By Joey Magidson
Film Contributor
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They say that all’s fair in love and war, but perhaps it’s time to add Oscar campaigning to that duo. In a perfect world, the race for Best Picture would be a friendly battle between studios, but especially of late, things have taken a decidedly nasty turn. Just about as soon as a film gains momentum for the Academy Awards, the smear campaign begins.
At present, for example, some people are attempting to drum up a controversy about the usefulness of torture in regard to Zero Dark Thirty. While the film treats the real-life use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” as a matter-of-fact bit of the United States’ history, a campaign is underway to discredit that and the film along with it. There’s also been a recent instance of certain politicians proclaiming the film to be less accurate than it originally claimed.
On the one side, defenders of the film say that these are just the facts, regardless of whether it’s nice to think about or not. Detractors paint that as a misconstruction of the truth and claim that this film in some way glorifies torture. Having seen the movie, I fall clearly into the former camp, but I’m not completely surprised that the latter claims have sprung up.
This debate is nothing especially new to the Oscar game, but in the past decade or so it has ramped up in a way that I was never aware of before. Sure, it happened here and there, but it was always a little more under the rug and polite.
The first time I really remember hearing about an active smear campaign was in the late 1990s with the film Good Will Hunting. Initially, all of the publicity was surrounding the outstanding screenplay that actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon turned in. Then, as it looked more and more likely that they could be in line to win Best Original Screenplay, the whispering began.
A rumor began to float around that Affleck and Damon had help in writing their script, if not outright had someone else do it. Initial speculation surrounded a few different people, most notably their friend Kevin Smith, who helped produce the movie. Smith and others were adamant that they had nothing to do with it, and of course the boys still won the Oscar, so it wasn’t effective in the end.
A few years later, A Beautiful Mind became the next victim of a smear attempt. As the biopic of John Nash was headed toward a number of Oscar wins, a number of articles began circulating about how the more unsavory elements of Nash’s life had been taken out of the movie. What was a heartwarming tale of triumph would look a little different if his anti-semetic episodes were left in.
The filmmakers were alleged to have removed homosexual elements from the story, as well as a manner of over-misdeeds by Nash. It didn’t stop the film from taking Best Picture, but it was a clear example of a movie being targeted for its purported inaccuracies as a way to curb momentum.
Million Dollar Baby was a film that snuck up on just about everyone, but no sooner had it become an Oscar frontrunner that a smear began. Ironically, this was a campaign that also ruined both the film’s big twist as well as its ending, a big transgression in my eyes. It was easy to see that someone was trying to cut off this flick before the Academy Awards.
The attempt to smear was mainly seen in a New York Times story that detailed social activists expressing concern with how the movie treats those with spinal cord injuries. The final third of the film is definitely divisive to some, but this was a manufactured controversy. Again, it didn’t stop the film one bit, but it certainly was intended to.
Slumdog Millionaire originally was going to go direct to DVD, so it was a true success story as it careened toward a whole host of Oscar statues. Still, a vicious rumor began circulating that the small children in the film were being exploited and were then left to remain in squalor. It didn’t wind up mattering in the awards race one bit, but it did show that no frontrunner is ever safe from this sort of attack.
In the last few years, both The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech have fallen victim to unsuccessful smear campaigns as well. The former was targeted for its apparent inaccuracies in representing IED squads, while the latter was another biopic to be accused of glossing over the more problematic aspects of its subject’s life, namely some Nazi sympathies.
Neither of those attempts worked, but again, we’re seeing these attacks being made time after time. It’s almost become expected at this point.
This year, we’ve already seen it in two notable instances. A few months ago, Affleck’s film Argo was targeted for its supposed inaccuracies, and now Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have that same target on them for the aforementioned Zero Dark Thirty.
The attack on Argo wasn’t actually successful, but the film has slowed down and is no longer looked at as a Best Picture frontrunner. It might still wind up with the same number of nominations that it would have otherwise, but its chances of winning anything have been greatly reduced, give or take Affleck himself. The fall had nothing to do with the smear campaign, but the negative attention came early, a sign of its initially strong position in the race.
With Zero Dark Thirty, the jury is out on what the effect will be. Clearly some in the industry consider it a bigger threat than originally expected, since the focus is almost solely on it right now. It’s interesting to note that this is the rare case of a controversy surrounding a film before most have seen it.
Most of the time, these smear campaigns wind up backfiring, so it’s fair to wonder why rivals even bother with them anymore. There’s no simple answer, but I suppose it’s mostly that humans are competitive and always look for any advantage that they can get.
Ultimately, Zero Dark Thirty might wind up winning Best Picture regardless of these attacks, though it might also lose to a film like Les Miserables or Lincoln completely independent of the smear campaign. One thing’s for certain, though: We haven’t seen the last of these tactics.