TRUTH . . . IN . . . OSCAR ADS

Academy Award nominations are abroad again. The polls closed Friday; the results will be announced Feb. 5. In the trade papers of the last month it’s For Your Consideration time; three-dot journalism’s finest hour. Variety and the Hollywood Reporter are bulked up with slick-paper ads until they weigh as much as the Sunday New York Times.

Out there in Academy land, mailmen are struggling to deliver expensively printed souvenir books, whose cost would probably feed an Ethiopian village for six months. (It’s particularly ironic when one of those elaborate books is on behalf of “The Color Purple,” a celebration of impoverished Southern blacks.)

There seem to be more 10 Best lists this year than I can ever remember, and no words of praise, however oddly phrased, went unused. To the single-minded souls compiling quote ads, everything is useful, and a mangled sentence is better than no sentence at all.

Actually, on a year-round basis, things are somewhat better than the really bad old days in the quote-ad department. There’s a little less of the cuticle-scissor approach, taking words out of context (“Brash!”) and plonking them at the head of reviews where they sound like nothing so much as the name for a new perfume. There are still the exceptions, like Michael Wilmington’s review of “Ghoulies” earlier this year. Describing the critters themselves, he wrote, “The ghoulies, foul reptilian little beings coated with some obscene, glittering, mucouslike moisture, have a certain nauseating charm,” and was startled to see that the studio’s ad read: “ ‘Ghoulies’ . . . has a certain nauseating charm.” Damned faint praise, I’d say, in any case.

In Charles Solomon’s review of the current Tournee of Animation, see if you can spot where the (in this case) exhibitor cut off the review for his quotes: “ ‘Sky Whales’ features lavish backgrounds, polished animation and some intriguing imagery, but the film ultimately sinks beneath its mythic pretentions and a voice track that sounds like something going down a drain the wrong way.”

When quotes are stretched beyond recognition, a writer can complain to his or her newspaper’s Permissions Desk and get results--at least in the immediate area. No one should be so naive as to believe that the offending lines are removed in ads nationwide, and so misquoted appreciation becomes part of a movie’s press book forever.

The problem isn’t policing, of course, but the philosophy at the top. And that philosophy isn’t determined by the film makers--except in the very few cases where the stamp of one man is on every detail, from a sound system in a theater to an ad line--but by the advertising/publicity departments that shape their campaigns.

With a few stunning exceptions (noted), major studio publicity departments are becoming almost circumspect in their care about quotes. They’ve had to be. Major newspapers have Permissions desks. In New York they have a city ordinance making it a misdemeanor to quote out of context so that a writer’s whole meaning is changed.

That came into being after Vincent Canby’s 1971 review of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Touch,” in which he went to some pains to explain why Bergman was a great director but why “The Touch” was nevertheless a lousy movie. An ad agency scissored his praise of the director into a whole new paragraph and ran it at the top of its ad. When an outraged Canby wrote a column explaining just what had happened, there was great furor; finally the Consumer Protection Agency under Bess Myerson got a city ordinance passed to prohibit just such artful dodging in the future.

Actually, quote ads have a sort of cautionary value to a writer. There is nothing worse than being faced with a shocking banality in 36-point type with your name attached. The first reaction, of course, is outraged denial, but once you’ve checked and that alibi is gone, and after the depression has lifted somewhat, there’s a certain stiffening of resolve to watch it in the future.

However, if during the rest of the year the quote-collection business has improved from outright larceny to being just a leetle bit chancy, at Academy Award nomination time, all bets are off and shamelessness is the order of the day.

What are they looking for? Well, ideally something like this, from NBC-TV’s Gene Shalit:

“Rare and seldom does such a film appear that is so great, ennobling and enduring, where the spell does not fade nor the emotion pass away. Steven Spielberg has made more than a movie--a sonnet, a song, an odyssey, an emotional surge into a triumph of blinding brightness. It should be against the law not to see ‘The Color Purple.’ ”

Now, admittedly, that’s a high-water mark. You don’t get quotes like that every day--although the likelihood of getting them from television critics is far higher than from print journalists who presumably read over their stuff one last time before committing it to newsprint. Many of the TV critics’ quotes read like an off-mike exchange with the weather person: “I loved it.” Just that, stark and spare, with no “whys” or “hows” to clutter the reader’s mind.

Failing such unequivocal fervor, they (researchers, agents/publicists and studio publicity departments) compile 10 Best lists, which become miniature geography lessons. It would be nice, all year round, to become familiar with the work of the critics from the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot or the Ft. Lauderdale News/Sun Sentinel and compare reactions the year’s output. But we meet them only once a year, through their 10 Bests.

A bit of caution should apply as you skim those lists. Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News was surprised to find her name as one of those who’d put “Kiss of the Spider Woman” on a 10 Best list. “The Trip to Bountiful” was the film she had picked. Oops! Completely understandable.

In this overheated season, an ironic review--admittedly a dangerous form--is taken at face value, and you get something like the stirring quote for “Revolution” which has dogged me since Christmastime: “ ‘. . . A thrilling vision of our country’s birth pangs.’ Los Angeles Times, Sheila Benson.” Well, now. That review began, “You could heartily recommend Hugh Hudson’s ‘Revolution’ to any student as a thrilling vision of our country’s birth pangs.” The second paragraph began:

“But you know students. Some rotten Emperor’s New Clothier among them would be bound to point out that ‘Revolution’ is utterly and fatally devoid of a story on which to hang its breathtaking pictures. And he’d be right.”

Nevertheless, here we are, “Revolution” and I, in lock step and full-color ads, together through the press books of the ages. Where’s Bess Myerson, now that we need her?

The real problem about shenanigans like this is that as a reviewer you always want to single out fine work wherever you find it, and write about it unrestrainedly. It would be ironic if a studio’s practices of pinning specifically intended phrases onto a picture as a whole began to make writers chary with their praise--ironic, sad and terribly unfair. Glancing through all the effusive words, expensive pictures, tricky cut-out art work and humbly “sincere” suggestions in this barrage of nomination publicity, one ad stood out, a dozen words on a single page, without a single quote to prop it up: “Dear Academy Members,” it said, “Please see our film, ‘Brazil.’ Terry Gilliam. Arnon Milchan.” Nice. To the point, too.