OSCAR: No T-Day Slowdown For Contenders

Traditionally,?most Hollywood businesses grind to a halt for the 5-day Thanksgiving holiday. But not this wide-open awards season.?Tangled had its official Academy screening last Sunday morning but only drew about 200 people. Instead, the holidays actually seem like a good time to push an animated Disney musical. So Disney isn’t even taking Turkey Day off: instead, the studio has skedded?screenings of Tangled at the DGA?open to all Guild and Academy members. This isn’t actually a new practice. In the past, Oscar hopefuls like Dreamgirls, The Lord Of The Rings, and others have done the same thing at the DGA theater drawing surprisingly strong crowds of potential voters on a day most people are thought to stay at home.?Disney also sent a note warning some early voting groups that they wouldn’t be able to send screeners of the film before deadlines for ballots (piracy concerns are part of that problem), so the T-Day screenings take on even greater import.

Tangled aside, distributors have been rushing to get screeners in as many voter hands as possible before Thanksgiving when they think people will have more time on their hands to pop a DVD in the player before the real crunch comes in December. Among those sent in the last few days are The Social Network, Made In Dagenham, Inside Job, Stone, Let Me In, 127 Hours, Black Swan, Conviction, Never Let Me Go, Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,? The Town, Inception, Hereafter, Legends Of The Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole, and The Ghost Writer.

Meanwhile, campaign season continues. Over the weekend, American Cinematheque also proved why?it can be a very useful tool during awards season by hosting two sold-out events? for Oscar hopefuls. Saturday night, there was a tribute to Pierce Brosnan at the Aero in Santa Monica?with a double feature?of Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and Matador. Inbetween, Pierce appeared for a nearly hour-long Q&A (I moderated) in which he discussed his career from TV's Remington Steele to James Bond to an Roman Polanski's Ghost Writer in which he?plays ex-British Prime Minister (Tony Blair, anyone?) now writing his controversial memoir.?Summit Entertainment is hoping?the pic?will land him in the Best Supporting Actor conversation. Its early February release is a hindrance?but by having a toney organization like American Cinematheque create these little tribute evenings, studios believe they can get the “right” kind of association for their contenders.

It was completely sold out, as was the next night at the same venue which hosted a Q&A session?with writer Aaron Sorkin and stars Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer following a special screening of Sony Pictures'?The Social Network. All were talking about the genius of Director David Fincher (away on location in Sweden shooting The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo remake) and the number of takes he would require of his actors. “Sometimes there would be 99 of them, but not 100, never 100,” Timberlake said. In an encouraging sign for writerly respect, most of the audience questions from the predominantly young crowd were surprisingly directed at Sorkin who said?dialogue-heavy movie might have been written by Paddy Chayefsky in another era. Not bad company to be in since Paddy won no less than three screenwriting Oscars. Some are asking if there is any way Sorkin can lose the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar this year? Especially after?The Social Network opened to near-unanimous acclaim and strong business for a drama.

Other Best Picture competitors were also active over the weekend with the official Academy screening of The King’s Speech and several rollicking Q&As for The Fighter. Neither has officially opened in theatres yet but their Academy campaigns are well under way.?The Weinsteon Co's Speech reportedly played to a near-full house?Saturday night for Oscar voters at the Goldwyn. Response was said to be predictably terrific with heavy applause at the end.?Of course if it doesn’t play with this crowd, it doesn’t play anywhere.

But The Weinstein Co and Sony Pictures might want to look out for Paramount’s The Fighter which packed several different Guild screenings in the last of couple of days. Saturdays’s SAG unspooling at the WGA theatre was as raucous as a prize fight and featured Standing O’s when the cast of Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo along with director David O. Russell were introduced. Monday night, it was the producers turn with another filled-to-the-max screening for the PGA membership featuring Wahlberg (again) and five other producers including Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh and Mandeville’s?Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman. Fighter was several years in development until Kavanaugh came in with the financial plan that finally got it before the cameras after Paramount basically had hit a wall. Now it is back in Paramount’s hands for release and everyone is talking Oscar. Funny how these things work out.

And last Friday night, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival handed out its annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film at a black tie dinner at the Four Seasons Biltmore.?This year's receipient was?Harrison Ford, currently earning some of his best reviews ever for Paramount's?Morning Glory.?Actually Douglas, 93,?was almost a no-show when his?wife Anne became ill and couldn’t attend. But trouper that he is, Kirk appeared, sat with Ford through dinner, and presented?the award himself. “When I was a little boy, I only wanted to be Indiana Jones. Harrison got there first. Originally Harrison was a carpenter and, if he'd stayed that way, I might have ended up being Indiana Jones!” Kirk said.?Ford?was accompanied by wife Calista Flockhart and his Cowboys & Aliens director Jon Favreau?and was his usual low-key self in accepting. “I was lucky? to be in an exciting time in this business, and, if luck would have it, I still get a job from time to time.”? He also apologized for the young-looking movie star photo of himself hanging on the stage taken, he said,?when?Calista was just 11 years old.?(By the way, the bar was serving drinks?labeled “Morning Glorys”. One guest from South Africa?said that's the?nickname in many parts of the world for a man’s early day “arousal”. Wonder if Paramount knows this.)

