Category Archives: Awards

Reflecting On Oscar

Unlike anywhere else in the world, Oscar weekend has the greatest impact in Los Angeles. Aside from traffic closures and the heartbreak and envy of Oscar parties to the uninvited, Oscar weekend provides the creative community with a weekend of self-reflection, profound anxiety and (dashed?) hopes for the future. The dream of so many here is that they too will be thanking the Academy for their own Oscar someday.

Mindful that so many may be inspired after the Academy Awards to take a different approach, the following post, originally published here and now here offers some guidance.

[Ed. note: Added the following on 2/26/15]

The Oscars, Reposted.

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Since this year’s Academy Awards are on Sunday, I’m reposting my August 28, 2007 post, “Credit Where Credit Is Due: Is There Enough Room On Awards Night For More Producers?” for Dealfatigue readers.

Two pictures in contention – “Michael Clayton” and “Juno” – each have four credited producers but according to the Academy’s website, only three producers on each of these pictures are eligible to accept the Best Picture award. So if either of these pictures picks up the award for Best Picture, apparently one producer won’t be getting an Oscar but the other three will. This, despite the fact that the Motion Picture Academy’s rules allow for the inclusion of an additional producer under “extraordinary circumstances.”

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After five producers received Best Picture Oscars for “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999, the Motion Picture Academy placed a three producer per Oscar limit on any film under contention. The Academy also required the honored three to be fully functioning producers on the pictures; studio execs, personal managers and lawyers (oh, well) need not apply.

Subsequent to enactment, certain producers who were credited on “Crash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Departed” but eliminated for award contention by this rule made some compelling objections against it. As a result, the Academy is relaxing its requirements, albeit slightly, to allow for the inclusion of one additional producer under certain rare and extraordinary circumstances. Each of the producers must be credited as “producer,” thereby excluding any individuals with executive producer or associate producer credits.

Meanwhile, the Television Academy is tightening its eligibility requirements in an effort to “crackdown on producer credit inflation” by capping the number of individual producers who can receive an Emmy for a comedy series at 11 and a drama series at 10. But even with these higher numbers, exceptions seem to be proliferating with “Gray’s Anatomy” and “House” each having grandfathered eligibility for 13 producer nominations.

Note that neither of these rules limit the number of producer credits accorded to any motion picture or television program. They just limit the number of producers eligible for award nominations. Nevertheless, the academies are right to be concerned with credit dilution. These awards are intended to acknowledge the creative efforts of those responsible for the works in contention. They are also a great way to increase box office gross. As I have said elsewhere in this blog, credits are “the coin of the realm” in the industry and diluting any credit reduces their value just like real currency. However, it is wrong-headed to set arbitrary caps on the number of producers eligible for an award as a means of addressing this capricious credit problem. Mandating that all award eligible producers render meaningful, creative services is a far more equitable way to go.

Until the academies modify their position, reps will need to be creative to increase their clients’ chances. Although the Motion Picture Academy asserts that it is “not bound by any contract or agreement relating to the sharing or giving of credit and reserves the right to make its own determination of credit for award consideration,” I have been involved in several negotiations where reps for producers (myself included) negotiated producer credit order “for all purposes, including award consideration.” Without a more logical approach, it is inevitable that the contractual intent of the parties to producer agreements versus the subjective consideration of the academies will be tested in the near future.