Playing to Golden Boy’s Backyards

If you lived in Ohio, you wouldn’t have Michael Clarke Duncan in your living room right now. Residents of Los Angeles and New York, however, can’t turn on their TVs lately without seeing “The Green Mile” star, not to mention “The Cider House Rules” director Lasse Hallstrom, and Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey of “American Beauty.”

It’s campaign time for these and other Academy Award nominees, which is why movie studios have bought TV ads in the two cities where most of the 5,600 academy voters live. Don’t even try to watch “Friends” if you don’t fancy a recap of Bening’s furious vacuuming scene. Don’t zone out in front of “NYPD Blue” unless you’re in the mood to hear Hallstrom, best actor nominee Michael Caine and best screenwriter nominee John Irving wax poetic about why “Cider House” is an American classic.

While the race to take home Oscar has been underway for months, the four-week window between the nominations being announced and the March 23 ballot deadline is crunch time for those who manage Academy Award campaigns. The goal, veteran strategists agree, is to keep your nominated films and stars in the public eye without looking desperate--to campaign, in effect, without looking like you think you need to.

That’s why best actor nominee Russell Crowe (“The Insider”) took a break from filming in Poland the other day to phone Variety’s Army Archerd (the resulting item took up a quarter of Archerd’s well-read column). That’s why the usually reclusive Spacey, also nominated for best actor, is suddenly RSVP’ing yes to high-profile soirees (“Award campaigns give a way,” Variety noted, “of bringing out the party animal in contenders”). And that’s why Bening, who is just days away from delivering her fourth child, showed up on Jay Leno last week.

Several Oscar hopefuls--from best actor nominee Richard Farnsworth (“The Straight Story”) to best actress nominee Hilary Swank (“Boys Don’t Cry”)--have happily pitched in to present other awards, from the glitzy Golden Globes to the various guild awards. Why? Because even events that are not televised draw live audiences crammed with academy voters.

“Nothing happens in a vacuum,” said Dawn Taubin, executive vice president of domestic marketing at Warner Bros., which is airing a new TV ad in New York and Los Angeles that doesn’t even mention “The Green Mile’s” big star (Tom Hanks) by name, opting to tout screenwriter (and Oscar nominee) Frank Darabont instead.

There’s no magic formula, but shrewd academy campaigns go for what Taubin called “the cumulative effect of your advertising campaign, your trade [publication] campaign, your publicity appearances and the inclusion of your movies or stars in articles about these events.”

Movie studios like to remain mum about how much all this is costing them. But a four-week analysis by The Times of the advertising for best picture contenders in just one of the industry’s two trade papers reveals the relative aggressiveness of each studio’s campaign. (The figures are based on Variety’s current ad rates.)

Most people in town believe the race for best picture boils down to a contest between DreamWorks front-runner “American Beauty” and the crowd-pleasing “Cider House” from Miramax, and a tally of the advertisements in Daily Variety since the Oscar nominations were announced bear that out. Of the four studios with best picture contenders, Disney spent the least on advertising, dropping about $141,000 on “The Sixth Sense” and $198,000 on “The Insider.” Warner Bros. spent about $313,000 to promote “The Green Mile,” while Miramax paid about $350,000 to draw attention to “The Cider House Rules.”

‘Beauty’ Tops in Trade Ad Promotions

But the deepest pockets by far have been at DreamWorks, which spent more than $774,000 on some of Variety’s most premium advertising to promote “American Beauty.” The studio bought six full-page front cover ads, for example--Variety’s most expensive real estate--at $29,100 a pop. By contrast, Warner Bros. bought three, Disney bought two (one for each film) and Miramax bought one.

“We are doing what we’ve done in each of the last four years. No more and no less,” said Mark Gill, president of Miramax’s Los Angeles operation. “We tend to spend based on what we think will work, not based on what other people are doing.”

And a DreamWorks spokesman noted that some of its spending has been necessitated by a steady stream of congratulatory ad buying that is considered de rigueur after nominations and award wins. (“American Beauty” has won most of the key guild awards, including the Directors, Writers and Screen Actors guild prizes.)

