So, now Puck News’ Matt Belloni is reporting that the Academy is investigating whether it’s rules governing Oscar campaigning were broken. There is a precedent for nominations to be withdrawn when rules violations were confirmed: 2014, Best Song nomination for Bruce Broughton, “Alone Yet Not Alone” when “he was found to have ‘improperly lobbied’ more than 70 members of the music branch via email.” Another rule forbids specifically mentioning the names of potential rivals in a negative way.
I have always really liked Mary McCormack, married to the “To Leslie” films director, who appears to be at the center of this. But it is a bad look that she seems to have messaged to her famous friends that they should list Riseborough first on their ballots, since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.” Except (Yikes!) the only to African American women on that supposed lock list are the ones who did not get nominated, and Riseborough appears to have taken one of their slots. There will be pressure to do something about this, and lots of bad feelings either way it goes. Below is an excerpt from Bellini’s piece from yesterday: “Mary McCormack and friends emailed and called tons of members of the Academy’s actors branch, begging them to see the little-watched alcoholic drama and post online about Riseborough’s searing performance. The result: dozens of influential stars—Gwyneth, Jen, Howard, Cate, Amy Adams, Ed Norton, and many, many more—sang her praises and helped win her the coveted nomination. But the shock nom has created a brewing shitstorm within the Academy because Riseborough seemingly pushed out Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Danielle Deadwyler (Till), two actresses of color that were backed by well-funded campaigns by Sony and MGM/Amazon, respectively, and were widely predicted to score honors, yet presumably do not have access to a network of powerful (and, let’s be honest, white) friends in the Academy to campaign for Oscars on their behalf. To some, it was the worst kind of racially-tinged cronyism, where the connections outshined the work. “We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating and unabashed misogyny toward Black women,” the Till director Chinonye Chukwu posted on Instagram. I’m not sure I agree with that—after all, what gets nominated is always a complex mix of quality, positioning, and politics—but the controversy raises a key question: Did the Riseborough effort violate Oscar campaign rules? I’m told the Academy is looking at this issue, and that it will likely be raised at the board of governors meeting on Tuesday. (The organization declined to comment.)” On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 at 5:23 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: Did read that Puck News piece, but also scattered other pieces of news and gossip. She was unknown to me (though I saw Amsterdam, and am one of the few people I know who enjoyed it; I did not know she was in it. Still I doubt anyone thinks that without the celebrity Twitter campaign she would have been nominated for an Oscar. Notice by end of today (Tuesday in US) gripes are starting to roll in about actresses who presumably got bumped to make room for her, including Viola Davis. On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 at 8:21 AM Adam Bowie <[email protected]> wrote: I suspect that I've read the same Puck pieces on Andrea Riseborough and "To Leslie" that PGage has. I believe the film got a very limited UK release back in October, but it completely passed me by at the time. But Riseborough isn't an unknown in any way, at least in the UK. For instance, she has a part in David O Russell's Amsterdam which came out around the same time (that film was a disappointment for me...) and has won various smaller awards over the years. The film seems to be available to rent on the usual streaming services, so I'll check it out too. (SNIP) Adam On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 3:31 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: At first glance I am most interested in the best actress nomination for Andrea Riseborough. I can’t remember if this has been discussed here; she is a little know actress in an extremely low budget and little noticed film (“To Leslie”), whose non-existent Oscar chances suddenly blew up in late December when a gaggle of A-List actors began tweeting superlative praises for her performance, seemingly spontaneously, culminating in Cate Blanchett name checking her in a gush during her acceptance speech for her Critics Choice Award last week. I first noticed this on my own Twitter feed with a tweet from Ed Norton, which seemed peculiar enough that I searched for, and found, many more. I have not yet seen the film (but will, as I try to see all films nominated in major categories every year), perhaps the social media blizzard is justified solely on the merits, though if so this would have to be the most impressive acting performance in history. More likely it is a good enough performance (I have seen it described as rather showy by less effusive reviewers) that got the social media celebrity supercharge treatment via Riseborough’s representation by CAA, which also reps a number of the Tweeting stars. The film had zero budget, and could not afford a single ad, and it doesn’t require too much imagination to picture CAA asking it’s top talent to watch the film and post something ice, and then initiating a perfect storm of romantic crusade for the poor underdog plus Puckish delight at pulling one over on the public and big studios, with perhaps some old AIDS ribbon era Hollywood conformity leading some fearful of being left out for jumping on board. Even so there was widespread speculation that the push was too little too late, and now that she actually got the nomination I wonder if some are sorry, as it must have pushed some established actress out of the nominations, perhaps a friend to some of the social media amplifiers. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYK0JTDO1V3GOQV6Qgv9LZfzXanXPMwMJtdMm46RHvPTgg%40mail.gmail.com.
