How much for your consideration? Best Actor

Continuing my series of poorly researched and misguided rants on the budgets of movies that win Oscars...

It is well known that famous actors will often lower their fees in order to star in a low budget, important, Oscar-worthy film. Why is this? Does this imply that big-budget movies are somehow not Oscar-worthy, or is this a fallacy, and budget is irrelevant to the chances of Oscar glory in the best actor category?

For the last 10 years, the winners of the best actor Oscar have been:

2005 - Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote ($7M)
2004 - Jamie Foxx, Ray ($40M)
2003 - Sean Penn, Mystic River ($30M)
2002 - Adrien Brody, The Pianist ($35M)
2001 - Denzel Washington, Training Day ($45M)
2000 - Russell Crowe, Gladiator ($103)
1999 - Kevin Spacey, American Beauty ($15M)
1998 - Roberto Benigni, Life is Beautiful (unknown, say $5M)
1997 - Jack Nicholson, As Good as it Gets ($50M)
1996 - Geoffrey Rush, Shine ($5.5M)

One movie on this list cracks the $100M barrier while three were made for less than $10M (I'm guessing about Life is Beautiful based on it being Italian, first time director, unknown actors etc. If anyone would like to correct me, please do so).

The average winning movie cost $35.6M. This is almost half the cost of the average Hollywood studio movie (about $65M). It just goes to show you can't buy a good performance. Not only that, but Ray, The Pianist, Life is Beautiful and Shine were not even produced by one of the big six studios. So maybe it's true, low budget is better for the best-actor category. There are a couple of reasons why this might be so. The obvious one is that big budget movies are mostly based around action and special effects, with acting and dialogue taking a back seat. The other is that the Academy recognises acting in important or controversial movie, and often these movies are not going to make very much money, and therefore will not be provided with a massive budget.

So the nominees this time around are:

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond ($100M)
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson ($700,000)
Peter O'Toole, Venus (unknown, say $5M)
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness ($55M)
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland ($6M)

Based on the last ten years, the winner could be any of these, although Ryan Gosling might struggle with Half Nelson's tiny budget. Will Smith and Forest Whitaker split the long term average between them, so flip a coin. Or better yet, roll a 5-sided dice (if one exists).

How much for your consideration? Best Picture

Let's review the best picture Academy Award winners over the last ten years, and the production budget that got them there.

2005 - Crash ($6.5M)
2004 - Million Dollar Baby ($30M)
2003 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($94M)
2002 - Chicago ($45M)
2001 - A Beautiful Mind ($60M)
2000 - Gladiator ($103M)
1999 - American Beauty ($15M)
1998 - Shakespeare in Love ($25M)
1997 - Titanic ($200M)
1996 - The English Patient ($27M)

So, one movie makes it in under $10M, and two crack the $100M mark. The rest are in what I like to call the 'mediocre' range.

The average winning movie cost $65M. Let's just compare that to the average cost of a Hollywood studio movie; you guessed it, about $65M. So what does this tell us. Well, on average, any studio movie has as much chance of winning Best Picture as any other, regardless of budget. This doesn't mean that any movie has an equal chance of winning, of course, just any "studio movie". The only movie on the list not produced by one of the big six studios is Crash, which was "independently produced" and then distributed by Lions Gate.

So it appears that any studio film has an equal chance of winning the best picture award - based on budget alone, although presumably making a good film will give you a slightly higher chance. Occasionally, an independent film might sneak through too. Based purely on the numbers over the last ten years, my vote for this year therefore goes to Babel; at $25M the closest to the average of the five movies nominated this year - $30.6M. Having said that, you'd have to be an idiot to bet against Clint Eastwood (Letters from Iwo Jima); the Academy loves that guy! Well, he was born only 1 year after the first Academy Award ceremony, and at 77 is probably the same age as the average Academy member

Now I haven't even mentioned the marketing that goes into getting nominations and votes for the Oscars, which is obscene (millions of dollars - they probably spent a lot more with the "for your consideration" campaign for Crash than they did making the bloody movie). But I'll leave that for another rant.

Let the most average win.

How much for your consideration?

I just checked out the nominees for the upcoming Oscars and I thought it might be interesting to see what it costs to make it an Oscar worthy movie.

And the nominees for best picture are:
Babel - $25M
The Departed - $90M
Letters from Iwo Jima - $15M
Little Miss Sunshine - $8M
The Queen - $15M

Other movies with more than three nominations:
Apocalypto - $40M
Blood Diamond - $100M
Children of Men - $72M
Dreamgirls - $70M
Little Children - $14M
Notes on a Scandal - N/A
Pan's Labyrinth - $19M
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $225M

So, for $225M you can buy four nominations (Pirates 2: art direction, sound editing, sound mixing, special effects) or for $8M you can earn four nominations (Little Miss Sunshine: supporting actor, supporting actress, movie, original screenplay).

