The Directors Guild of America has decided to stop allowing any screeners of movies hoping for nominations to be sent to guild member’s homes. The reasons are clear but the execution has been a bit muddy. It has a lot to do with the new movie Dreamgirls. Yahoo.com gives us this:
As several studios were preparing to send screeners for the first time to the members of the Directors Guild of America, the group reversed itself Wednesday and announced that it would prohibit the practice.
The decision came a day after news broke that DreamWorks had caught rival studios off guard by deciding to send promotional DVDs for “Dreamgirls” to the guild’s 13,400 members in order to boost director Bill Condon’s chances of securing a coveted DGA Award nomination. Issuing a statement, the guild said: “The DGA has determined that DVD screeners will not be mailed to members this year. We recognize that there has been confusion among studios and distributors regarding the guild’s policies and wish to avoid any unfairness in the awards process. We regret any inconvenience this has caused.”
So that seems fair, but Dreamworks is still allowed to send out the screeners of Dreamgirls, since it already had permission to do so.
The DGA, which insisted it has never had a policy banning screeners, also sent a letter to the studios Friday, informing them that they were free to send them this year, even though the DGA nominations balloting process, which ends January 8, had already begun on December 4. While Miramax received the notice by fax and immediately began readying a possible mailing of screeners of “The Queen,” several studios did not receive the notice until Monday or Tuesday, and their representatives complained loudly that they had not been given enough notice about the policy.
Confronted by an uproar in the competitive circle of Oscar consultants — and also faced with a situation in which prestigious directors could find their films at a disadvantage – the DGA suddenly closed the door on any screeners this year but said it “will allow the mailing of DVD screeners to the entire membership next year for the guild’s 60th annual DGA Awards.”
Man this smells sleazy. How is it not known if screeners are allowed in a union as big as the DGA? What it looks like is DreamGirls put major grease on the wheels of the DGA to look the other way so that they could send out these screeners, then when the hot baggie hit the fan the DGA had to do some major backtracking and PR control.
I have a good friend on the SAG awards nominating committee and he feel strongly (as many do) about attending the theater screenings.
From what I hear this is even more sacred in the DGA. Also, most people want to go because at least half the time the director and members of the cast show up and do wonderful Q&A’s afterwards, I’ve been invited to a few and believe me they make Inside the Actors Studio look like small talk at a party.
My thoughts on screener DVD’s is that with the exception of the disabled everyone on any awards nominating committee should have to go out to see the movies. If you are to busy to do that then you are too busy to think clearly on who should win.
I don’t know what went on behind closed doors at the DGA, there obviously wasn’t an iron clad rule about screeners but it’s pretty obvious that Dreamgirls is getting some special privileges, I can’t even get into what I think about Miramax’s early fax.
It’s too bad because this fouls my impression of the movie considerably, why can’t the PR people just believe in the quality of the film? Why do they have to push it on everyone? In showing their lack of confidence in this movie I am now loosing respect and interest in it as well. I can only imagine how members of the Directors Guild must feel.
