Film Fund-amentals: The Wheel Goes Round and Round

 First published January 12, 2012

In the old children’s song, the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round. Sort of the same thing goes on in the film industry. Lots of wheels moving around but nobody seems to be actually going anywhere.

Take for example this week’s decision by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to change the means by which feature documentaries get qualified for nomination. Technically, this rule change for 2013 is supposed to make the nomination process more equitable (as explained by Michael Moore).

OK, I must confess that when I first read Moore’s explanation I thought maybe the poor lad had his ball cap on too tight. But let’s take a look at the current rules used by the Academy in this category. Currently, a documentary film has to have a seven-day screening in both New York and Los Angeles. So that rule stays the same. The ad requirement appears to have been dropped (“The motion picture must be exhibited for paid admission, and must be advertised during each of its runs in major newspapers…”). This rule even specifies the size of the ad. There is also the current requirement for the film to be screened multiple times during the day and evening. If, indeed, these points have been dropped for next year, that’s a good thing (especially the ad part, because daily ads are expensive). Unfortunately, the screening requirements stay basically the same and will still be a problem for many documentaries that are lucky to get two nights in the middle of the week.

The major change is that starting next year, the voting will shift to the full membership of the documentary branch of the Academy. Traditionally, the first round of voting was done by small committees overseeing different divisions of documentary movies. This system has long resulted in numerous claims of small groups of people being able to derail a movie from ever making the shortlist. In theory, the new system will prevent this. Well, maybe. Time will tell.

Of course, you’ve got this slightly odd extra ringer in the new system. Not only must the documentary be screened commercially for at least a week in both New York and Los Angeles, but it also has to be reviewed by either The New York Times and/or Los Angeles Times. Thirty years ago, this would have almost made sense (maybe).

Technically, The New York Times reviews every film that has a commercial run in New York. The New York Times averages about 760 reviews per year. This is a pretty noble achievement in today’s newspaper market. Question: How firm is the Times commitment to film reviewing?

After all, with last week’s dismissal of J. Hoberman from The Village Voice we have all been reminded that in modern journalism, film critics are a dime a dozen and the value of the dime has dropped to about three cents. Both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times may have a strong desire to maintain an active arts section, but no one in their right mind should want to bank on anything in the fluid state of the contemporary print media. Even the new Academy rules leave open the prospect of changing this requirement when future development warrants it. We can call it the Gray Lady Down clause.

Either way, these rule changes will neither hurt nor help most documentary movies. Some people have already wondered why the Academy didn’t include the DocuWeeks program as part of the process. This forum is presented in both New York and Los Angeles. It is a major presentation site for documentary movies and is a more consistent and better managed clearinghouse than you will find in any commercial theater. Considering the unique and specialized nature of documentaries (and the fact that most commercial theaters and many critics avoid them), it would be a more comprehensive approach to the process. As it is, these rule changes sound like  just another spin on a wheel that never goes anywhere.

But the review requirement still bugs me. Oh sure, a review in The New York Times makes it all sound more official. But really, who cares? Part of the modern crisis in newspaper film reviewing (crisis as in it is vanishing) is rooted in the fact that the whole newspaper business is in massive flux as it stumbles through a radically changing world without a clue as to where it is going. Over the past decade, a variety of newspapers have folded. Many others have undergone major overhauls, normally resulting in massive layoffs and reporter rooms seemingly staffed by underpaid (or even unpaid) college interns. Where I live, we have the biggest daily newspaper in the state, and its weekday edition is often thinner than the weekly Clip N Save coupon rag.

So it is not surprising that the field of newspaper film critics has taken a walloping hit. Hell, at many papers even the sports department is getting whacked, and that was viewed as much more sacred than movies. The main reason many newspapers even had film critics was because it helped attract and maintain advertising from the major distributors. But many of the major players in movie PR have moved away from an emphasis on newspaper advertising (the focus is now TV and social networks online). In the past, film critics were expected to cover (either positively or negatively) the major Hollywood movies. There was no drive to cover much of anything outside that zone. The rationale was simple. Most publishers were too crass to care, and many critics were to lazy to bother (and keep in mind that at least some of these “critics” had actually been booted into the job after they had bombed out in the sports section).

Hoberman was an important exception to this. That is why many people in the indie film business will miss him. Unfortunately, the days of newspaper film criticism are over. For better or worse, it’s done. So I guess this is one of the reasons why I find the Michael Moore strategy at the Academy to be just a tad bizarre. It is as if they are preparing for tomorrow by grabbing a broken crutch from yesterday and hoping to hobble into the dawn.

Which suggests to me that this is another spinning wheel that is about to go flat. I just hope Moore has kept up his AAA membership.