Thinking, Talking, <i> Breathing</i> Oscar

After Morgan Freeman won the best supporting actor award from both the New York and Los Angeles critics’ associations the other day for his role as a pimp in “Street Smart,” a Calendar reporter called a Cannon publicist to see how the awards affected the studio’s Oscar strategy.

“I think (Morgan’s) performance stands for itself,” said Cannon’s Randall Barton. “It’s obviously an outstanding performance and it doesn’t require a lot of hype.”

Two hours later, another Cannon publicist called a Times entertainment editor and offered to set up an interview with Freeman.

Since most members of the academy live in Los Angeles, the local media are inevitably included in the strategy of various Oscar campaigns, and articles such as this one become active participants in the process.

Will the above references hurt or help Morgan Freeman’s chances? Will this sentence--where it is revealed that Sean Connery has hired an aggressive Hollywood PR firm to promote him even as he is being mentioned as a leading contender for a supporting actor award for “The Untouchables”--help or hurt his chances? Would the simple mention of a name in an Oscar story prompt a campaign, as one publicist interviewed last week suggested?

The only thing certain is that for the next few weeks, people in Hollywood will be sizing up and attempting to influence the Oscar nominations (to be announced Feb. 17) and the final awards (April 11).

To find out what the Oscar campaign issues are this season, Calendar reporters talked to dozens of studio executives, producers, agents and publicists, asking not who and what are being promoted, but who and what are considered serious contenders. By most accounts, 1987’s Oscar picture is particularly unfocused.

“Right now, I don’t see any clear front runners,” said a studio marketing executive who is annually assigned the chores of Oscar campaigning. “There aren’t the extraordinary films that have ‘academy credentials.’ ”

Another veteran campaigner said: “If you had asked me three weeks ago which films I thought would be the ones to beat, I would have said ‘Wall Street’ and ‘Empire of the Sun.’ In the last week, ‘Broadcast News’ has become the clear favorite.”

Several things have happened to push “Broadcast News” into the limelight, not least of which was the fact that it opened in New York and Los Angeles and people liked it. It also took five of the major awards--picture, director, screenplay, actor and actress--voted by the New York Film Critics Circle, a group generally resistant to such Hollywood seductions. And it landed on the cover of Newsweek magazine.

Happy New Year, 20th Century Fox.

What About ‘Wall Street’?

The good news has bittersweet connotations for Fox. “Broadcast News” is humming an Oscar tune, but where does all this attention leave Fox’s other big Christmas movie, “Wall Street”? Oliver Stone, who took no prisoners while sweeping the Academy Awards with “Platoon” last year, is a presence to be reckoned with, “this year’s 800-pound gorilla,” as one publicist put it.

Fox executives are so tight-lipped about their Oscar strategies, they wouldn’t answer a question about them if Sam Donaldson shouted it while they were getting on a helicopter.

They did acknowledge that both films will be given dignified, enthusiastic Oscar support, but would reveal no specifics.

It was learned that at director James L. Brooks’ request, Fox is positioning all three of “Broadcast News’ ” principal actors--William Hurt, Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks--for consideration in lead categories. Many people think Albert Brooks, who plays a smart field reporter to Hurt’s airhead network anchorman, has a better chance of winning in the supporting actor category.

“From the beginning, (James Brooks) has said there are three leads of equivalent substance on the screen,” a person close to the production said. “There is no other honest way to go than to promote (Albert) and Hurt in the same category.”

Brooks may still end up being nominated as best supporting actor. The decision belongs to the actual voters. If so, he may be competing with another actor who is being promoted for the lead actor category.

Universal is suggesting Denzel Washington for a best actor nomination for anti-apartheid drama “Cry Freedom,” even though his character--black activist Stephen Biko--dies before the film is half over.

‘Hope’ and Puttnam

One of the most interesting developments in the 1987 Oscar story occurred this week when Canadian-born producer Jake Eberts volunteered that David Puttnam did not launch John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory” while chairman of Columbia Pictures.

Eberts said he wanted to clear the record on “Hope and Glory,” the hit of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. year-end awards voting, because he and Boorman feared “the Puttnam label” was preventing Columbia from giving their picture the kind of Oscar campaign it deserves.