Now, these are production budgets, i.e. not including marketing and distribution costs. It would be even more interesting to see what the studios actually spend specifically on spruiking for an Oscar. More to follow...

Drowning in the bloodbath

Done, finito, finally!

All of my reviews from the Bloodbath horror festival have now been posted. It only took six weeks, when I intended to take two. And, well, technically, I haven't done a review of the final, bonus movie at Bloodbath, called Porcelain Man. That's because I slept through most of it, and it would be unfair to give a review of something I only saw about half an hour of, although that, in itself, might give an indication of how gripping it is. In short, it's a bit like 28 days later but with less horror, and more political intrigue. I think.

Would I do it again? Well, proper (if you can call them that) reviews take quite a while, at least for me, and I have a life outside the blogosphere (it's called the biosphere, and it's quite nice, there are other people who you can see and touch, there are trees and clouds and home cooked meals and horses running over green fields - you should check it out sometime), so no. But then again, what the hell, bring it on... I don't really like horses anyway. First, though, I think we might need to come up with a similar challenge for Meatpopsicle. After all, this site is called "Holland -vs- Woon", not "Holland where's Woon?".

So now I can get back to the real job of whinging about how unnecessarily expensive movies are these days.

The Silencer

Director: Steve Lawson, Siman Wyndam
Starring: Glenn Salvage, Maye Choo, Jim Clossick, Steve Lawson
Production Budget: ~US$5,000
Running Time: 75 min
Released: 2006

Glenn Salvage plays Michael Eastmann, a policeman who is framed during a botched drugs bust, shot and then left for dead (not to be mistaken by Left for Dead, another movie starring Salvage, where he isn't - left for dead that is). Horribly injured but not dead, he is rehabilitated and then sets out for vengeance. The only problem is he can no longer talk, and his spine is so badly damaged that a hard knock will paralyse him for life (OK, that's two problems). His wife (Choo) grows distant and his former colleagues shun him, but he can still kick arse.

Director Steve Lawson and star Glenn Salvage were both involved in Left for Dead, which was an overlong mess. The Silencer is the exact opposite, a short, neat action movie. The action scenes are great, including a great moment in an underpass where a bunch of thugs hassling a lady meet their worst, silent, motorcycle helmeted, leather clad nightmare. The story is pretty clichèd (although it flows well), but that's not the point, this is a movie about revenge, and it is served up with quality. This movie was made for virtually nothing (Lawson describes it as the cost of a family holiday). All indoor scenes were set in Lawson's house, where one room was continually remodelled for different scenes, and the cast was kept nice and small and mostly volunteered their services. And good for them too. Everyone looks good in this; Salvage has real presence and just a hint of charisma, the martial arts and stunts are awesome, and the directors show that they can really direct.

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting." - Gloria Leonard

One of the most obvious things that shows up a low budget movie is the lighting. The other martial arts movies I saw at Bloodbath, Left for Dead, and Intergalactic Combat were both notable for their bad lighting. The lighting in The Silencer is so much better, with light streeming through windows and a subtle glow on characters faces. Good lighting is one of those things that's difficult to describe, but obvious when you see it. This was $5,000 very well spent. If Left for Dead was martial arts porn, then this is martial arts erotica.

When they can make a $5,000 movie look like a $500,000 movie, imagine what they could do with $500,000. I am curious, and hopefully The Silencer will get the film-makers noticed by some people with some cash. So pay attention, all right!

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Room 36

Director: Jim Groom
Starring: Paul Herzberg, Portia Booroff, Frank Scantori, Nicola Branson
Production Budget: ~US$300,000 (guesstimate)
Running Time: 90 min
Released: 2005

Set mostly in a seedy London hotel, the Midlothian, Room 36 is a tale of mistaken identity, although in this case it is the identity of the room that causes the confusion. In room 36, an obese salesman (Scantori) awaits a prostitute (Branson), while next door, in room 38 a hit-man (Herzberg) has arranged a meeting with a young, female MP (Booroff). All it takes is one chipped room number and things go horribly wrong.

"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well' the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all." - Alfred Hitchcock.

This film took 11 years to make, due to one disaster after another, including death, fire and Kodak's decision to stop producing the film they were using half way through filming. Yet the director persisted, and it was well worth the effort. The grainy black and white looks fantastic, giving it very much the feel of a film noir or early Hitchcock. It even has a classic Hitchcockian McGuffin, in the microfilm the MP is supposed to be delivering to the man who turns out to be a hit-man. Yet it is also very funny, at times almost to the point of slapstick. The acting is excellent, not even considering the budget, and the 10 year commitment many of them made to it with little or no pay.

Groom's only other movie was 1991s The Revenge of Billy the Kid which centred around the mutant child of a farmer and his goat (get it, Billy the Kid). I haven't seen it but am intrigued, and who wouldn't be?

I urge you to seek out this film, so then in another 11 years we might get to see what Groom comes up with next.

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