Shhh! Oscar contenders get silent treatment

Oscar surprises
The past few years offer some strong evidence for the theory. While quirky and not easily emulated, the examples form a pattern that execs say is getting harder to ignore.

There’s certainly no formula for a successful awards campaign, but in 2004, “Million Dollar Baby,” a movie that few expected even to be released that year, swooped in to win the best picture prize with only 11th-hour campaigning.

In 2005, a backlash against the early anointing of “Brokeback Mountain” resulted in “Crash,” a spring release not even talked about as a contender for much of the season, landing the best picture win.

Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images Martin Scorsese accepts his Oscar for best director for "The Departed" at the 2007 Academy Awards. The film won four Oscars.

And last year, “The Departed” rode to four Oscars by doing everything conventional wisdom and recent Martin Scorsese campaigns didn’t: actively avoiding all mention of awards until other front-runners were already established.

Of course, not every movie is eligible for the anti-hype treatment. “Atonement,” with its Oscar-ready ingredients of epic love and period drama, might be able to coast on its merits more than the intimate and painterly French-language movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

There are other caveats. Studios can’t always control buzz, even when they want to. And the notion of not hyping a movie forms its own kid of hype (witness this article).

Finally, the line between a campaign that chooses not to seek buzz and one that tries but simply can’t conjure it up is a thin one.

And while it’s hard to separate circumstance from design — word on Anderson’s “Blood,” for instance, has been limited because the movie was only recently finished — all these films are nonetheless hoping that laying low now will help them rise later.

It’s also a way to stay out of the unpredictable clutches of a proliferating group of bloggers. With those online voices amplifying even small stories — witness the Movie City News item last week, since retracted, that the Weinstein Co. would put up Cate Blanchett for best actress for “I’m Not There” — some studios reason that it’s better to stay away from the buzz saw than risk getting chopped up in it.

Still, this year might prove a good test of the school’s potential, with several low-hype movies going up against more conventional rollouts like Miramax’s “No Country for Old Men,” which is playing strongly in limited release. The buzz gears were cranking on the Coen brothers’ passion project even before the lights came up on the premiere in Cannes. Now it just has to keep them churning all the way into February.

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