AN OSCAR ARGUMENT HEATS UP

Should the four Academy Awards presented annually for documentaries and short films continue to be given equal time with the other motion picture achievements that are extolled during the live Oscar telecast?

That issue was raised last month at a meeting of the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, provoking what some in attendance described as the most heated Oscar format debate in years.

Tuesday night, when the board reconvenes, the issue will be put to a vote. According to sources in the academy, the Oscar rules committee has recommended that the documentary and short-film awards be presented during a pre-Oscar dinner, along with awards for scientific and technical achievements. Traditionally, the winners of the “sci-tech” awards are announced via videotape, seemingly at scan speed, during the Oscar show. All that is needed to adopt the change, which would affect the March 30 show, is a simple majority of the votes cast by the members of the board of governors. Academy President Robert Wise said he expects more than 30 of the board’s 36 members to show up Tuesday.

Documentary and short-film makers are understandably upset by the prospect of having their presence downsized. It is, as one academy board member said, “a thrill for any nominee just to be in that auditorium and to hear your name announced to the world.” With the proposed change, none of the nominees would be in the auditorium and only the four winners would hear their names announced.

The documentary and short-film makers also say that they depend on the Oscar exposure for TV and theatrical bookings of their work.

“We don’t want to be in a side show; we want to be in the big top,” said Robert Guenette, president of the International Documentary Assn. “The (show) promotes the fact that documentaries belong in theaters. We need it.” Guenette said that the few minutes saved by trimming the documentary and short-film awards would do little to streamline or glamorize the show. In fact, he said, such a move would compromise the integrity of the academy by eliminating categories that very often represent the year’s most passionate artistic achievements.

What the show needs is more documentary exposure, not less, Guenette said. A few examples that would liven this year’s show: a tribute to Cary Grant (which we will undoubtedly get), a look at war movies from “All Quiet on the Western Front” to “Platoon,” aerial special effects from “Wings” to “Top Gun.”

The show does need more of that sort of thing, and the show’s producer, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., has promised it. It is ironic that Goldwyn is in the eye of this storm. Goldwyn, through the Samuel Goldwyn Co., is one of the leading distributors of documentaries.

The problem for Goldwyn and the academy’s board of governors, faced with descending TV ratings, is not just the minutes spent introducing the documentary nominees (five each for films over and under 30 minutes running time) and short films (five each for animated and live action). There is the fact that most of the billion or so worldwide viewers have not, cannot and will not see them.

Whatever time the introductions, presentations and speeches take, it is downtime for the TV audience. It flattens out that interminable mid-section of the show and pushes the last act--those final minutes when the acting, writing, directing and best picture Oscars are all handed out--that much later into the night. The documentary and short-film makers deserve their own show, where their work could be properly represented. PBS once aired a 13-week series, sponsored by Polaroid, that featured documentaries and short films that had either won or been nominated for Academy Awards. Screenwriter Norman Corwin, a current member of the academy’s board of governors, hosted that PBS show and said a similar proposal “is now on the table.”

Certainly, there are greater fat deposits on the Oscar body than the documentary and short-film awards. The academy would do better to cut the songs, which these days have little to do with the movies for which they are nominated, and they could eliminate most of the Las Vegas review numbers.

They could tell Jack Valenti to stay home and tell his cat how well his ratings system is working. They could stop reading the rules (meaningless, boring and unverifiable), and they could ditch the Price-Waterhouse guys who--we will concede it--look honest! If the academy were willing to make some of those cuts, there might be time for showing enough footage from the nominated documentaries and short films for viewers to glean a rooting interest. (Before you choose sides on grounds of artistic purity, one of the opponents of the rules change said many people depend on these categories as tie-breakers in their office Oscar pools.)

For all but a handful of people in the industry, those categories hold no more suspense than the achievements honored each year at the sci-tech dinner. The person who wins an Oscar for inventing a new lens would probably prefer to pick it up under the big top too. So many awards, only so many minutes.

THE LAST DETAIL: At the end of the final credits for Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” is a thank you to, among others, fellow director Michael Cimino.

The tribute gets the mind racing to all sorts of conclusions. Cimino, because of his experience with “The Deer Hunter,” gave Stone the inspiration for his Vietnam sequences in “Platoon.” Cimino, because of his excesses on “Heaven’s Gate,” gave Stone tips on how not to go over budget.

No, says Stone. Nothing quite so . . . cinematic.

“I had given up the whole idea of trying to get (‘Platoon’) made,” said Stone. “The script was on the shelf. . . . It was in the morgue. I couldn’t get anybody interested in it. I said, ‘Nobody cares about Vietnam anymore.’ It was Michael who convinced me the issue was not dead, that the climate was right for it. He was prescient.”

Apparently, so. “Platoon” has turned into the season’s biggest box-office surprise. Orion Pictures, which opened the film in Los Angeles and New York before Christmas to qualify for the Academy Awards, has quickly moved it into about 60 theaters in 13 major cities and will add another 100 by next week.

As of Monday, it had grossed $3.6 million and on a per-screen basis, it is the most popular movie in release.

Stone, a Vietnam combat veteran and a former Oscar winner (for his script for “Midnight Express”), said Cimino came to him in 1984 and asked him to write “The Year of the Dragon,” which Cimino was planning to direct for Dino de Laurentiis. If Stone would do that, Cimino said, he would go to De Laurentiis and offer to produce “Platoon.”

Legal problems between Cimino and De Laurentiis prevented Cimino from producing Stone’s movie, but the encouragement got the script back off the shelf. Stone eventually got the English company, Hemdale, to finance “Platoon” as part of a two-picture deal. The first movie, “Salvador,” was released early last year.

Now, Stone picks up the daily trade papers and sees his movies competing with each other for the attention of Oscar voters. Hemdale is running ads promoting “Salvador”; Orion is running ads promoting “Platoon.”

Despite the fact that “Platoon” is based on his own combat experiences, and the 10 years it took to get it made, Stone said he can’t root for it over “Salvador.”

“I’ve got as much of me invested in one as the other,” he said. “They are both like children. ‘Platoon’ is just a child that’s been with me longer.”

EX-FILMEX: The American Film Institute is holding a press conference Tuesday, apparently to announce that it has taken over the date of the Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Filmex) with plans to begin hosting its own film festival starting this spring.

Ken Wlashin, the lone survivor of a staff cut at Filmex a year ago, is expected to assume the title of artistic director and will select the films--presumably far fewer than the more than 140 included in past Filmex events--for the AFI festival.

Filmex President Bill Magee acknowledged that the Filmex board overturned a previous decision to merge with the fledgling American Cinematheque, after the board for the Cinematheque insisted on Filmex retiring all debts before the merger could be completed.

Less than a year ago, Filmex had debts of more than $300,000, prompting the organization to postpone the festival from spring to fall, then to cancel it for 1986 altogether.

It is unclear how the roles of Filmex’s board and AFI come together in the new alignment. Magee refused to comment, but others close to both groups said the AFI festival is being considered a new festival, not a redressed Filmex and that the AFI is not assuming any of Filmex’s debts.

The name of the AFI festival and theater locations for this year’s event, to be held sometime in late March, are expected to be announced Tuesday.