How to Get "Temple Grandin" an Oscar

I've blogged before about the rise in quality of made-for-TV movies, and the odd way that the TV and film industry organizations have demarcated the landscape so that it's impossible for recent titles like "Temple Grandin" and "You Don't Know Jack" to compete with theatrical films for major awards, despite their comparable quality. I speculated that changing a few rules might erase this arbitrary division, to the benefit of many underseen films that are funded by and premier on HBO and Showtime and other cable outlets. As it turns out, they would only need to change one.

Section Three of the Academy Awards' Rules for Eligibility states the following:

Films that, in any version, receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release will not be eligible for Academy Awards in any category. (This includes broadcast and cable television as well as home video marketing and Internet transmission.) However, ten minutes or ten percent of the running time of a film, whichever is shorter, is allowed to be shown in a nontheatrical medium prior to the film’s theatrical release.

Change that one rule, and the widely lauded "Temple Grandin," which picked up five Emmy Awards on Sunday, would be eligible for Oscars after a qualifying theatrical release. Certainly some stigma might remain due to its origins, but at least it would have its chance. And any handicap probably wouldn't be as great as the naysayers might expect. Looking at the credits of "Temple Grandin" and its fellow nominees, it's clear that these are all productions with familiar film industry names involved, no different from any of the prestige pictures that are released in theaters. Many of the actors and directors have been nominated or have won their share of Oscars, and I can't think of any reason why Academy voters would give lower marks to a performance by Al Pacino or Claire Danes just because the film they appeared in was broadcast on premium cable before it premiered in theaters.

The question is, why did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences make the distinction in the first place? Digging into some Academy history, the rule seems to have originated out of a major case of sour grapes. In 1971, the Richard Williams "A Christmas Carol" animated short picked up an Oscar after a successful release in theaters. However, it had premiered on television the previous year. I've seen the short and suspect it was more than deserving of the award, but the other nominees raised such a fuss over the history of "A Christmas Carol," a rule was enacted to bar any future made-for-television productions from Oscar eligibility. Thanks to those sore losers, the rule has gone on to cause plenty of trouble in the subsequent forty years, especially for documentaries and foreign films, which have to juggle several other tricky eligibility requirements.

Occasionally the Academy will bow to pressure and reverse course. The 1996 Japanese film "Shall We Dance?" was declared ineligible because it aired on Japanese television before its US theatrical run, but after premiering in Japanese theaters. After significant controversy and outcry, the Academy tweaked the requirements to allow similar broadcasts while imposing a six-month "blackout" period between foreign theatrical and television premieres (domestic films require two months). However the same year, they also declared that unsold television pilots were ineligible from the live-action shorts category despite the pilots having never been broadcast at all. The Academy has also had notorious problems with the eligibility rules for documentaries, especially when they tried to impose a multi-city theatrical release requirement that backfired spectacularly and had to be rescinded in 2007.

All of these rules can be traced back to the same impulse: to keep theatrical releases separate from television, cable, and the internet. However, the media landscape is very different now than it was in 1971, and the lines have gotten so blurry behind the cameras, I don't see how the distinction can be kept up for much longer. Distribution windows keep shrinking, which means "blackout" periods get more oppressive. Financing deals may be tied to specific television premiere dates that are out of filmmakers' control. During the Emmy telecast, several of the made-for-television-movie category winners thanked HBO for putting up the money to fund their pictures, that otherwise wouldn't have been made. Since a premiere on HBO all but guarantees a decent audience, it's no wonder that more and more prestige projects are finding cable an acceptable alternative to theatrical distribution.

Sometimes which films get those qualifying theatrical premieres feels completely arbitrary. The Academy has declared that all made-for-television films are ineligible for Oscars, apparently whether they were broadcast on television or not, but what about the TV films that were originally conceived as theatrical features? "An American Crime" with Ellen Page and Catherine Keener premiered at the Sundance Film festival in 2007 to controversy and mixed acclaim, but couldn't secure theatrical distribution. It would have gone straight to DVD if Showtime hadn't stepped in and premiered it on cable in 2008. Should taking a way out of distribution limbo be an automatic disqualifier? Should film buyers really be the arbiters of which films are eligible for Oscars and which aren't? Quality clearly no longer has anything to do with these decisions.

What about films that are simultaneously released in theaters and through cable, like Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble"? It nabbed a Best Director nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards, but of course didn't qualify for the Oscars because of the blackout requirement. And what about those gutsy enough to sidestep the entire system, like Nina Paley did with "Sita Sings the Blues," which she released to the Internet under a creative commons license in 2009? Surely they deserve their share of recognition, or at least a chance to compete on the same stage as their peers. Television films at least have the Emmys to recognize some of the films that fall into its jurisdiction, but there's nothing comparable for pictures that end up premiering on the Internet, or direct-to-DVD, or in other venues.

Naysayers will argue that HBO could have given "Temple Grandin" a short theatrical run in order to qualify it for the Oscars before premiering it on cable. The Emmy rules allow this as a specific exception to its own eligibility requirements. But it just shows that the theatrical premiere has become a technicality. The difference between films that premiere in theaters and films that premiere elsewhere is - and to my mind always has been - a superficial distinction. We'll see more challenges to the status quo in the years to come, as media and the ways we consume it continue to change. There's been talk of being able to stream films into private homes while they're still in theaters, television films are making debuts at film festivals, and everyone seems to be scared to death of what the Internet may spring on us next.

"Temple Grandin" may not have the buzz and acclaim to undo a forty-year-old mistake, but I expect that something will come along eventually that will force the Academy to address the issue. Either that, or film lovers will be paying a lot more attention to the Emmys in the future.