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Hollywood: Inside the Oscar Nominations Guest: Sean Smith, NEWSWEEK Entertainment Correspondent/LA • Audio clip | Complete show | Podcast |
Feb. 13, 2006 issue - While Reese Witherspoon and Heath Ledger slept, about 30 people already knew the actors' fates. Each year, on the Monday night before the Oscar nominations are announced, a small band of staff at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences goes into lockdown at the Academy's headquarters in Beverly Hills. Phone lines are unplugged. Internet access is disconnected. Cell phones are confiscated, and guards ride the elevators. For nine hours, these people are cut off from the world, because they know who the Oscar nominees are. They work through the night—jacked up on sugar cookies, black coffee and Red Bull—preparing the stats, nominee biographies and general info that will be disseminated worldwide at 5:38:30 a.m., PST, on Tuesday. This year, NEWSWEEK asked the Academy if we could spend the night with them.
At 9 p.m. Monday, Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas, from the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, present the list of nominees, tabulated from ballots cast by 5,800 Academy voters, to Academy executive director Bruce Davis and staff. Despite all the security at the Academy, the two men just drove the list over, without so much as a police escort. "We're both big, strapping guys," Oltmanns says, laughing. "Those are required characteristics for the job." As everyone pores over the list, they're eerily quiet. Does nothing about the nominations surprise them? "The big shocker for me," says Ariff Sidi, from ABC.com, "is that I haven't seen even one of the movies in the best picture category."
Neither did most Americans. Box office was down 6.2 percent for 2005. Even with best picture noms, "Brokeback Mountain," "Crash," "Capote," "Goodnight, and Good Luck" and "Munich" won't come close to being blockbusters. As one insider was overheard fretting, "This could be the lowest-rated show in Oscar history." If so, the Academy will just have to tough it out. Their job is to reward greatness, not grosses. "We get criticized that we're losing touch with the public," says Davis, "but if it was only about TV ratings, we'd be nominating 'Big Momma's House 2'."
Besides, the controversial content of these films proves great fodder for gallows humor as the evening wears on. In a seventh-floor conference room, Davis and seven staffers have been trying to come up with fascinating stats about this year's nominees. (This year, for instance, is the first time since 1981 that the best picture and best director nominees have matched.) But even after hours of brainstorming, the group is stumped for fun facts about the acting nominees. A staffer points out that Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal and Philip Seymour Hoffman are all nominated for playing gay men: "How about looking at the number of actors in history who've been nominated for playing gay?" Davis thinks about it for a millisecond, then deadpans, "I'm sure the Reverend Robertson will point that out for us." By 4 a.m., everyone's pretty punchy. As famed Oscar telecast producer Gil Cates looks over the nominees, Davis points out that the rap number "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" is nominated for best original song. "You've got a song with the words s--t and f--k in it," Davis says, laughing. "That ought to be a production challenge." Cates considers. "Maybe Dolly Parton can do it," he says.
As it nears 5 a.m., about 400 reporters, photographers and publicists have crammed into the Academy theater downstairs to hear Mira Sorvino and newly elected Academy president Sid Ganis announce the nominees. Sorvino has done this gig before. It's Ganis's first time. He's beaming. "I have been watching this since I was a little boy," he says. "And now ... this is just a good moment." He smiles. "It's the Academy Awards." Even in a small year, that's pretty big.
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