• Melissa Leo tells a different story on Adgate: She was doing what Parmount told her to do. [Daily Beast]
• Telecast hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway in their first interview on the upcoming festivities. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Meanwhile, Tom Sherak tells Susan Wloszczyna we’ll like the style of the show. [USA Today]
• Pete Hammond on campaigns entering the final stretch, voters with ballots in hand. [Deadline]
• Anne Thompson discusses Oscar voting procedures and more with AMPAS president Tom Sherak. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Jen Yamato talks being the underdog with “Winter’s Bone” star (and Oscar nominee) John Hawkes. [Movieline]
People get so wrapped in the seasonal mechanics of the Oscars, it’s easy to forget that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually has a purpose beyond the doling out of awards. It is, after all, an academy: an nonprofit organization dedicated both to preserving and developing American filmmaking.
The LA Times’s Christy Grosz offers a handy reminder of what AMPAS does all year round, and how the Academy Awards — with their $65 million license fee from ABC — essentially fund their activities.
Among the places where that money goes: screenwriting fellowships (Allison Anders and Susannah Grant are previous beneficiaries), college grants, film restoration and archiving of assorted movie memorabilia, with a long-term view toward building a museum of Hollywood history.
• John Lopez digs into the preferential voting system in intense depth. Maybe nothing you haven’t already read. And I’m kind of over it. [Little Gold Men]
• Charlie Wilson — yes, that one — has left us to our own wars. [Variety]
• Penelope Cruz says “thanks, no thanks” to Lars Von Trier, opts for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” That’s how you follow up two Oscar nods in a row, I tell ya. [Hollywood Reporter]
As a former Fox chairman with a background in marketing, it’s unsurprising that Tom Sherak, who recently replaced Sid Ganis as president of the Academy, wants to bring a more populist approach to the Oscars.
In this LA Times interview, he makes it clear that the primary objective of the move to 10 Best Picture nominees is to get more blockbusters into the race — having himself voted for “The Dark Knight” last year — but admits that they may not succeed:
The point of it was to do something … We need to not be afraid to try things. We need to be positive. The people who are against the idea say, ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ Then we won’t do it again.
UPDATE: Anne Thompson has now posted this story (which she’s been working on a while) in full with — imagine that — sourced information.
EARLIER: Over at Deadline Hollywood Daily, Nikki Finke conveys what we all know: that AMPAS brass would love a do-over of last year’s Oscarcast and have already approached Bill Condon and Laurence Mark about directing and producing the show once again. The new news, however, is that, in the wake of the duo’s “thanks but no thanks” (busy, busy), the Academy is going to approach Hugh Jackman to host the show once again.
This is, as Anne pointed out in last week’s edition of Oscar Talk (wherein we also discussed ideas for hosts and producers), putting the cart before the horse as no producer has been nailed down yet. Finke floats the idea of Joe Roth again (a confidante of newly tapped Academy president Tom Sherak, also mentioned by Anne last week). But she also reports murmurs that Hawk Koch and Joel Silver separately offered to produce the show.
It’s all rumor-mill stuff right now, and Finke says that Jackman’s handlers will suggest he decline the offer if it is extended, so there’s no way of knowing what’s true and what’s not at this point. But it’s getting to be crunch time. Let’s get on with it…
I stumbled onto this item over at Deadline Hollywood Daily earlier this afternoon. Apparently Tom Hanks, who was elected First Vice-President of the Academy earlier this week, was the group’s first choice for the top spot. In fact, Tom Sherak, who was ultimately elected president, is the one who nominated Hanks in the first place.
Here’s what Nikki Finke dug up:
Sherak…thought Hanks could be a “Gregory Peck-type” AMPAS leader. But insiders tell me Hanks declined, saying he “didn’t feel he could put the time in”. So his name was withdrawn, and that’s when Sherak got the gig. At least it’s comforting to know that AMPAS’ and Sherak’s heads were in the right place by wanting an actor instead of two back-to-back studio shills.
• How many days did Bill Murray re-live in “Groundhog Day?” [Chicago Tribune]
• Screenwriter Roberto Orci to receive Imagen Awards’ Norman Lear Writer’s Award. [Variety]
• David Poland sits down with three more Super Movie Friends to talk “Inglourious Basterds.” [The Hot Blog]
With Sid Ganis on his way out as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the search for a replacement has come to an end. Tom Sherak, a representative of AMPAS’s Executives Branch, has parlayed his seven-year stint on the Board of Governors and a one-year go at treasurer into the new head of the organization.
“Sherak, a marketing, distribution and production executive with more than four decades in the motion picture industry, is currently a consultant for Marvel Studios,” the press release reads.
Nikki Finke is rather beside herself at the news, chastising Sherak as a “major advocate” for what she calls “he worst idea ever in the modern history of the Oscars: the recent decision to have 10 feature films vying in the Best Picture category.” She also uses the fact that Sherak was “responsible for lobbying the board to choose Jerry Lewis to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the last Oscars” as a mark against him. You’ll recall there was something of a controversy around that particular award last year.
Elsewhere, Tom Hanks left his post as a Actors Branch Governor to take on elected duties as first vice-president, while Producers Branch Governor Kathleen Kennedy and Writers Branch Governor Phil Robinson were elected vice-presidents. Feature Animation Branch governor John Lasseter was elected secretary.
Full press release after the jump.