A couple of years ago Melissa Leo did a little won the Oscar and even managed to drop an eff-bomb during her acceptance speech. Well, Ann Dowd was paying attention.
Dowd was named Best Supporting Actress by the Compliance.
Now, Compliance isn’t exactly your typical prestige film. Marred with controversy (from what I believe to be people’s disbelief that the atrocious acts in the film actually happened), the film played Sundance, was picked up by Magnolia and released in theaters in August where it grossed a meager $319,285 after 77 days in release in a maximum of 21 theaters.
Yet, despite the poor performance at the box-office, many believe Dowd had one of the better performances of the year and has a chance at an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress (myself included), but distributor Magnolia is refusing to foot the bill to send out screeners to Academy members. What is a potential Oscar nominee to do? Well, if you’re Ann Dowd you get together with your husband and put $6,000 on you credit card and borrow $7,000 from friends and send out your own screeners.
Scott Feinberg at The Hollywood Reporter brings the news that Dowd and her husband see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and that a nomination could change the course of her career. Dowd was paid $100 for 16 days of work on the film — yeah, a measly $1,600 — and is clearly taking a large risk.
Matt Cowal, Magnolia’s senior VP of marketing and publicity, told Feinberg, “This is a film that, unfortunately, we’re going to take a loss on… If it had worked, like some of our films have, we would have supported Ann with a terrific end-of-the-year awards campaign, like we did for Melancholia and I Am Love… When a film is already out on DVD, supporting actress awards buzz does help, but it’s not a game-changer on the film’s bottom line, so we just are trying to be as responsible as we can.”
It’s hard to argue against Cowal. Is it worth investing $13,000 on an Oscar campaign for a performance that, at best, would be nominated but never have a chance at winning? Will that help or hurt the bottom line?
Considering Dowd was paid only $1,600 to work on the independent production (Magnolia didn’t produce the film, but merely picked it up for distribution), it would seem like the right thing to do to help support her career, but is it the “right” thing to do from a business standpoint?
You can Yet, it is true.
