Five ways to turn your film into Oscar bait

Alonso Duralde Film critic

Some of my recent favorite reviews from other film critics involve calling out movies that were clearly made with awards on the brain.

Take blogger Paul Matwychuk’s dissection of “The Reader,” in which he places it among “end-of-year Miramaxian prestige pictures” that feature impeccable “actors’ accents and costumes…noticeably impeccable, in a way that makes you feel you’d be remiss not to comment on them approvingly.”

Or the observation by Andrew Tracy of ReverseShot.com that “in any sane world, ‘Revolutionary Road’ would be laughed off as a joyless embarrassment before we moved on to more pressing business. Yet while this latest Oscar-baiting turkey will doubtlessly find its ultimate fate in the critical memory hole, the reason for the season demands that we speak of it as if it deserved serious consideration.”

But “Oscar-baiting” is the name of the game in Hollywood. It’s as though the industry were seeking penance for 10 months of mindless romantic comedies, teen slasher flicks and breathless action movies by cramming all of its Quality-with-a-capital-Q movies into the last six weeks of the year.

Not that 2008 was a year that required enormous amounts of penance — while “WALL-E” and “The Dark Knight” are topping most of the year-end critics’ polls, many of those critics would no doubt rather sit through a second viewing of “Iron Man” or “Role Models” than “Seven Pounds” or “Australia.”

In taking a look at this year’s would-be awards fodder and holding it up to the Oscar nominees of recent years, a pattern definitely emerges regarding what films have the right elements to get some love from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Here’s a peek at the movies that sucked up to Oscar just right, as well as a few that were either too awful — or too cool — to get an invitation to the Kodak Theatre:

Strategy 1: Reduce historical events and personalities to easily-chewable, bite-size nuggets
Complexity is for academics. If you can’t boil it down to good guys and bad guys — and keep it at around two hours — voters can’t be bothered.

2008 examples: “The Reader,” “Milk,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Defiance.” Whether it was World War II, post-Watergate fallout or the dawn of the U.S.’s gay political movement, there was no history-making story so complicated that these movies couldn’t transform it into digestible entertainment. Extra brownie points to “Milk” and “Frost/Nixon” for tying into the zeitgeist thanks to, respectively, the renewed battles over same-sex marriage and Bush/Cheney sharing Nixon’s notions about presidential power.

Recent Oscar faves: “The Queen,” “Blood Diamond,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Munich”

Oscar won’t like: “Che,” which assiduously avoided the clichés and shortcuts of the Hollywood biopic in portraying the life of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. It’s a movie that doesn’t tell you what to think, nor does it try to tame the messiness of history to fit in a neat package. Oscar-wise, it’s doomed.

Runner-up: “Australia,” not because it was even-handed by any stretch, but for plopping a storyline about the “Stolen Generation” of Australian Aboriginals amidst sweeping romance and epic magical cattle drives.

Strategy 2: Showcase a single bravura performance
Even if your movie gets ignored in almost every other category, spotlight one extraordinary piece of acting — preferably, but not necessarily, by a movie star working way outside of his or her comfort zone — and your movie will get as much mileage out of the Oscars as the multiple nominees do.

2008 examples: “Gran Torino,” “The Wrestler.” Both films have their fans, but it’s clear that each film’s best bet to be a player in the upcoming Oscar race is to focus on the male lead. There’s even a good sentimental hook: Clint Eastwood says that “Torino” will be his last lead acting role — oh, and he’s never won an acting Oscar, incidentally — while Mickey Rourke’s stunning turn in “The Wrestler” gets extra juice by having the role (a washed-up ’80s star gets another shot at fame and redemption) so closely mirror the performer.

Recent Oscar faves: “Monster,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Monster’s Ball”

Oscar won’t like: “Seven Pounds,” even though star Will Smith snagged a best actor nomination for “The Pursuit of Happyness,” his previous collaboration with director Gabriele Muccino. This time, Smith gives an inert performance in a script that could kindly be called bonkers, so it’s unlikely that this specific lightning will strike twice.

Strategy 3: Take a complex play or novel and streamline it for the screen
When I lived in Dallas, it was often noted that no artists from that city were ever taken seriously unless they had moved to New York or Los Angeles and found success there first. Hollywood has a similar inferiority complex when it comes to the theater and the published word; adaptations from other media always get the tiniest bit more respect from the picture people.

2008 examples: “Frost/Nixon,” “Doubt,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Revolutionary Road,” “The Reader”

Or, if you prefer, two Broadway hits, a short story that long resisted adaptation and two acclaimed novels. These five films have more going for them, Oscar-wise, than their respective pedigrees, but don’t think those pedigrees aren’t helping.

Recent Oscar faves: “No Country for Old Men,” “Atonement,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Dreamgirls,” “Notes on a Scandal,” the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy

Oscar won’t like: The haunting and beautiful “Elegy,” an adaptation of Philip Roth’s “The Dying Animal,” which some critics attacked for not hewing closely enough to the source material. Not that such fidelity matters much to Oscar voters — it’s just unlikely that many of them saw the movie.

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