Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This weekend, we all have to ask ourselves one important question.
Speaker 2: Am I Team Barbie or Team Oppenheimer? That's right, The
Speaker 2: ninety six Academy Awards are happening this Sunday, Everyone's favorite
Speaker 2: award show, the super Bowl of the movies. This year
Speaker 2: promises to be an all stops pulled out kind of event,
Speaker 2: from the red carpet fashions to the box office busting
Speaker 2: nominees to a non singer performing a Best Song nominee
Speaker 2: in a major spectacle with Ryan Gosling's I'm Just.
Speaker 3: Ken, I'm Just Trade anywhere else upy.
Speaker 2: But the Oscars weren't always so glitzy in the beginning.
Speaker 2: The ceremony was a pretty humble affair.
Speaker 3: Race in nineteen twenty nine was the first Academy Awards.
Speaker 1: I think it was the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Speaker 3: And the actual award giving was around fifteen minutes long.
Speaker 2: Fast forward almost a century later, an Oscar Night looks
Speaker 2: pretty different. But to movie studios, winning is more important
Speaker 2: than ever. An oscar can translate into millions of dollars
Speaker 2: in box office and streaming revenues. Not to mention ragging
Speaker 2: rights and to secure their shot at capturing those coveted statuettes,
Speaker 2: those studios have started spending enormous amounts of money and
Speaker 2: employing armies of marketers. Getting an Oscar has become a big,
Speaker 2: big business. Today, on the show Inside Oscar's Inc. We'll
Speaker 2: take you back to the sweet Shakespearean romcom that started
Speaker 2: it all, to the overheated, multimillion dollar ad blitzes we
Speaker 2: see today. For your consideration, this is the big take.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder. The Oscars is one of Hollywood's biggest
Speaker 2: nights and this year is shaping up to be truly cinematic.
Speaker 1: I just went guys today to pick up my Oscar
Speaker 1: credentials and the entire street, Hollywood Boulevard has been closed
Speaker 1: off for a week.
Speaker 2: That's my colleague Chris Paul Mary. He covers Hollywood and
Speaker 2: the entertainment industry.
Speaker 1: For Bloomberg, elaborate sets being designed, their intense security, or
Speaker 1: an incredible effort that goes way beyond just you know,
Speaker 1: a party in a ballroom.
Speaker 2: And for the studios, the Oscars mark the finish line
Speaker 2: for the month's long campaign. Studios will often invest millions
Speaker 2: of dollars hire teams of specialists, all in the name
Speaker 2: of snagging a win, and there's a bit of a
Speaker 2: formula to it these days. That's according to author and
Speaker 2: Oscar historian Michael Schulman, how do.
Speaker 3: You win an oscar? I mean, Step one, obviously is
Speaker 3: to make an incredible movie.
Speaker 2: Step two, get your movie and the story of your
Speaker 2: movie in front of as many people as possible.
Speaker 3: Oscar campaigns are like political campaigns, you know, in the
Speaker 3: sense that you have the messaging and the ground games.
Speaker 3: So the messaging is through advertisements, interviews. What you want
Speaker 3: the narrative to be for a certain person, whether it's
Speaker 3: you know, an actor who's long overdue and kind of
Speaker 3: a career award, or a really bold subversive movie, or
Speaker 3: a bio pick that's giving due to some figure who
Speaker 3: has been underappreciated in history. That's the messaging. That's like,
Speaker 3: you know, a candidate for president giving a stump.
Speaker 2: Speech, and after that comes the ground game.
Speaker 3: In presidential politics, you see like politicians kissing babies at
Speaker 3: the Iowa State Fair. In the oscar race, it's you know,
Speaker 3: movie stars going to cocktail parties and you know, shaking
Speaker 3: hands with voters and you know, doing Q and as
Speaker 3: and fancy screening rooms and stuff. So it's a bit
Speaker 3: more chic obviously than the Iowa caucus, but in another sense,
Speaker 3: it's the exact same.
