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UPDATES More Best Picture Oscar Credit Controversy
UPDATES 'Hurt Locker' Oscar Credits Controversy
Heading off a potential Crash controversy in the Best Picture category, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences this afternoon cleared the way for the 4 credited producers of The Hurt Locker to stand onstage and receive Oscars if the film should emerge victorious on March 7th. Academy rules limit Best Picture nominations to three producers, except in extreme cases. I've learned it was decided after deliberations today that Greg Shapiro, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and Nicolas Chartier all pulled their weight and deserve the honor. A spokesperson for Summit told me all the producers were relieved by today's decision.
*3RD UPDATE: TAMPAS said, "Academy rules state that normally no more than three producers may be named as nominees in the Best Picture category. However, the rules allow for an additional producer to be named under extraordinary circumstances. In finding that all of the producers of The Hurt Locker had fully functioned as genuine producers of the film, the committee chose to exercise the 'extraordinary circumstances' provision of the rules."*
The Academy also approved the trio of producers on The Blind Side, meaning that Gil Netter and Alcon Entertainment partners Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson also will take the stage if the film wins Best Picture. In both cases, the Academy adopted the same ruling made by the Producers Guild following its own auditing process.
It is the second year in a row that Oscar has allowed four producers: last year, it permitted the quartet on The Reader after 2 of them, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, died when the film was in post-production. The only producer to feel sorry for is Jeffrey Clifford, who was deemed ineligible by the PGA on Up In The Air. The PGA decided-- and the Academy accepted its recommendation — that only Daniel Dubiecki and Ivan and Jason Reitman were eligible to contend for the Best Picture trophy.
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Thank goodness that was settled. The world’s problems have now been solved.
Is someone able to give me a legit reason why the number of Producers needs to be limited to any number? Is this about too many people taking that stage on the telecast, or how many statuettes get handed out?
It would seem to me that if you get on-film credit as “Producer” or “Produced by” you get to go on stage if the film wins Best Picture.
Looking for a decent explanation and not trying to be a smart-ass (for once).
A simple explanation is that producer credits are thrown around for any reason. The line producer does all the work while other producers may have raised the money or owned the property at some point and didn’t have anything to do with the actual making of the film. The other thing is that there is no real explanation of what a producer actually does. Some producers stay on the set and guide the director through the work. Others show up at cocktail time. It is the most ill defined category and the Producer’s Guild is a recent addition to the ‘Guilds.’ the only guild that has clearly defined categories is the DGA. Getting back to basics, the screen credit for producers is largely meaningless and is the only place in filmmaking that isn’t clearly defined. Just put the name up there. How can a film have six producers? It’s a joke.
Only people who actually perform the role of a producer should receive an award for producing. There have been far too many vanity credits given over the years and that has only reduced the integrity of the producing credit on the whole.
AMPAS came up with a “rule” of no more than 3 in order to discourage vanity credits, but for the past few years AMPAS has followed the decision of the Producers Guild which examines the role of the person credited as a producer on a nominated film to determine if the person was an actual producer or only a vanity credit producer.
This all became an issue when a massive amount (not sure how much) of producers went up to accept for “shocker” win Shakespeare in Love and they felt that people claim producer credit without really doing the job — which is fair but to deny those that were there on a day to day basis actually producing is unfair and it’s kinda ridiculous that they have to prove it.
Having said that I hope that Inglorious Basterds comes up victorious in both best picture and best director because it really is the most interesting, enjoyable and best picture of the year.
Sadly, there are a lot of “producers” who get a producer credit who don’t actually produce. Producing is a big job with a lot parts to it. There’s much more than just developing a script, or just packaging a project, or just being on set, or just pushing a project through a studio or finding indie money, or working on a marketing campaign… it’s all of these things and more. Often individuals are able to leverage a credit for some reason or other (bringing an element, being tied to the financing etc.) so they’re not really doing the job of a producer and shouldn’t be allowed to share an Oscar with the person who did… And then again, sometimes producers who do the work get screwed out of an Oscar nomination that they should be sharing with their team.
See Weinstein, Harvey
Back in the day- I used to be able to buy a completed movie and slap my name on it. Then if it won awards I got to go up and take the stage just like the people who labored long and hard from development through post production. I had the cash so I made the rules. Sometimes, if I really wanted to get my hands dirty, I would simply finance a movie on the condition that I got a Producer credit, even though the director and actors banned me from the set and ignored my notes, I would still hog the limelight on the Oscar stage. Nobody could stop me … until this damn rule..
well done dumbo’s…
bout time you make the right call on something.
while this will not be a popular statement, perhaps its time to go back and give yari proper credit..
No one – I recall that the “three producer” rule was enacted following “credit inflation” in the late 90s where every person who carried any weight on the production (including financiers who never set foot on set and had typically been “executive producers,” actors who performed little if any producing services, company executives — hi, Harvey) glommed on to the “producer” credit. I remember a couple of bigger indy pix with 6 or 7 named “producers” not to mention exec prod, co-exec prod, co-prod, associate prod, etc.
In these cases, I think the Academy got it right!
The PGA can go to hell.
And they’ve insured that Jeffrey Clifford — who has a long career ahead of him — will never support their masturbatory efforts.
The only thing Ivan Reitman produced on this movie was Jason.
Is someone able to give me a legit reason why the number of Producers needs to be limited to any number? Is this about too many people taking that stage on the telecast, or how many statuettes get handed out?
For several years now studios started offering “Produced by” credits to an actor and his family members, as part of their overall compensation package– this “producer” would collect a salary but he wouldn’t actually be involved in any “producing” and his or her job was essentially a sinecure. Agents, managers, and members of a director’s/producer’s/studio exec’s entourage have also managed to get themselves attached to films as nominal producers, in exchange for various services performed in packaging the deal.
Producing is actually a very complicated and stressful job that often involves producers working years on a project in development without any salary, and basically betting their careers on the success of one film, and so there’s a general consensus that people who aren’t actually doing anything to “produce” the movie and aren’t worthy of recognition.
The Academy’s resolution of this problem is pretty strict, but after “Shakespeare in Love” had something like six people on stage, it became clear that the “Produced by” credit was quickly turning into something people in authority would grant to each other in order to curry political favor.
its nice to see that sometimes justice prevails in an unjust world.
No one, it’s because Producer is the only credit that can be handed out like candy. There are a lot of people who received that credit (managers, a friend of the star, etc) who did not actually produce a darn thing.
Anyone knows what the director, writers, actors do but the producer credit is ambiguous. Real producers should of course get to stand on stage but everyone in the business knows films do not really have 5, 10, 16 producers. It’s BS. I’m talking about the Produced by credit and not the co-producer, exec producer etc. credits.
The problems start when you try to determine who was actually a producer on the film. If the film flopped or wasn’t up for awards, nobody would care.
But in Hollywood failure has no friends, a success? That’s a completely different story.
I think it is a result of so many trying to get producer credit and since it is a job that does so many varied things people have made a run on the credit. Actors and their partners are now producers, financiers/bankers/rich guys want to be producers, and significant others are producers……it’s a cluster-f*&k and the guild is trying to establish a standard retroactively. Late but necessary none the less.