‘Hoop’ Snub Takes On a New Focus : Movies: As criticism continues, the academy’s documentary selection process moves into the spotlight.

The exclusion last week of “Hoop Dreams” from the list of Oscar nominees has put a spotlight on the documentary selection process. Or should we say a flashlight?

When members of the documentary committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences screen the entries, members shine flashlights 15 minutes into the film to indicate whether a potential Oscar contender should be allowed to proceed.

In a procedure some liken to the old TV series “The Gong Show,” if three-quarters of the audience lights up, it’s on to the next film. If the movie passes muster, a new vote is taken every 10 minutes during which a simple majority can relegate it to the can.

“You know after 20 minutes if the movie’s a turkey,” says documentary distributor Mitchell Block, who has served on the committee for 15 years. “To require people to sit through terrible movies is ridiculous.”

Walter Shenson, acting chair of the 47-member documentary committee, also defends the unusual policy: “While we want to be fair, we have to speed things along.”

Committee members did sit through all three hours of “Hoop Dreams,” Fine Line Features’ highly acclaimed look at the lives of two inner-city basketball players--the year’s most popular documentary, which was passed over when it came time for Oscar balloting. The omission of the film, one of the few documentaries to ever cross over into mainstream popularity, has created a major brouhaha.

“For years, the committee has ignored films with broad-based commercial appeal on the grounds of ‘taste’ or ‘judgment,’ ” says “Nell” director Michael Apted, whose “Seven-Up” documentaries, which tracked a group of British schoolchildren, has never been acknowledged by the academy. “But with the spectacular omission of ‘Hoop Dreams’--the best picture of the year--it has nowhere to hide. The committee finally shot itself in the foot.”

According to Sandra Evers-Manly, outgoing president of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP, the group has received more than 150 protest calls from people of all ethnic groups. And on Friday, she placed a call of her own to the academy in hopes of initiating a formal investigation.

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“People are using the term ‘injustice’--raising questions about whether there’s an openness to diversity and . . . who’s making these decisions in the first place,” she says. “(Academy President) Arthur Hiller says he’s going to take a ‘cold, hard look’ at the system--but for ‘Hoop Dreams,’ it’s too little, too late.”

Part of the problem, critics agree, is that there’s no documentary branch of the academy. Whereas directors nominate directors and costume designers nominate costume designers, documentary nominees are decided on by a voluntary committee--actors, producers, cinematographers--whose members are drawn from all 13 branches. Since the commitment is substantial--this year, 63 movies were screened for four hours every Tuesday and Thursday night for three months, few hard-working professionals are lining up to volunteer.

Shenson, who has been an academy member for 48 years and a documentary committee member for 18, acknowledges that more than half the group is over age 50, a good number of them retired or unemployed. “There are a lot of senior citizens in all branches of the academy,” he says. “The documentary committee is merely a cross-section. I’d be glad to have a committee of peers--if you could find enough documentarians within the academy willing to put in the time.”

Critics of the system offer a number of solutions. Making the documentaries available on videocassette--as the distributors do with their feature films--would open up the process to documentarians living outside Los Angeles and would minimize the hassles of viewing the films. Stricter submission standards would also lighten the load. Unlike most other categories, which require a seven-day Los Angeles run, the documentary category accepts films that have appeared in accredited festivals.

“Some of the stuff looks very amateurish, almost like home movies,” notes a 36-year-old committee member who declined to give his name. “And since we have to see 80% of the movies for our ballot to be counted, the executive committee should screen out the worst. Even the good ones don’t always get a fair shake. People are more likely to cut off a film scheduled for 10 (p.m.), since they want to get home. And no other division I know of holds discussions after the screenings.”

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Ira Wohl, director of the 1980 Oscar-winner “Best Boy,” sees a definite pattern in the tallies. “The films that gain notoriety never seem to get nominated,” he says. “ ‘The Thin Blue Line,’ ‘My Brother’s Keeper,’ ‘Visions of Light’--excellent movies that did well in the theaters--were all overlooked. Maybe the committee is adopting a paternalistic view, assuming that if a film is doing well on its own, it doesn’t need academy help.”

Shenson, producer of “The Mouse That Roared” and executive producer of PBS’ upcoming Beatles documentary, says he empathizes with the plight of those making--and selling--documentaries.

“Documentarians have to hustle up money, mortgage their wives and their kids in order to get movies made--and few get their money back,” he says. “No matter what our critics say, we don’t view ‘commercial’ as a dirty word. And as a former publicist, I know that drumming up a controversy about the Oscar nominations can be a very effective tool.”

Shenson, who plans to discuss the hoopla with Hiller on Tuesday, adds, “In every category, you hear the phrase ‘I was robbed.’ But democracy is always painful.”

“Democracy implies accurate representation,” counters Lianne Halfon, executive producer of “Crumb”--which won the Jury Prize at last month’s Sundance Film Festival but didn’t make the Oscar-nomination cut.

“This committee is a clique, a club with a secret membership and its own, very strange agenda,” she adds. “Leaving out ‘Hoop Dreams’ is like leaving out ‘Schindler’s List.’ ”