‘Out of Control’ Out in the Cold?

“Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” is out of luck.

Errol Morris’ documentary profiling a quartet of eccentric but unrelated personalities has failed to make the cut in the best feature-length documentary category despite a number of year-end awards, according to several members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who judged the entries.

Over the past several years, the academy has weathered recurring storms after such critically acclaimed documentaries as “Paris Is Burning,” “Truth or Dare,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Roger & Me,” “Brother’s Keeper” and “Shoah” were excluded from the list of Oscar nominees.

Several academy members who took part in the balloting told The Times that Morris’ film is not among this year’s 15 Oscar semifinalists and, thus, will not be in the running when the five nominees are announced Feb. 10.

“In recent years, the most critically acclaimed documentaries have not been nominated,” said producer Frank Marshall. “That will happen again this year. ‘Fast, Cheap & Out of Control’ will not be nominated. . . . There is something wrong with our system.”

Another voter, producer Michael Meltzer, added: “It would have been nice to see [“Fast, Cheap & Out of Control”] make the cut because I thought it was a good film.”

Peter Wooley, a production designer and documentary voter, said he gave “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” a “top score” but also confirmed the film is not on the list of semifinalists.

“I went through this last year with ‘Paradise Lost’ that everybody agreed was so wonderful, and we never heard of it again,” Wooley said.

Morris’ 82-minute film has won awards from such groups as the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review.

Times film critic Kenneth Turan listed it among his top 10 films of 1997. The film, he wrote, is “a one-of-a-kind extravaganza by Errol Morris, the most original talent now working in documentary film. . . . Morris is intent as always on pushing nonfiction filmmaking as far as it can go.”

The Oscar omission would not be Morris’ first. In 1992, the academy ignored “A Brief History of Time,” his documentary about physicist Stephen Hawking, which won the Filmmaker’s Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The academy also failed to nominate “The Thin Blue Line,” Morris’ controversial 1988 documentary that was credited with helping to overturn a man’s murder conviction. Morris noted that after the film failed to get an Oscar nomination, some academy members were so outraged that they sponsored him for academy membership.

Morris said he has not been told of the results of this year’s balloting.

“Would I like such an award or nomination? Yeah,” the director-producer said by phone from his home in Cambridge, Mass. “Would it help bring the movie to a wider audience? Yes. But I’m going to continue to make movies anyway. I like to think of myself as a very unique and innovative filmmaker and I like to continue that way.”

Academy officials declined to comment on whether “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” made the semifinals. “We don’t discuss nominations until the nominations come out,” said Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director.

Some believe that a dearth of academy members willing to volunteer their time to judge the entries is a chief reason why highly acclaimed documentaries often don’t get nominated.

“I’d like to see more people volunteer,” Marshall said. “It’s similar to how many people vote for our politicians. It’s endemic even in our academy. Do people feel they don’t do it because they feel they don’t get anything in return? I don’t know.”

“We need a bigger voice,” Meltzer said. “This is my second year doing this and I found a similar pattern [both years]. Few people are willing to lend time and energy to the voting process. As a result, the voting scales aren’t balanced.”

Two years ago, only 25 people were on the committee that determined the nominations for feature documentaries, but Davis said this year that number has expanded to 172 people.

Walter Shenson, who chairs the academy’s documentary screening committee, took issue with complaints that there aren’t enough volunteers.

“At one time, there were very few, but we’re getting lots and lots of people who want to be on our committee,” he said. “The problem is, with a lot of them, they are busy at night or it’s too much of an obligation to see all the films and we lose a lot of them.”

Shenson estimated that the number of people who show up at screenings is “roughly 20 in the theater at one time, maybe more.”

Shenson said he did not know whether “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” failed to make the semifinals.

“Whether it did or didn’t, I saw that [film] and I also saw everything else,” Shenson said. “If all of us didn’t give it good enough votes to make the semifinals, obviously we felt there were better ones.”

Robert DoQui, an actor who has taken part in the documentary category balloting for seven years, defended the current voting process, but agreed that greater participation by voters could affect which documentaries are selected.

When “Hoop Dreams,” the 1994 documentary about two urban basketball players that was hailed by critics and audiences alike, failed to receive an Oscar nomination, academy officials vowed to examine the process.

At that time, some likened the process to the old TV series “The Gong Show,” noting that when members of the documentary committee viewed the entries, members would shine flashlights 15 minutes into the film to indicate whether a potential Oscar contender should be allowed to proceed. That practice was abandoned after it became public.

Under a new framework, the academy divides the entries among three committees--two in Los Angeles and one in New York--and each committee comes up with its own list of five top choices. Voters must see at least 80% of the films to have their ballots counted. Once those 15 semifinalists are chosen, members of all three groups then watch any of the semifinalists they have not yet seen and select the top five.

Some critics say, however, that despite the changes, the judging is still dominated by older, retired people who have time on their hands to watch the films.

“It’s donkey work,” Wooley said, noting that in November and December volunteers have to spend one night a week watching two documentaries back-to-back from 7:30 to 11 p.m.

“It’s tough every Thursday night driving all the way to Santa Monica and sitting there for 3 1/2 hours and watching some really bad stuff,” Wooley added. “Occasionally, when you get a beauty, it’s just heaven.”