Speaker 2: Thing, very expensive chic caucuses. Studios pour tons of resources
Speaker 2: into these efforts. Shelman says. Netflix has earmarked as much
Speaker 2: as one hundred million dollars every year on its OSCARS
Speaker 2: campaign alone, and that's led to the creation of a
Speaker 2: bunch of Academy regulations, Chris told us, limiting how far
Speaker 2: studios can go to get their gold.
Speaker 1: There's pages and pages of rules on what you can
Speaker 1: and can't do. For example, you're allowed to invite people
Speaker 1: to screening some movies after the nominations. That is all
Speaker 1: throttled back in big way. You can still have a screening,
Speaker 1: you just can't. You can't wind and nine people. So
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of rules that have come about as
Speaker 1: the Academy has tried to calibrate the amount of campaigning
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: Sort of like campaign finance laws, but for the movies,
Speaker 2: says Shelman.
Speaker 3: What you can say in an ad, what you can't
Speaker 3: say in an ad, What kind of party you can
Speaker 3: throw at which point in the campaign you know for instance,
Speaker 3: we all know this phrase for your consideration. Well, people
Speaker 3: say that because you actually can't directly solicit votes. You know,
Speaker 3: you can't say vote from my movie in so many words,
Speaker 3: and in fact people have been disqualified from their nominations
Speaker 3: for doing just that. So these rules are enforced.
Speaker 2: But things weren't always this way. In fact, the entire
Speaker 2: Oscar Inc. Industry, all of the wild spending and months
Speaker 2: of campaigning, can be traced back to one moment, actually,
Speaker 2: one film, back in nineteen ninety nine. The movie was
Speaker 2: a romantic comedy, Shakespeare in Love, and it set its
Speaker 2: sights on an Oscar for Best Picture. At the time,
Speaker 2: says Chris, Nobody nobody thought Shakespeare in Love would win.
Speaker 2: Everyone assumed the Oscar would go to the critically acclaimed
Speaker 2: World War Two epic Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 1: Oh yes so, And it seems funny now to even
Speaker 1: think about the competition, because Saving Private Ryan is a
Speaker 1: movie I've watched numerous times and so widely regarded, if
Speaker 1: not the certainly one of the best war movies ever made.
Speaker 1: And Shakespeare in Love I've seen once, no great desire
Speaker 1: O great.
Speaker 2: I got a stand up for Shakespeare in Love. That's
Speaker 2: a great film.
Speaker 1: I'll give it another shot. Okay, obviously it was the best.
Speaker 2: Picture after the break, the controversial figure behind this first
Speaker 2: real Oscar campaign, and how it continues to set the
Speaker 2: standard for award season as we know it. We're back
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine. Movie lovers and Oscars watchers were
Speaker 2: stunned when Shakespeare in Love snagged the Academy Award for
Speaker 2: Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan. But a lot of
Speaker 2: strategy and a lot of money had gone to that moment,
Speaker 2: says Bloomberg's Chris Paul Mary. Strategy and money from one
Speaker 2: of the most notorious figures in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein.
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein Mirrimax was the guy who sort of really
Speaker 1: took oscar campaigning to the next level. It was a
Speaker 1: real bare knuckle sort of fight. You know, there was
Speaker 1: there was always a bit of entertaining involved and getting
Speaker 1: people to come out, you know, Academy members to see
Speaker 1: the movies. But in Weinstein Error, it was it was
Speaker 1: like phone calls. It was showing up at the retirement
Speaker 1: home for aged actors and you know, literally doing everything
Speaker 1: you can could convince these people to vote. There was
Speaker 1: you know, lunches, elaborate menus, and then the other side
Speaker 1: of it was this sort of trash talking, the sort
Speaker 1: of quiet, you know. Disparagement of the competition is certainly
Speaker 1: something that happened in that case.
Speaker 2: Oscar historian Michael Schulman says, Harvey Weinstein pulled out all
Speaker 2: the stops. Hollywood and just about every place else was
Speaker 2: saturated with Shakespeare in Love.
