Whoops! - Marty's Oscar campaign

Started by mutinyco, June 30, 2003, 11:00:41 AM

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mutinyco

Does anybody recall when Miramax screwed up Marty's Oscar campaign earlier this year by advertising a fake letter from Robert Wise? I lampooned it at the time. For a laugh go to:

http://movienavigator.org/scorbrick.htm
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

mutinyco

I'm curious -- how many people actually knew about this?

Right before the voting deadline for this year's Oscars an add appeared in the LA Times, I think. It purported to be a letter of endorsement by Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still), declaring that Scorsese should win the Oscar. Academy members were so pissed off that many demanded their already filed votes back to scratch off Scorsese's name. The Academy refused. Then, the punchline: turns out Wise never even wrote it! Miramax did! Miramax wrote the letter and Wise simply approved it. Notice how Marty was the first to offer Polanski a standing ovation?
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

Sleuth

I like to hug dogs

mutinyco

Well, folks, that's what happened.The best place for genuine movie news on the web is:

http://www.moviecitynews.com

Most of the other sites are dealing with promo news. Stuff from studio press releases about upcoming movies, rumors, etc. If you want to know what's actually going on, this is where you go.

So, yeah, that's the story of how Miramax and Marty fucked themselves at the last Oscars...
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

ono

Quote from: mutinycoI'm curious -- how many people actually knew about this?

Right before the voting deadline for this year's Oscars an add appeared in the LA Times, I think. It purported to be a letter of endorsement by Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still), declaring that Scorsese should win the Oscar. Academy members were so pissed off that many demanded their already filed votes back to scratch off Scorsese's name. The Academy refused. Then, the punchline: turns out Wise never even wrote it! Miramax did! Miramax wrote the letter and Wise simply approved it. Notice how Marty was the first to offer Polanski a standing ovation?
If you were screwed over for an Oscar yet again, you'd feel sucker punched, and immediately stand to your feet and start clapping, too.  I bet he may have been making his way to the stage subconsciously, yet trying to hold back that sinking feeling.

Anyway, neither Polanski or Scorsese really deserved best director for their films this year.  Nor did anyone else who was nominated.  It was a rather sucky year in that category.  Should've gone to PTA, but surprise, surprise, he was overlooked.  Jonze was overlooked, too, and he did an excellent job with Adaptation.

ShanghaiOrange

Mutinyco would be a good focus puller.   :(
Last five films (theater)
-The Da Vinci Code: *
-Thank You For Smoking: ***
-Silent Hill: ***1/2 (high)
-Happy Together: ***1/2
-Slither: **

Last five films (video)
-Solaris: ***1/2
-Cobra Verde: ***1/2
-My Best Fiend: **1/2
-Days of Heaven: ****
-The Thin Red Line: ***

Arnzilla

http://www.nypost.com/avantgo/avantgossip/71634.htm

March 24, 2003

CONTRARY to a recent Los Angeles Times report of a "firestorm," there were actually only two or three Academy members who asked for their ballots back after seeing Miramax's controversial ad angling for a Martin Scorsese Oscar. The flap came when the studio reprinted Oscar-winner Robert Wise's op-ed piece in support of a Scorsese win, originally published in the L.A. Daily News, as an advertisement elsewhere. To avoid future skirmishes, however, Miramax is requesting a meeting with the Academy and other studios to clear the air and clarify Academy rules regulating parties, screenings, ads and the expenditures that have gotten so out of control, says a studio rep. One proposal that's been discussed would create an independent oversight panel composed of former judges, academics and accountants to enforce objective standards and keep the focus on the movies, not the hype.


http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030323/nysu025_1.html

March 23, 2003

LOS ANGELES, March 23 /PRNewswire/

"There have been occasional reportorial inferences in some entertainment news columns that as a public relations consultant to Miramax I did something 'inappropriate' by drafting, at Robert Wise's specific request, an Op-Ed piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News in support of Martin Scorsese and 'Gangs of New York.' I strongly disagree with this suggestion.

"As a veteran Hollywood publicist, I've been writing speeches, letters and statements for filmmakers, executives and actors for more than 40 years. It's what the men and women in my profession do all the time. We take direction and guidance and our job is to put on paper the thoughts given to us.

"The background is that I have known Robert Wise ever since my days as publicity director of Universal Pictures, where I worked with him on three of his major films. Earlier this year, Mr. Wise volunteered his admiration and enthusiasm for Martin Scorsese's career and current film. Knowing this, when William Goldman wrote a vicious attack on Mr. Scorsese's career in Variety, urging Academy members not to vote for him, I asked Mr. Wise if he had any interest in authoring a supportive piece about Mr. Scorsese in response. He agreed with the proviso that we prepare a draft for his approval expressing the thoughts he provided on the subject. Not an unusual request and not an unusual assignment for me. The piece was drafted, submitted to Mr. Wise and he personally approved the draft as composed for placement in a newspaper or advertisement."