Puttnam, a British producer who came to Hollywood in June of1986 with his critical guns blazing away at the agents, producers and other power brokers he considered enemies of the art, was forced to resign from Columbia when the parent Coca-Cola Co. decided to merge Columbia and Tri-Star. Puttnam had alienated many people close to Coke, including producer/stockholder Ray Stark and star/Coke bottler Bill Cosby.

Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” and “Hope and Glory” were perceived to be the first two “prestige” Columbia pictures under Puttnam, and knowledgeable Oscar watchers have wondered how much support the new Columbia administration would give those two films.

“It would be irony in the extreme if indeed there was any kind of anti-Puttnam stance by Columbia,” Eberts said by telephone from Toronto. “Although David has been truly good to us, the project was committed before he got involved.”

Puttnam had nothing to do with the actual making of “The Last Emperor,” either, but to his supporters, both films reflect his taste and there is no question that Puttnam invested them with the energy of the studio.

“David gave (“Hope and Glory”) the imprimatur of a major studio,” Eberts said. “I don’t think we would have gotten that kind of treatment elsewhere. It’s just makes me sick to think the studio is holding back because people think it’s a Puttnam film.”

A Columbia marketing executive denied that the studio is giving “The Last Emperor” and “Hope and Glory” short shrift, and said the L.A. critics awards for “Hope and Glory” (best picture, best director and best screenplay) prompted a budget increase in the upcoming Oscar campaign for that film.

The “Puttnam Debate” is reminiscent of the reaction to Steven Spielberg’s snub by fellow directors two years ago. Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” received 11 Oscar nominations, but it was the one it didn’t get--best director--that set sympathetic hearts pounding.

Last year, the academy voted Spielberg the Irving Thalberg Award for his contributions as a film producer. It was read by many people to be a symbol of regret and it was felt that Spielberg’s just compensation would come with the eligibility of “Empire of the Sun.”

“Empire” has gotten mixed reviews, as did “The Color Purple,” but Warner Bros. is promoting it heavily in trade ads and it seems certain to collect several nominations, including one for best direction.

“It irks me to hear people say he didn’t get a nomination for ‘The Color Purple’ because other directors are jealous of him,” said a voting member of the directors’ branch of the academy. (All nominees except best picture are voted by the members of the individual branches.) “I didn’t vote for him because I didn’t think it was a well-directed movie. ‘Empire of the Sun’ is well-directed.”

Routine Strategies

There is a checklist of routine strategies for Oscar campaigns.

Ads in the industry trade papers Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter. Some ads are used to remind voters of films released earlier in the year. Some are there to promote specific performances or achievements. Some are there to massage egos.

Last year, academy members were encouraged by trade ads to remember Sylvester Stallone’s work in “Cobra” and Eddie Murphy’s in “The Golden Child,” even though the odds against their winning Oscars were about as long as those against Kadafi winning a Nobel peace prize.

(A source with knowledge of the “Ishtar” deal at Columbia revealed that producer Warren Beatty had demanded--and received--a contractual guarantee for an Oscar campaign for “Ishtar” that was “as great as or bigger than” the highly visible one that Paramount conducted for “Reds.” It seems unlikely, given “Ishtar’s” critical and box-office reception, that Beatty will push the issue. But fingers may be tightly crossed at the studio.)

Academy screenings. “All the advertising in the world won’t do any good if people don’t see the films,” said Blaise Noto, publicity chief at Vestron Pictures. Vestron, which had never distributed a movie before this fall, has several legitimate contenders from “Dirty Dancing,” “Anna” and “The Dead,” and he said the company is conducting the bulk of its campaigns in the screening room.

Noto said Vestron is beating the bushes, trying to get as many members of the various craft unions to see the movie as possible.

Tri-Star Pictures has gone a step farther this year, sending out several hundred videocassette copies of “Gaby” to members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., and to each member of the actors’ branch of the academy.

Media interviews. Get ready for the onslaught. Publicists are working harder than mesquite-eating termites right now setting up newspaper and television interviews with their Oscar candidates.

