The rules of engagement

WITH the possible exception of the Oscar-winning “My Cousin Vinny,” it’s almost impossible to be nominated for -- let alone collect -- an Academy Award without a quality effort. But behind every honored movie or performance is an equally (if not more) inspired campaign.

Those awards efforts have their own set of rules. Ignore them at your peril. Follow them and enjoy the Governor’s Ball.

Hone your strategy

1. If “Crash,” last year’s winner, was to get past “Brokeback Mountain,” it needed first to reduce the best picture battle to a two-horse race. “We thought we had the better movie, and the one that affected people more,” says Tom Ortenberg, president for theatrical films at Lionsgate. “We needed to win something -- but where was that breakthrough going to be?”

“Crash” was blanked in December’s best picture nominations for the Golden Globe awards and had fared poorly in November’s nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards. But the race-relations ensemble drama still enjoyed strong support from actors. So Lionsgate decided “Crash’s” last, best place to make its Oscar stand was in the Screen Actors Guild awards. At a cost of about $250,000, Lionsgate sent 110,000 “Crash” DVDs to the entire SAG membership. “It was a big idea,” Ortenberg says of the mass mailing. “No one had done it before.” They’ll do it now: SAG gave its top prize to “Crash” in late January. Even though SAG’s best ensemble award is not a good predictor of best picture winners, the field had been reduced to two, and “Crash” was on its way.

Let film speak for itself

2. When a film has even a glimmer of a chance at an Academy Award, its stars and makers spread through Hollywood like precinct walkers in a close election. Roman Polanski, the fugitive director of 2002’s “The Pianist,” couldn’t come to the United States without being arrested, and Adrien Brody was mostly unknown. Worse still, Oscar heavyweight Miramax had three best picture contenders: “Chicago,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Hours.” “It was a very difficult year,” says Robert Benmussa, one of “The Pianist’s” producers. “Miramax was very, very aggressive. It was impossible to compete with them on spending. And no one knew anything about our movie.”

But “The Pianist” played incredibly well, its Holocaust story resonating with the academy’s voters. And Focus Features pushed all voters to see the film in theaters, rather than on DVD. “That wasn’t just for technical reasons,” Benmussa says. “It was for emotional reasons.” In what Benmussa says was an orchestrated smear campaign, the 1977 grand jury transcript of Polanski’s unlawful sex with a minor case surfaced in the middle of the Oscar race.

But then Polanski’s victim spoke out to say the filmmaker’s past conduct should have no bearing on his film. Focus even cut new “Pianist” spots to humanize Polanski, a Holocaust survivor.

“At some point,” Benmussa says, the controversy “worked to our advantage.” In three upsets, “The Pianist” won the directing, adapted screenplay and actor Oscars.

Stand up to the big guys

3. “Shakespeare in Love” was deeply appreciated, but the 1998 romantic comedy stood in the shadows of “Saving Private Ryan,” which felt like a more momentous (meaning: best picture) undertaking. But Miramax Films wasn’t cowed by DreamWorks or Steven Spielberg, and launched one of the great come-from-behind best picture campaigns in Oscar history.

“We stood in the ring for the first time, and went toe-to-toe and spent equally with everybody else,” says Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein.

The studio quickly settled on a “Shakespeare” campaign theme. “It’s a movie about art, and how art is created,” Weinstein says. “I don’t know if there had been a movie about the creative process in a long time. When Charlton Heston told me he had voted for us, I knew we had a chance.”

No money, no excuse

4. Soon after Vestron Pictures released 1987’s “Anna,” the independent distributor closed its doors. When Oscar season rolled around, the movie was out of theaters and there was no money to strike new prints or manufacture videocassettes.

“It was a campaign for a picture that virtually didn’t exist,” says Dale Olson, a publicist who represented “Anna’s” star, Sally Kirkland. “We didn’t have anything.” Except desire. Olson gathered enough money to make 50 “Anna” videocassettes and hosted a cocktail party for the film (Olson did the cooking himself). Among the 100 or so actors (Shelley Winters, Lainie Kazan, Elliott Gould) and media who attended, Olson distributed the 50 cassettes, with one directive.

“They had to look at it immediately, and either return it or give it to another academy member,” Olson says. Slowly but surely, “Anna” spread across Hollywood and emerged out of anonymity; the underdog campaign itself became news. Kirkland went everywhere and worked tirelessly, sending every Golden Globe voter a handwritten note (she won the Globe for best dramatic actress).

