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by Bayley Silleck
Reprinted with permission from the April 1999 issue of Original Cinema: The Newsletter of the Large Format Cinema Association.
Will a large-format film ever be honored with the motion picture industry's most prestigious prize - the Academy Award?
Last year, I would have answered with a resounding "yes." After all, since 1992, no fewer than six 15/70 features have been nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Five of them (The Living Sea, Cosmic Voyage, Special Effects, Amazon, and Alaska) were nominated in the category of Best Documentary Short Subject. One, Fires of Kuwait, was nominated as Best Documentary Feature.
This year, my answer (and that of most large format veterans I've talked to), is an almost unequivocal "no," although the 15/70 animation short MORE was nominated.
What happened? Two things, in rapid succession. First, on January 7 the Academy's Board of Governors voted to combine the two documentary categories into one, Best Documentary, beginning with the 1999 production year. Second, when Oscar nominations were announced in February, Everest, the most successful large format film of 1998 and one of the top-grossing documentaries of all time, was conspicuously absent from the list.
The Academy's decision to combine documentary categories was made in spite of a specific recommendation last October by its own Executive Committee for Documentary Rules (chaired by Walter Shenson) that the short category be retained.
So why did they do it? According to Academy insiders, the governors accepted the assertions of an undetermined number of members that:
1) Most short documentaries are made for television release today.
2) Most have no bona fide theatrical outlet except for large-format.
3) The quality of short documentaries is not
up to the standards of entries in other Oscar categories.
4) Many short documentaries are made by students, who should be eligible for special student awards rather than Oscars.
Some industry observers wonder whether there was amother, unspoken concern: that the short documentary category was becoming a de facto large format category. They see the Academy decision as "a slippery slope," a prelude to termination of the other two categories of shorts - Best Live Action Short Subject and Best Animated Short Subject. In fact, the Academy voted to do just that in 1993, but a high-visibility press campaign led by such Hollywood names as Spielberg, Lucas, and Scorsese succeeded in reversing the decision. At this writing, a similar campaign is being mounted to save the short doc category, though this time around it may prove to be bigger challenge.
Oscar-winning documentarian Chuck Workman endorses the Academy's move, stressing that most short ducumentaries are made-for-TV and have been of generally inferior quality in recent years.
So what about Everest? Many of us assumed it would be a shoo-in for a nomination and a probable Oscar-winner. (Although James Cameron already grabbed one of the best potential lines of an Everest acceptance speech - "Top of the World, Ma!") Depending on who you talk to, it didn't get nominated because of
1) questions over its actual running time,
2) a backlash against favoritism in the nominating committee,
3) prejudice against large-format documentaries that gross $90 million,
4) the perception that it contained too many re-creations to be a legitimate documentary, or
5) all of the above.
Another Academy documentarian says that some committee members were indeed disturbed by the re-creations in Everest and cites the Oscar-winning Japanese film The Man Who Skiied Down Everest as an example of a "true documentary."
Alec Lorimore of MacGillivray-Freeman Films, which produced Everest, responds by quoting from the Academy's own rulebook: "A documentary film... may employ partial re-enactment... as long as the emphasis is on factual content and not on fiction."
From a large format perspective, Everest should have been nominated - no question - when you look at previous large format nominees and the film's impressive success with audiences.
If the Academy sticks to its new one-category policy, can a large format documentary ever win? To do so, it will have to beat out 90-minute films that explore in depth such subjects as the horrors of war, racial injustice, corporate malfeasance, power politics, prison life, and human dignity in the face of fatal or crippling disease - and the occasional feat of human courage, in the boxing ring or atop a mountain.
Since most science museums have displayed deep reluctance to show, for example, a bit of ethnographic nudity or a corpse on a battlefield, our documentaries have a hard row to hoe. Will the increasing number of commercial theaters change this equation? Maybe. Maybe not.
Chuck Workman disagrees that large format releases now have less of a shot at Oscar. "Large-format films are competitive," he says. "They can stand up to other documentaries. A good film is a good film, regardless of format. It's as simple as that. The Academy likes large format and will honor a large format film, if it's really the best that year."
I hope he's right. But, rightly or wrongly, many large format filmmakers now feel they'll have to ski up Mt. Everest to get Academy recognition.
Note from LFCA President Christopher Reyna: Considering theat large format is a growing theatrical industry, with tens of millions of ticket-buyers annually, it seems premature for the Academy to discard the short documentary category, which could be the most prestigious form of recognition for large format films. We urge industry members who belong to the Academy to express their opinions to the Academy Board of Governors.
Bob Rogers of BRC Imagination Arts is an Academy member and active on this issue. If you want to add your voice to his, contact Rogers at tel.
818/841-8084, email brc@brcweb.com.
Bayley Silleck of Bayley Silleck Productions is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the director of Cosmic Voyage. He can be reached at tel. 212/645-0745 or by email at bsilleck@aol.com. |
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