Big-Budget Entries

Most of the year’s “big movies”--those with large budgets and high ideals--failed to generate the kind of critical consensus necessary for successful Oscar campaigns.

“Cry Freedom” has impeccable credentials. It is about a serious social issue, it has spectacle, it comes from a director who five years earlier turned “Gandhi” into a cinematic proclamation for human decency. Academy voters rewarded the act with nine Academy Awards, at the same time turning two modern masterpieces--Spielberg’s “E.T.” and Sydney Pollack’s “Tootsie”--into Oscar also-rans.

But “Cry Freedom” didn’t muster that kind of support when it was released in early fall, and Universal quickly rewrote its marketing plan for the movie. (Included was a plan for a schedule of trade-paper ads to run in December and January, committed to as early as October, according to one source at Daily Variety.) The ultimate box-office fate of the movie now seems dependent on a good harvest of nominations.

Last month, the studio drew a master stroke of PR when it issued an internationally announced challenge to the South African government to allow “Cry Freedom” to be exhibited in integrated theaters without cuts. If the government agreed, the studio said, all proceeds would go to the UNICEF fund for children in South Africa.

It was a no-lose proposition for the producers. The movie didn’t figure to get past South African censors anyway. If the government banned the film, it would just produce more publicity. If it accepted it, Universal and Attenborough could claim--justifiably--that theirs was a film that could conceivably shift the course of human events, at least in South Africa.

“ ‘Cry Freedom’ is the liberal dream of ‘87,” said a marketing executive from a rival studio, while assessing the competition. “I expect it will get a lot of nominations, but it has not done well enough at the box office to win.”

Handle With Care

Others think the just-released “Ironweed” may get the liberal vote in the academy. It’s about street people, a social issue closer to home, and it has no box-office history to impede it.

Tri-Star Pictures didn’t release the film at Christmas because it wanted to depress people. It is simply an expensive movie with a subject matter that requires wide critical validation to give it a chance in the marketplace.

“The film is being handled very carefully. It’s not one you just show to as many people as you can and hope for the best,” said a Tri-Star executive. “It needs nominations and we think we’ll get them.”

Taft-Barish, the production company responsible for “Ironweed,” has hired Lloyd Leipzig, a former United Artists and Orion marketing executive, to handle the campaign for “Ironweed.” Leipzig has worked on such past Oscar winners as “Amadeus,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Deer Hunter.”

“Lloyd has handled a lot of tough films and he knows how to get word-of-mouth going on them,” said a fellow publicist. “What he does is organize a lot of screenings for small groups of influential people and he sells the movie to them. He’s like a Mercedes salesman. He calls the next day and says, ‘Well, how’s it drive? Is that a car, or what?’ ”

Leipzig would not discuss his strategy for “Ironweed,” but he did begin screening the movie last month and it was being heralded as an Oscar contender long before Jack Nicholson won best actor honors for it (and for “Witches of Eastwick”) from N.Y. and L.A. critics.

Actresses Galore

Alive Pictures is giving high visibility to its little-seen “The Whales of August.” The movie got a trendy send-off last May at the Cannes Film Festival, where grateful critics applauded its geriatric quartet of stars Lillian Gish (about 91), Bette Davis (79), Ann Sothern (78) and Vincent Price (76).

“Whales of August,” directed by Lindsay Anderson and adapted from a play about two elderly sisters on the New England island where they have spent their lives, has been playing in Los Angeles for months, and though it has not done well commercially, it is presumably being seen by academy members.

Most insiders think Lillian Gish, who was in her 30s when the Academy Awards were launched in 1927, has the best chance at a nomination.

An Alive executive acknowledged that the trade ads for the film give Gish and Davis equal play, which conformed to their contracts (Davis’ name appeared first in advertising materials, with Gish’s name to the right and higher ), but said Gish’s position on the right-hand page of two-page spreads may work as a subtle hint to voters.

