Oscar campaign in Hollywood: "The Artist"

On my second night in LA, Adam invited me to a Hollywood insider event - a free screening of "The Artist" at the Directors Guild private cinema. An awesome chance to jump right into one of the dominant factors of LA culture and learn something about the movie industry there. Let me share.

Before the Academy Awards/Oscars are handed out, there is a real campaign by the contending movies to get as many of the 6000+ votes as possible. Contrary to the Golden Globes (where only around 90, if I remember right, people vote, which get all kinds of goodies for their votes), it's not that easy to bribe the voters. It's forbidden to invite them to screenings or offer them incentives. It is allowed, however, to organize private screenings for the different guilds, essentially the labor unions of directors, actors, and others. In the hope that some of the voters will attend themselves or the people around them will create some buzz and convince them to vote for their movie.

Since Adam is working for the Actors Guild he gets plenty of invitations and tickets, in fact, he used to organize these private screenings in a former job. It just so happened that "The Artist", one of the main favorites for this year was to be shown the day after I arrived. Awesome timing.

I didn't take my camera so a quick pic of the red curtain with the phone.

The movie itself was good - black and white, silent, something different. Since it tells a Hollywood story and the focus is quite exclusively on the acting, it's easy to see why anyone in the industry would love it on first sight. So the Q+A session afterwards, which included some of the crew, the casting director and three actors (Missy Pyle, the actress in the movie-in the movie; Basil Hoffman, the auctioneer; Annie O'Donnell, the woman with the policeman), while interesting, was pretty much a love fest.

Still, it was a very interesting experience getting a look behind the curtains. Let's see if the movie wins in a few weeks.