Documentary Rush Is On

It’s now or never for documentarians with Oscar aspirations. Under new guidelines, all contenders must have a weeklong run at a Manhattan or Los Angeles-area theater commencing by midnight Oct. 31, leading to a surge in the number of nonfiction releases now hitting the screen.

Sept. 27 saw the release of “The Leopard Son,” a story based on animal footage shot in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, as well as “A Perfect Candidate,” a look at the ideologically polarized 1994 Virginia senatorial race between Oliver North and Sen. Charles Robb. Coming Friday are “Microcosmos,” an insect movie that swept the Cannes Film Festival; and “Tell the Truth and Run,” Rick Goldsmith’s portrait of the muckraking journalist George Seldes. And coming soon are “When We Were Kings” (Oct. 25), about the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight; and “Paradise Lost,” an examination of a grisly triple murder in Arkansas, made by the duo responsible for 1992’s award-winning “Brother’s Keeper” (Oct. 31).

“The marketplace is the most crowded I’ve ever seen it for independent films--documentary films in particular,” said Joe Berlinger, who shot “Paradise Lost” with his partner, Bruce Sinofsky. “If documentaries begin with two strikes against them, we have 2 1/2 right now.”

The months between the summer blockbusters and the holiday onslaught have always been considered hospitable to documentaries, said Mark Gill, president of marketing for Miramax Films, which in addition to “Microcosmos” is opening last year’s Oscar-nominated “Small Wonders,” the story of a Harlem teacher fighting arts cutbacks, on Wednesday. And, now that the academy has eliminated film festivals as an avenue of eligibility, the race to the theaters has heated up.

“For an established distributor, there’s still plenty of room,” he said. “For anyone else, getting screens is a little like breaking into Ft. Knox--possible but unlikely.”

Documentaries generally open in a few art-house theaters, expanding the release as word of mouth builds. But Discovery Channel Pictures is so confident that “The Leopard Son,” its maiden full-length theatrical feature, will penetrate the mainstream that it bypassed that circuit in favor of bigger venues, such as Universal City’s Cineplex Odeon.

“We view our major competition as commercial, family films such as ‘Fly Away Home,’ ‘Extreme Measures’ and ‘First Wives Club’ rather than other documentaries,” said Tom Ortenberg, a marketing consultant on the film. “We’re filling out forms not only for best documentary, but for the best picture and best score categories as well.”

Despite the box-office success of documentaries such as “Woodstock,” “Hoop Dreams” and “Roger & Me,” there’s still public resistance when it comes to nonfiction films, says Karen Cooper, director of New York’s Film Forum, a nonprofit theater specializing in foreign, independent and documentary films.

“The average filmgoer associates documentaries with ‘National Geographic,’ not with an $8.50 ticket price or a Friday night’s entertainment,” she says. “They’re a much harder sell than a Bette Midler film.”

The 1995 snub of the popular “Hoop Dreams,” the tale of two urban high school basketball players, raised questions about the Oscar nomination process, as did the omission of the critically acclaimed “The Thin Blue Line,” “Roger & Me” and “Brother’s Keeper” in years past.

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The committee--composed of volunteers from all 13 branches of the academy in the absence of a documentary branch--was said to be skewed toward older, less active members of the organization since the time commitment was so great. And when it came to choosing the nominees, critics charged, there was a distinctly anti-commercial bent.

In June of that year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that, should the number of entries be too large or time-consuming, the workload would be divided among screening groups. To promote diversity, the academy set up a New York screening group and embarked on a recruitment campaign.

“We eliminated film festivals to make the requirements for this category the same as for every other,” said Walter Shenson, chair of the documentary committee. “Besides, a lot of the festival documentaries end up on TV.”

Betsy McLane, executive director of the International Documentary Assn., finds the process inequitable nevertheless. Few of the filmmakers have the financial resources to book a weeklong theatrical run, she said. Those who do often engage in the practice of “four-walling” a theater--renting it for a week and handling their own promotion--to make the Oscar cut.

“All the new outlets make this an exciting time for documentaries,” McLane said. “But increased air time doesn’t translate into more money for the filmmaker. Producers who got $250,000 for an hourlong show are now getting $100,000 for that same hour. And since cable wants the back end [profits] and ancillary rights, it’s not easy to get rich.”

Having to “four-wall” a theater or pay for a theatrical release puts the little guys in a bind, Berlinger agreed. “On ‘Brother’s Keeper,’ we spent $1,200 to rent Laemmle’s Sunset 5 for a week of 11 a.m. screenings--which no one came to see,” he said. “On ‘Paradise Lost,’ we’re forking out $150,000 for the first three cities alone. And since some aesthetically strong films are only intended to be shown at film festivals, the new rules are detrimental to the academy as well.”