Aziz is McFarland’s producing partner/co-founder of Red Granite Films. Red Granite bought the rights off of Warner Brothers after the studio sat on the project for five years due to budget concerns. Aziz assisted with financing The Wolf of Wall Street and was awarded a nomination from the PGA (who did not nominate Scorsese or DiCaprio, as they are not members of the PGA), but was determined not to have met the requirements of the AMPAS for a nomination.
American Hustle
But all four credited producers (Megan Ellison, Jonathan Gordon, Charles Roven and Richard Suckle) all received nominations.
The Non-Super-Sized Best Picture Nominees Are:
Captain Phillips – Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca and Scott Rudin
Dallas Buyers Club – Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter
Gravity – Alfonso Cuaron and David Heyman; CraveOnline was lucky enough to interview Heyman about the production.
Her – Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze and Vincent Landay
Nebraska – the aforementioned Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa
Philomena – Steve Coogan, Tracey Seaward and Gabrielle Tana
The Academy Awards will be announced this Sunday, March 2.
Impress your friends with your knowledge on the “smaller” awards, by reading up on some of the categorical histories that we’ve diligently researched for “The OTHER Oscars.”