Speaker 3: You couldn't get in your car in la without hearing
Speaker 3: the score of Shakespeare in Love. And they ran an
Speaker 3: advertisement during Monica Lewinski's interview with Barbara Walters, of course,
Speaker 3: the Saving Private ryand people were furious that they did that.
Speaker 2: In response to these efforts, DreamWorks, the studio behind Saving
Speaker 2: Private Ryan, began escalating its own behind the scenes maneuvers
Speaker 2: to try and secure the votes of Academy members, But
Speaker 2: Shakespeare in Love had too much of a head start,
Speaker 2: and to the shock of many, took home the Best
Speaker 2: Picture Award.
Speaker 3: Many people thought, rightly or wrongly, that Weinstein had basically
Speaker 3: bought the win. So what happened the next year was
Speaker 3: that every other studio in Hollywood thought, well, we're not
Speaker 3: going to let this happen again. We're not going to,
Speaker 3: let you know, Miramax, this indie movie company from New
Speaker 3: York come and steal our oscars.
Speaker 2: After Weinstein pulled out all the stops. Took this to
Speaker 2: an level, the modern day business of winning an oscar
Speaker 2: was kind of born, or the genie is out of
Speaker 2: the bottle. What about now? What are the elements of
Speaker 2: the business of winning an oscar?
Speaker 1: It's still a huge business for a big movie in Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty five million dollars in Oscar campaign. He
Speaker 1: is not out of the question.
Speaker 2: And the campaigns have only gotten more elaborate, creative, and
Speaker 2: of course expensive, says Shulman.
Speaker 3: It's like insane the stuff that the money is spent
Speaker 3: on to just drown people in swag essentially, but it's
Speaker 3: also make them pay attention. You can't make someone like
Speaker 3: your movie, but you can make them pay attention to
Speaker 3: it and remember it, and you know, most importantly, watch it,
Speaker 3: because nobody's going to vote for or nominate for something
Speaker 3: that they haven't watched in the first place.
Speaker 2: Does all this investment really pay off? Chris says, the
Speaker 2: Oscar's bump is real.
Speaker 1: The increase that of films historically have gotten in theaters
Speaker 1: it can certainly lead to tens of millions more in
Speaker 1: box office. For sure? Is this in the streaming error.
Speaker 1: It doesn't immediately translate into dollars, but they'll certainly see
Speaker 1: an increase in viewers.
Speaker 2: But a lot of what we know about the Oscar's
Speaker 2: industrial complex is speculation, says Chris. He says as a
Speaker 2: reporter in Hollywood, he certainly experiences and sees some of
Speaker 2: the campaigning, but it's hard to get the studios to
Speaker 2: openly reveal what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's so hard to get anyone to actually talk about
Speaker 1: Oscar because they don't ever want to admit that this happens.
Speaker 1: You know, it's both high profile and low profile, and
Speaker 1: the why and what they're doing and how much this
Speaker 1: spending is all kept hidden. The industry is always going
Speaker 1: to fight to win these awards, and the spending will
Speaker 1: continue to escalate because it's just so important to everybody
Speaker 1: in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Millions of dollars were spent by Oscar contenders this year,
Speaker 2: and millions of people are expected to tune in on
Speaker 2: Sunday to see whose efforts paid off. We'll get to
Speaker 2: take home that best picture Oscar and who is just
Speaker 2: Ken I'm just Sarah Holder, and there's so many people
Speaker 2: we'd like to thank for this episode. This episode was
Speaker 2: produced by Alex Suguiera and Matt Goldman. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Stacy vanick Smith. It was fact checked by Naomi En.
Speaker 2: It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez. Our senior producers are
Speaker 2: Naomi Shavin and Jill Duddy Carly. We get editorial direction
Speaker 2: from Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole beemsterbor is our executive producer. Sage
Speaker 2: Bauman is Head of Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2: We'll be back on Monday.