The Hollywood Reporter has had a similar glut of Oscar-related advertising, at similar rates. And there’s no such thing, it seems, as a ceiling on how much the studios will spend. When a postal service error caused the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to postpone its ballot deadline, for example, from March 21 to March 23, film companies wasted no time booking ad space for the extra two days.

Industry veterans note that trade advertising is always more extensive for films that are still in wide release, as “American Beauty” and “Cider House” are. The calculation by a studio is this: For films still in more than 1,000 theaters nationwide, an Oscar win for best picture would not only be prestigious, it could mean a lot more box-office revenue--10% to 15% more, by one estimate. And even before that, heightened advertising in the weeks leading up to the Oscars also drives people to the theaters.

“Oddly enough, the biggest payoff is the six weeks between nomination and the awards,” said Gill, who noted that “Cider House” has doubled its domestic gross in recent weeks.

‘Making Hay While the Sun Shines’

By contrast, for films in limited release or those that already have come and gone, Oscar campaign advertising, in the words of one insider, “is throwing good money after bad.”

A frugal campaign doesn’t necessarily mean going home empty-handed on Oscar night. The thriller “Silence of the Lambs,” for example, was released in February 1991 and already had gone to video by Oscar time 13 months later. Orion Pictures didn’t go nuts on the pre-Oscar advertising and still won big: The film won best picture, best actor (Anthony Hopkins), best actress (Jodie Foster), best director (Jonathan Demme) and best adapted screenplay (Ted Tally).

“It’s not just a matter of getting Oscars. From the studios’ point of view, it’s about making hay while the sun shines. A lot of what seems like bombast is predicated on sound business decisions--which relationships you need to nurture and what upside there is financially with a win,” said one longtime Oscar campaign veteran. For that reason, “you can’t claim that the [relative] lack of ads for ‘Sixth Sense’ means Disney is more tasteful. If it [was still in 2,000 theaters] and could make $20 million more, they’d be there.”

The observer also pointed out that Disney already has a first-look deal with M. Night Shyamalan (the best director and best screenplay nominee for “Sixth Sense”) and is backing his next project, “Unbreakable,” starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson.

Miramax, meanwhile, is being restrained in promoting best actress nominee Meryl Streep, who starred in “Music of the Heart.” Why? According to one analyst, Streep--unlike some other stars who need to be constantly stroked--”will do a good script. You don’t have to prove anything to her” with a bells and whistles campaign. (Besides, said another insider, “everyone knows she has no chance to win.”)

Streep isn’t the norm, however. Another studio-based Oscar veteran says many stars and directors keep close tabs on how much studios are spending to back their films at Oscar time.

“We are in some ways forced into doing certain things because other studios are doing them,” this strategist admitted. “I’ve gotten calls from people saying, ‘It doesn’t feel like you’re behind us.’ You have to be competitive.”

Not Everyone Is Lobbying Academy

Lately, though, there’s been no keeping up with DreamWorks. After the DGA awards, for example, where “American Beauty” director Sam Mendes won the top prize, the young studio threw a swank party at the Century Plaza Hotel. Cherry martinis were served, in keeping with the red rose petal theme trumpeted in all the ads.

Not everyone in Hollywood is lobbying the academy, however. Jim Carrey, who has been passed over two years in a row for his work in “The Truman Show” and “Man on the Moon,” recently accepted his ShoWest male star of the year award by taking a swipe at the academy.

“I think of [the academy members] as hard-working, conscientious individuals who are trying to destroy me,” the actor joked when he accepted his award in Las Vegas. He then played a profane phone message supposedly left by “Moon” director Milos Forman on Carrey’s answering machine the morning that the Oscar nominations were announced.

“Put [the academy members] in Russian gulag!” said the Czech-accented voice on the message (which was actually Carrey imitating Forman). “I hire gypsy to put curse on dem.”

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“We are doing what we’ve done in each of the last four years. No more and no less. We tend to spend based on what we think will work, not based on what other people are doing.” MARK GILL, president, Miramax L.A. operations