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OSCAR: Red Carpets Rolling Out For Contenders In Ultra-Crowded Season

The pace of the 2010 awards season seems at this early November juncture to be faster than any I can remember. (I feel like the title of the late and great?Jill Clayburgh’s star turn,?I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can.) Hopefuls are getting out there earlier, and more forcefully, in order to gain a foothold in the race any way they can.?Examples from just two days' worth of campaigning: Michelle Williams called me from the London set of My Week With Marilyn.?Yes, she’s playing the iconic Monroe but couldn’t yet articulate what that means to her and instead wanted to talk about her?awards contender, Blue Valentine. So we did?before I had to run off to the Four Seasons Hotel to chat with Robert Duvall about his contender, Get Low. It was?a summer release he's now trying to keep in the conversation by?doing an exhaustive series of interviews and Q&A sessions. For a guy who is about to turn 80, he could not have been more?energized even with the daunting prospect of facing months of the “season” still to go.?Javier Bardem called on his cell from a street corner in Madrid to recount for me the intense experience of making Biutiful. Then I had to again race to the Four Seasons?for back to back bar chats with two other Best Actor wannabes, Kevin Spacey who talked Casino Jack before Aaron Eckhart arrived 10 minutes later to discuss Rabbit Hole.

With the exception of?Get Low, all of the above were spotlighting work in independently made movies that are mid to late December releases. But their stars cannot afford to wait if they are to get?on the map in this ultra-crowded season.?The ever-busy Spacey?was at the Britannias and an MPTVF event ?on Thursday night and also turned up Sunday evening at the Pacific Design Center for an actor-centric?post-screening Q&A for SAG nominating committee members. Like an episode of Inside The Actors Studio, the packed house gave him a standing ovation. Reliable eyewitness sources tell me ?even more impressive standing O?happened to Halle Berry two nights in a row at the same place where she Q&A’d her December stealth entry, Frankie & Alice for?the NAACP Image Award voters Friday and SAG Nom Comm?Saturday. They marked her indie’s first screenings but Berry wasn’t watching. She was out in the lobby doing TV interviews about what the project meant to her as an actress. Meanwhile publicists were frantically cutting film clips for the late-breaking entrant and hoping to have their DVD screeners out well before Thanksgiving. As part of her?campaign,? Berry will also be “in conversation” with a career retrospective Tuesday night at the AFI Fest.

Speaking of that,?the AFI Film Festival?opened?with Twentieth Century Fox's Love And Other Drugs. The glut of?AFI galas?is because it's an inexpensive way for distribs to do LA premieres this time of year and still get maximum exposure. They included?The Weinstein Co’s Blue Valentine with co-star Ryan Gosling and director Derek Cianfrance on the carpet? at the Chinese. While down the street at the Egyptian, Sony Pictures Classics unveiled their comedy Barney’s Version with?superlative performances from stars Paul Giamatti, Minnie Driver, and Dustin and Jake Hoffman who were all?on hand for the stroll down that red carpet.?The film, based on the Mordecai Richler story and?previously seen in Venice and Toronto, was a hit at AFI with special praise for absent co-star Rosamund Pike who could find her way into the supporting actress race. Pike also co-stars in another of ?SPC’s Oscar hopefuls, Made In Dagenham, which has it’s LA premiere tonight? at AFI opposite Casino Jack with yet another appearance? from?Spacey.

There also was?the LA premiere of?The Weinstein Company’s?much-touted The King’s Speech --?which one recent Oscar-nominated producer described?to me?afterwards as “a wet dream for the ?Academy”. A pre-unspooling Q&A moderated by my pal Leonard Maltin featured director Tom Hooper, Colin Firth, and Geoffrey Rush who got sprung from Hawaiian locations of the new Pirates Of The Caribbean fourquel in order to make the quick trip to L.A..?Screenwriter David Seidler's decades-long efforts to tell this story made the film even possible and also was there but wasn’t a part of the Q&A.?Guess it just shows the status of the writer in Hollywood (or at least at the AFI fest). But I think it is?shameful that he wasn’t on the panel. Thankfully, Hooper got a chance to at least acknowledge him in separate remarks intro’ing the film.

I caught up with Seidler at the crowded Hollywood Roosevelt?party. At 73, he’s being portrayed as an overnight sensation. But the veteran writer is getting pissed about that falsehood. “The Hollywood Reporter said I was an unknown in their headline when, in fact, I’ve been around a long time and been nominated three times for WGA awards and won once,”?he told me. He pointed out that the paper could?have just looked?on IMDB where he has many top credits including Tucker: The Man And His?Dream which he wrote for Francis Ford Coppola.?When I asked him to clarify the Original Screenplay status of the film, he said that has also been misrepresented since some reports?have inaccurately said it started as a play. “I wrote it originally as a screenplay but then, as an exercise to improve it and solve some structure problems, my ex-wife suggested I re-write it as a play which I did. Once others became involved, though, it reverted to its original screenplay form.”?he emphasized it was never produced as a play, thus making it eligible for the Original Screenplay category where thankfully it doesn’t have to face off against Aaron Sorkin’s much-liked adaptation, The Social Network). Ironically, after the movie is released, it now?will become a play. Seidler says it was going to open?in March on Broadway but that was thought too close to the Oscars. So now?a West End opening in London?with acclaimed ex-Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Adrian Noble?signed?to direct is planned.

I asked if King George VI's daughter, the current Queen of England,?had seen the movie and he said only her staff has viewed it so far – and liked it. But?Harvey Weinstein told me he’s working on getting her to see it. Harvey is understandably ebullient about the Oscar buzz for the movie but?is not?overplaying his hand too early in the game. As he told me, “I’ve done this a few times. Trust me. I know what I am doing.”

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