Source: Weissman/Delson Communications

Sleuth

Then it's settled, Gangs of NY and Scorsese are both awesome.
I like to hug dogs

mutinyco

Ain't shit settled. It was a lot more than 1 or 2. And the Post gossip column is not the place to go searching for fact. As well, the fact that the publicist even had to write that op-ed, which is HIS version, is proof of the shit storm that erupted.

And Gangs still sucks.
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

Sleuth

Okay, you think that, but do you HAVE to do the southern accent thing?  "ain't shit settled, y'all, come on down and we can have us a good ol' fashioned shootout at the ok corral with bessie mae and leg stump bubba, y'hear"  everybody must stop that at once
I like to hug dogs

mutinyco

"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

Sleuth

I disagree with that article

Quote"Gangs" is in trouble from the outset. In the opening scene Leo, at about age 10, is watching his daddy shave. There is a cut. The razor is given to the kid and then the father intones the following: "The blood stays on the blade."
I have a friend who is so giddy with the sheer pretentiousness of that line that he says it to everyone. You say "Good morning." He answers, "Yes, and the blood stays on the blade."


Uh, what the fuck?  Is that the last thing you could ever imagine that character saying to his son?

QuoteWhat story though? The lack of an answer is what demolishes the movie. Is it about gang warfare? Family revenge? Irish immigration? The Civil War? The draft? Political corruption? Prejudice? These subjects and more, all of them valid enough alone, flicker in and out, never accumulating or connecting one to the other.

Actually, these subjects and more are all connected because that's the time period they lived in.  Did Goodfellas take some sort of sharp turn because it got into drugs?  I think environment is the key word.

QuoteOne example to indicate the problem: Two hours and seven minutes into the film, folks, there is a scene between Leo and the political boss of New York -- and they are discussing a subject never mentioned before in the movie and which you could not guess if I gave you the rest of my lifetime: who is going to run for Sheriff.

So what?  Did this guy even watch the movie?  These characters, as real people would, are trying to make their lives less horrible by having a good representative (that's how our government works)

Quote
For 10 minutes, an amazing wasted length of movie time, and especially damaging this late into a pic, we deal with the election of the sheriff and his subsequent murder and Leo eventually challenging Daniel Day-Lewis to combat.

But we knew from the first sequence that this would happen because Day-Lewis killed Leo's pop.

So now the fight, yes? Nope. Not in this baby. Ten additional minutes drudge on before they get to it.

...


But this fight was worse -- because you couldn't see it. Scorsese has hidden it behind the smoke of cannon fire. Nothing to make John Wayne worry.

But the battle is still better than the way the movie ends, with a disgraceful shot of the World Trade Center.

A waste of time?  Amsterdam's emotions are charged by all of that.  It's more fuel for the fire.  The best part of the fight is that it isn't what you expect, it is the anti-fight you are led to believe.  I think that is important that it shows how some things you really have no control over.  Not everything works out perfectly like you planned (the fight planning by the way taking place in that 10 minute drudge that is spoken of, meaning it's only building your expectations up of the predictable)

Disgraceful shot of the WTC, that's really interesting.  I want that better explained.

You know, this guy generalizes critics who liked the movie.  It would be just as easy to generalize all of those who didn't.[/quote]
I like to hug dogs

Arnzilla

Quote from: mutinycoGo to:

http://www.moviecitynews.com/notepad/2003/030207b_fri.html
Shame on Billy Goldman for breaking the AMPAS rules in such a brazen manner. Disgraceful... and poorly written.

As Roger Ebert said last March, "Goldman embarrassed himself with the article, which was mean-spirited, green-eyed and wrong.

Arnzilla

Quote from: mutinycoIt was a lot more than 1 or 2.
Oh? How many more actually made such a phone call to AMPAS? The prez said it was an "unspecified number." But he hasn't been very evenhanded in the whole affair. His silence on the Goldman editorial was deafening.

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/oscars/cl-na-oscars14mar14.story

SoNowThen

Yeah, Mutinyco, our dear friend, we all know how you feel about Scorsese. Could you kindly fuck off from his thread, and cool out on the smear campaign? We love him. I fucking love Gangs. I could go on and on about it like our other thread, but who really cares? You're not going to listen. If the movie doesn't work for you, fine, but it works for me. Maybe that's because I don't impose prior opinions on what an epic has to be, what with its stock of hero and villian, etc. But I love it.

Seriously, we gotta stop the Marty hate. You and William Goldman must go off into a corner and bitch amongst yourselves, because Marty's name will live on forever as one of the greatest filmmakers on this planet.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.