(Disney’s problem on “Outrageous Fortune” wasn’t as easily resolved. When that film was released, there was such a flap over the placement of the names of co-stars Bette Midler and Shelly Long in the credits that the studio ended up making two sets of prints. Half of the theaters got prints with Midler’s name first, half got prints with Long mentioned first. Neither name appears in the Oscar ads appearing in the trades. A source said Disney executives decided against promoting them because it would have required two sets of ads, and twice the budget.)

If Gish does get nominated by the actors branch, many people believe the general voting body will give her the Oscar. She was nominated only once before--for the 1946 “Duel in the Sun”--but did not win.

Alive has also sent copies of Alan Price’s musical score to the 160 members of the music branch.

Who would Gish be competing with in the best actress category?

Although the number of people on Meryl Streep’s bandwagon seem to be declining, she is considered by many to be a shoo-in for her role as an ill homeless woman in “Ironweed.”

Holly Hunter has exploded into prominence in Hollywood this year--first with a twitchy role as the simple-minded redneck kidnaper in “Raising Arizona,” then in “Broadcast News”--and she may have an Oscar to cap it off.

The 29-year-old actress played an ambitious network producer in “Broadcast News”--one of the best professional woman’s roles ever written for the screen--and she did it so well, real women network producers are rushing to their word processors to tell everyone how eerily accurate it all seems.

Hunter has swept the best actress awards of the N.Y. and L.A. film critics and the National Board of Review. Said one Oscar forecaster Wednesday: “She’s in.”

Despite Tri-Star’s efforts on her behalf for “Suspect,” recent Newsweek cover girl Cher is thought to be a lock for “Moonstruck,” in which she plays a frumpy Italian-American widow revived by an affair with a young baker.

You don’t expect an actress portraying a mad woman in a suspense thriller to be given much consideration for a Oscar nomination, but Glenn Close’s performance in Paramount’s “Fatal Attraction” was perceived as something special.

“I think Glenn Close’s name is on everybody’s lips,” said an executive at a rival studio. “I think this is the movie that takes her out of the category of the ‘poor man’s Meryl Streep.’ ”

Faye Dunaway has gotten nearly unanimous praise from critics for her role as an alcoholic in “Barfly,” and Cannon is giving her strong support in trade ads. But few people saw the movie, and getting academy voters to screenings by the Feb. 5 nominations deadline will be difficult.

Barbra Streisand had one of the showiest roles of the year playing the not-quite-mad defendant in “Nuts,” and ordinarily it would seem an easy prediction to make. But insiders--specifically, fellow actors--are put off by rumors of her fighting with Mark Rydell, who was fired as director before production began, and with Marty Ritt, who took over.

“I think Streisand could win if she got nominated, but I don’t think she’ll get nominated,” said a former Oscar-nominated actor. “She’s not liked among actors.”

In its trade ads, Warner Bros. is promoting “Nuts” in most categories, and is singling out “for your consideration” no fewer than six actors. But despite the apparent leading role played by Dreyfuss, only Streisand is identified as a lead, and it is lost on no one that as the film’s producer, she likely played a part in that decision as well.

The publicists and studio executives involved with “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” and “Anna” are working hard to get voters thinking respectively of Maggie Smith and Sally Kirkland.

Kirkland, who teaches acting classes that many voters may have attended, shared the L.A. film critics’ best actress award last week with Holly Hunter and Smith is a perennial Oscar favorite. Russell Schwartz, head of Island Pictures, said the company is campaigning for Smith, co-star Bob Hoskins, director Jack Clayton and the adapted screenplay, but Smith is the centerpiece of the campaign.

“There’s no question it’s Maggie’s show,” Schwartz said. “I think everybody feels that way. She’s in every scene.”

Critics have written enough wonderful things about Christine Lahti’s performance in “Housekeeping” to hang a campaign on, and Columbia is promoting her in ads. But the “David Puttnam label” on “Housekeeping” is not being disputed by anyone.

Some other longshots being campaigned for in the category are Judy Davis, the Australian actress who is reunited with Australian director Gillian Armstrong for “High Tide,” and Anjelica Huston, who stars in her late father John Huston’s “The Dead.”

Nicholson’s Year?

