Things just got even uglier. Nikki Finke tracks down the Chartier story even further and shows that the Academy, aka the “house of all things holy” committed the following blunder – something I consider far more damaging than anything Chartier did:
…This is the down and dirty system which AMPAS hath wrought and doth condone.¬†And no one is surprised by it, least of all the Academy. In fact, this morning AMPAS’ Ryan Dekorte, the executive offices awards assistant, forwarded today’s New York Times‘ “Carpetbagger” blog¬†account of the Chartier email¬†to every Hollywood flack and Oscar campaigner. So now the Academy was badmouthing The Hurt Locker for badmouthing Avatar! A minute later, Dekorte sent out this apology, “Sorry y‚Äôall‚Ķhit the wrong button.¬†Feel free to toss.” But, as those prosecutors on Law & Order always tell the judge, “You can’t unring the bell.”
And then Nikki Finke writes something really great – the first to do so, I might add:
Of course Chartier¬†apologized for breaking the rules of Oscar campaigning which he claims he didn’t know.¬†‚ÄúMy naivete, ignorance of the rules and plain stupidity as a first time nominee is not an excuse for this behavior and I strongly regret it,‚Äù according to the email I received. But I don’t see anybody else in this hotly contested¬†Oscar race apologizing for all the trashtalk they’ve been sending out. Remember that Chartier¬†has been¬†odd man out from the start. Even though he put up the financing for the film, and¬†even leveraged his house,¬†the scuttlebutt¬†was that relations between him and¬†the other Hurt Locker producers grew frosty after Chartier tried to fire screenwriter Mark Boal. So Nicolas was banned from coming to the set in Jordan. Because it likes to keep the number of producers to just 3, AMPAS almost yanked Charter’s producing credit. But Greg¬†Shapiro, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal each sent letters to both BAFTA and the Producers Guild to endorse the idea there were 4 legitimate contributing producers on the film.¬†No good deed goes unpunished.
Thanks to Jnow for the link. Hallelujah. Take it from me, folks, campaigning is dirty business. I warned you that this week was going to be hell because there was blood in the water. And so far, to borrow a Finke phrase, toldja.