It’s Oscar season, which means lots of funny things start happening and no one can really pinpoint their source just that, well, it is easier than ever to float a negative idea about a film because social networking picks it up so fast, runs with it, burns the house down before things settle down. One can only hope this happens long before ballots are in hand. Late breaking films, though, have to do damage control and fast. Remember Lincoln and that congressman debacle? Who can forget Zero Dark Thirty and Glenn Greenwald’s unwarranted (as we now know) protests about said film. That destroyed a movie that could have been the frontrunner. Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln were hit hard, leaving Argo to walk home easily with the gold, splitting with Life of Pi.
These stories exist up one side and down the other – they happen with frequency — usually as we barrel towards the voting period. There merely has to be a whiff of scandal to send voters fleeing, unless the story reflexes backwards and voters feel inclined to defend the film against attackers. That didn’t happen with either Lincoln or Zero Dark Thirty. It’s only now as we look back that we can see how little it all mattered.
Michael Cieply has written a story about Jessica Chastain being prevented by Christopher Nolan and the Interstellar crew to campaign for another film besides Interstellar through Oscar season.
In a behind-the-scenes scuffle that pits a very big movie, Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” against a very small one, “A Most Violent Year,” Ms. Chastain, a co-star in both, is being blocked from promoting her eye-catching performance as a mob princess in the smaller film.
That is because Mr. Nolan and others, for the most part, are enforcing an agreement that says she cannot campaign for any film but Mr. Nolan’s from early October through early December, with the exception of her appearance at the premiere on Thursday, according to people briefed on the dispute. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject for both sides.
Chastain defends Nolan, though, later:
Speaking on Wednesday from Washington, where she is on a press tour for “Interstellar,” Ms. Chastain declined to talk specifically about the blackout. “I never comment about my contracts or my salary,” she said.
But she noted that Mr. Nolan had personally helped her get out of an appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman” so she could attend the premiere for “A Most Violent Year.”
Actors and filmmakers occasionally must face conflicts created by overlapping films, and this year Ms. Chastain has also been juggling “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby,” “Salomé” and “Miss Julie.”
“We all put our heads together and do what we can,” she said.
Apparently, the producers of A Most Violent Year decided to release the film for Oscar consideration very late in the game based on the assumption that the film’s biggest star, Chastain, would be allowed to attend parties (like wooing the HFPA for a Golden Globe nod, for instance) to help the film rally in the last minutes before ballots are in hand:
But Mr. Nolan and his backers have insisted that Ms. Chastain’s contract forbids even those semiprivate encounters and have not given in to pleas from Mr. Chandor, A24 and others for a waiver. Next week, however, she will be permitted to attend a private tastemakers’ screening at the Creative Artists Agency here.
It gets worse:
“A Most Violent Year” cost about $20 million to make. And, like Mr. Chandor’s earlier films, “Margin Call” and “All Is Lost,” its promotion will depend more heavily on publicity than on advertising. By contrast, “Interstellar” cost about $165 million and will be backed by a large ad budget.
And the money shot:
She is expected to help promote “A Most Violent Year” in mid-January, after a European film shoot. By then, however, deadlines for nominations for key film awards — including the Oscars, for which nominating ballots must be cast by Jan. 8 — will have passed.
The weird thing about this is that Chastain would be lead for A Most Violent Year and Supporting for Interstellar. I haven’t seen the former but she’s great in Interstellar – the best thing in it, actually, the best thing about it, actually – she is always the best thing about every movie she’s in. That’s why she’s a big star.
So I’m not really getting why Nolan and his backers would not permit Chastain to campaign. Moreover, why the Chandor crew had to literally beg them to let her do SOME press. It’s kind of strange since the two films really aren’t competing against each other for anything other than Best Picture at the moment.
But no one knows anything yet. No one knows how A Most Violent Year will land and no one knows whether Chastain will knock it out of the park as she always does. It would be a shame, though, if she missed out on an Oscar nod for any of her lead performances. She’s fantastic in Eleanor Rigby and Miss Julie. I bet she’ll be great in A Most Violent Year.
How do you get publicity when you can’t do publicity? You tell the story about not being able to get publicity and that will more than do the job of getting people to pay close attention to Miss Chastain.