The best actor category seems wide open. Nicholson may have a lock on one spot, and if the popularity of “Broadcast News” is translated into Oscar votes, Hurt and Albert Brooks may both be nominated.

The most interesting buzz is over the possibility that both Steve Martin and Robin Williams will overcome the academy’s traditional bias against comedy actors and be nominated, respectively, for “Roxanne” and “Good Morning, Vietnam.”

Island Pictures is weighing in with a campaign for Marcello Mastroianni, whose performance in the Cannes Film Festival hit “Dark Eyes” has scored with critics here, too. An Island executive said the company is depending on frequent academy screenings and on ads using review quotes, the best of which came from the Boston Globe’s Jay Carr: “If you regarded Mastroianni’s career as a meal, this is the dessert.”

John Lone, who plays the title role in the second half of “The Last Emperor,” is mentioned frequently by people who’ve seen the film, but again, there is the question of Columbia’s commitment to a campaign, and some people feel that the movie is too cold to generate much heat for its star.

Longshots in the category include Albert Finney (“Orphans”), Kevin Costner (he’s getting some studio support for both “The Untouchables” and “No Way Out”), and Nick Nolte (“Weeds”).

Nolte is a special case. He got good reviews for “Weeds,” in which he played a convict who organizes a psychologically therapeutic prison theater company, but he was in Borneo on another movie when “Weeds” opened (and closed). The financially struggling De Laurentiis Entertainment Group generated very little publicity for his performance and little is expected in the way of an Oscar campaign.

Connery, Dukakis, et al.

The collective opinion of Calendar sources put Sean Connery in front of the pack for best supporting actor for “The Untouchables” (“He would have to commit a felony not to win,” said one person), with Morgan Freeman (“Street Smart”) and Ian Bannen (“Hope and Glory”) right behind.

The question is whether the voters will ignore the ad campaigns for Denzel Washington (“Cry Freedom”) and Albert Brooks (“Broadcast News”) and vote for them as supporting rather than lead actors.

Others considered serious contenders in the category: Lee Ermey (the screaming drill instructor) in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Tom Waits in “Ironweed,” Bob Hoskins in “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” and James Whitmore (“Nuts”).

Vincent D’Onofrio, the suicidal recruit in “Full Metal Jacket,” was a runner-up for best actor in the N.Y. critics’ balloting, but his name does not even appear in Warner Bros.’ Oscar ads.

A couple of other longshots who are getting early campaign support: Vincent Price (“Whales of August”), James Naughton (“The Glass Menagerie”).

Olympia Dukakis, two names more familiar to beer drinkers and political pundits than to Hollywood, emerged as the supporting actress favorite as soon as the first witnesses got a look at her performance as Cher’s mother in Norman Jewison’s “Moonstruck.”

Elaine Stritch seems the only serious contender from Woody Allen’s current “September,” and Vanessa Redgrave has once again dazzled the critics, this time playing writer Joe Orton’s cynical publisher in “Prick Up Your Ears.”

Norma Aleandro, the Argentine actress who was a best actress contender last year for “The Official Story,” is being heavily promoted for “Gaby” by Tri-Star publicists, who are also planning to remind voters of Lisa Bonet’s work--punctuated by a controversy over her sexually explicit scene with Mickey Rourke--in “Angel Heart.”

Finally, for longshot betters, keep in mind the title “My Life as a Dog.” The film was released in Swedish director Lasse Halstrom’s homeland two years ago and is not eligible for the academy’s foreign-language award. It is eligible for the best picture category.

A spokesman for Skouras Pictures, the film’s American distributor, said the company sent posters to academy members at Christmas with a note to jog their memories about the movie. He said Skouras is also considering running ads that just bluntly state that “ ‘My Life as a Dog’ is not eligible for best foreign-language category but it does qualify to be nominated for best picture of the year.”

It’s a longshot, the executive admitted, but it has been done before. In 1971, “The Emigrants” was nominated, and the following year, “Cries and Whispers” made it.

Both of those films, as superstition would have it, were also from Sweden.

Jack Mathews, Pat H. Broeske, Patrick Goldstein, Leonard Klady and Jane Lieberman reported and researched this article.