What's in a movie's buzz factor? In the race for the Oscars, it's everything. No other recent movie proves this more than Brokeback Mountain.
A critical darling, Brokeback seemed unstoppable. It earned glowing review after glowing review. It won award after award. And then Jack Nicholson got up on stage at the Academy Awards and read those famous words: "And the Oscar goes to..."
Crash.
How did it happen? How could a film that seemed to have a sure lock on Best Picture collapse at the finish line? The answer may lie in the delicate game of "buzz".
Building Oscar buzz is a complicated strategy of marketing, lobbying, and sometimes just plain good luck. Studios try to push the odds in their favour by offering media outlets preview screenings and press junkets in posh hotel rooms. They then take the glowing quotes from entertainment reporters and fill the daily newspapers with ads.
At the end of the year, the studios send out "For Your Consideration" DVD screeners of their likely candidates for nominations. They put their stars on the red carpet at premieres and have them make strategic public appearances to keep their names on people's lips.
They place ads in the trade papers and of course, a well-timed star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for the film's lead never hurts either.
But perhaps the most important factor of all is timing. Delicate timing.
Have your buzz peak too late and you won't generate enough hype in time for the Oscar balloting. Peak too early, and your film's momentum peters out too early.
This is what is thought to have happened last year with Brokeback Mountain. Though critics gobbled up the film, by the time the Oscar ballots were mailed out, Academy members seemed to have had their fill of that "gay cowboy flick."
"Brokeback Mountain was absolutely a victim of 'hype overload'," says film critic Richard Crouse.
"It seemed like such a lock for Best Picture that I think Academy voters got tired of hearing about it and voted for the alternative -- which, to my mind wasn't nearly as good a movie."
Not all moviegoers would agree, but one thing is certain: Crash defied the Oscar odds makers twice - by pulling off a victory at all; and by winning despite being released long before "awards season".
The oft-mentioned awards season begins, in many people's minds, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Dozens of movies, from Chariots of Fire to Capote made their North American debut at the TIFF and went on to become Oscar winners.
Distributors hope if a film develops buzz at the TIFF, it can be released shortly after, ride a wave of momentum through the fall into the Christmas season and be showered with gold come Oscar time.
It's a strategy that has worked fairly consistently for years - until Brokeback Mountain. But it's such a popular strategy that now studios flood the market with "important", Oscar-worthy films every December. And if you send out your "Oscar bait" films in the middle of it, you risk it getting lost in the deluge.
That's why distributors sometimes try to defy the release date convention.
Thinkfilm CEO Jeff Sackman says they deliberately released their Oscar hopeful Half Nelson in August to avoid the awards season rush.
"We knew ahead of time that a lot of the films coming out in the fall were powerhouse, indie-type movies and we didn't want to go head-to-head with those," referring to films such as Babel and The Last King of Scotland.
Sackman says it was a risk to place Half Nelson in theatres at an unconventional time, but that was weighed against his company's belief that they had a quality film that could carry its own.
But any film released early in the year assumes the risk that Academy members may forget about it come voting time. Some say that is what has happened to Flags of Our Fathers, which arrived in theatres in October, garnered only modest box office revenues and seemed to fade out of sight.
Crouse worries that United 93, released in April, could be similarly overlooked.
"It didn't earn a single Golden Globe nomination, although it would seem that a Best Director for a Drama would have been a natural fit," he said before the nominations were announced.
"If the awards had been announced in March, this movie would have been at the top of the list. But as the year went on, and people's memories faded, United 93 got lost in the shuffle."
It would appear Crouse was right; the film was snubbed by the Academy and didn't earn a nomination in any of the key categories.
Sackman says in the end, release date strategy is all a gamble. But he admits that release date timing is hardly an exact science.
"It just goes back to the old adage, 'No one knows anything'," he says half-jokingly.
"Every year is different, every situation is different. You're applying your experience and knowledge and purported expertise to come up with the best decision. And in the end, the final result tells you if you made the right decision."
