Ladies and Gentlemen, Let the Lobbying Begin : The Annual Push for Oscar Nominations Is On, and Columbia’s Package Has Tongues Wagging

The gun has gone off on the Oscar campaign season. And the lengths to which the Hollywood studios go to seek out voters’ attention has apparently reached a new zenith, or nadir, depending on whom you talk to.

The Academy Awards ceremony won’t roll around until March 21 but the pressure is on among Hollywood’s competitors to try to boost the profile of their pictures and, with the now-common practice of sending out videos, making it convenient to academy members who otherwise might not opt to attend Oscar screenings. (The academy’s official line is that there is no substitute for seeing movies in theaters.)

Oscar nominations, as well as Golden Globe and critics’ awards, can add considerably to a film’s fortunes at the box office.

Hollywood is buzzing about Columbia Pictures’ seemingly extravagant move to send the 4,700 or so members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by Federal Express a custom-designed black box filled with a library of specially packaged videocassettes of the nine films the studio believes have Academy Award potential.

Some rival studio marketing executives spent hours trying to estimate what the black box may have cost Columbia. One figured at least $650,000.

While Columbia officials had no comment, one executive refuted the figure as double its actual cost, saying that sending the videos all at once was actually less expensive than separate mailings on each picture, the more common practice. Besides, he said, “this way, we get talked about more.”

Titles run the gamut from such Oscar-expected entries as “Remains of the Day” and “The Age of Innocence” to less likely candidates “Groundhog Day” and “Malice.”

“Notice that they didn’t include ‘Last Action Hero,’ ” said one rival studio executive, referring to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that was one of the most talked about productions of the year for its excesses and lack of box-office charisma.

If the novelty and apparent lavishness of the package isn’t causing enough talk in the industry, the fact that it was delivered by Federal Express certainly is. Campaign materials usually are sent through the more humble U.S. Postal Service.

True to the industry’s typical backbiting ways, a number of Columbia competitors were quick to express their disdain. But for one publicity executive at a rival studio: “It’s one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen . . . really first-class.”

More common was the negative remark. “They might as well have included a couple of $20 bills,” said a successful screenwriter, sarcastically alluding to the package as thinly veiled vote-buying. But the same academy members who may deride the increasingly shameless promotional techniques never seem to mark them Return to Sender.

The Samuel Goldwyn Co. boasts that its quest to earn Oscars for Kenneth Branaugh’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” began in September, before anyone else.

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As far as volume, Warner Bros. has already eclipsed its competitors, mailing out separately video versions of hits and duds, including, respectively, “The Fugitive” and “Man Without a Face,” a triple-packaged boxed set (“Sommersby,” “Falling Down,” “Dave”) plus soundtracks and movie scores too numerous to mention.

The opposite is true of 20th Century Fox, which plans a scant mailing of one title, the Sean Connery-Wesley Snipes thriller “Rising Sun,” based on Michael Crichton’s bestseller. Similarly, MGM will be sending out only a video and soundtrack of “Six Degrees of Separation.”

Ever protective of potential bootlegging of its animated features, the Walt Disney Co. has yet to decide when or if it will do a mailing of “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Copies of Disney’s two big Oscar hopefuls--”Joy Luck Club” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It”--will go out by year’s end.

Paramount is sending a New Year’s present in the form of a box of videos, including its blockbuster “The Firm.”

As far as its mega-hit of the year (and all time), Universal said there will be no freebies of “Jurassic Park” and is only considering sending copies of “In the Name of the Father” and “Schindler’s List.”

No one, meanwhile, expects to generate as much heat as Columbia already has.

“It’s so overdone, in typical Columbia fashion . . . in this economy, I can’t believe it,” was the comment made by an executive who works for Columbia’s sister company, TriStar Pictures, which also is owned by Sony. TriStar is sending out a handful of cassettes, including “Philadelphia,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Cliffhanger” and Woody Allen’s last studio-backed movie, “Manhattan Murder Mystery.”