Ultimately, there wasn’t money to make cassettes for all of the Oscar voters. But Kirkland was nominated for best actress (losing to “Moonstruck’s” Cher), a small miracle for a movie that didn’t exist.

Go on the offense

5. “A Beautiful Mind,” 2002’s best picture winner carried a lot of baggage. Long before he started throwing cellphones at hotel desk clerks, star Russell Crowe upbraided the producer of the British BAFTA Awards for cutting his “Beautiful Mind” acceptance speech. Crowe’s angry demeanor (although he later apologized) wasn’t the film’s only problem.

In adapting Sylvia Nasar’s biography of John Nash for the 2001 film, director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman stood accused of sanitizing the mathematician’s life. Similar charges had derailed Universal Pictures’ awards drive for “The Hurricane” two years earlier. So, well before “A Beautiful Mind” debuted, Universal pushed its own story, and organized a team to respond to any charge against the film.

“Akiva and Ron did early interviews during production about what the movie was and how it differed from the book,” says Eddie Egan, Universal’s co-president of marketing.

Universal also hired crisis public relations expert Allan Mayer to keep Nash out of the media, went to Nasar to check on her allegations of Nash’s homosexuality, and urged reporters to lay off.

As the Oscar campaign kicked in, Universal switched the campaign from emphasizing its thriller components and mental illness to focus on the film’s poignancy.

“John Nash was literally rescued by love,” Egan says. “The best thing you can do with any good movie is to get at the heart of why audiences like it, and keep reminding them of why they liked it.”

Sell it differently

6. When Italy declined to make writer-director Michael Radford’s 1994 “Il Postino” its official selection for the foreign language Oscar, the filmmaker assumed he had said arrivederci to his Academy Awards chances. “I was desperately disappointed,” Radford says. But Miramax decided it would try to get the film nominated for best picture -- a feat no foreign-language movie had managed since 1969’s “Z.”

The movie was anchored by the poems of Pablo Neruda, and Miramax organized poetry readings, sent Oscar voters Neruda collections and even organized a celebrity-filled CD of Neruda poetry readings between “Il Postino” soundtrack cuts.

As resonant as the poetry might have been, Miramax had another, even more irresistible “Il Postino” story to sell. The movie not only starred but was also dreamed up by Massimo Troisi, an Italian actor and filmmaker who literally gave his life for the movie. Troisi had heart troubles; he died less than a day after production wrapped. “Il Postino” was nominated for best picture, as was Troisi for best actor. Both lost, although the film did win the music award. “The perception to this day is we did win the foreign language Oscar,” Radford says. “And I don’t disabuse them of that notion.”

john.horn@latimes.com

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MASTERS OF THE GAME

If they handed out an Oscar for the best leave-no-academy-voter-behind campaigns, these savvy masterminds would be among the nominees.

HARVEY WEINSTEIN

Title: Co-founder, Miramax Films, the Weinstein Co.

Why he matters: Winning best picture for “Shakespeare in Love.”

Caveat: Heavy-handed tactics sparked almost as many new Oscar rules as Miramax has trophies.

FELICITY HUFFMAN

Title: Star, “Transamerica.”

Why she matters: Tireless campaigning and countless appearances brought a best actress nomination.

Caveat: Lost to Reese Witherspoon for “Walk the Line.”

TERRY PRESS

Title: Head of marketing, DreamWorks.

Why she matters: Pioneered the DVD launch party as an Oscar vote rainmaker ... winning best picture for “Gladiator.”

Caveat: Ads urging votes against “Cold Mountain” in favor of “House of Sand and Fog” backfired.

JAMIE FOXX

Title: Star, “Ray.”

Why he matters: After a great performance, he charmed people into thinking he did his own singing and won best actor Oscar.

Caveat: This year “Dreamgirls” heat focused not on Foxx but costar Eddie Murphy.

TONY ANGELOTTI

Title: Oscar strategist, Universal Pictures.

Why he matters: A tough best picture win for “A Beautiful Mind,” despite charges of anti-Semitism.

Caveat: Only minor wins for last year’s would-be murderer’s row of “Cinderella Man,” “Jarhead,” “The Producers,” “King Kong” and “Munich.”

THE DART GROUP / 42 WEST

Title: The biggest Oscar consulting firm.

Why it matters: In addition to representing more than two dozen contenders, recently landed crisis PR expert Allan Mayer.

Caveat: Does Helen Mirren mind that her Oscar consultants also are hawking Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Annette Bening and Penelope Cruz?