Could this hurt The Hurt Locker's chances for Oscar glory?

I hope all is well with you. I just wanted to write you and say I hope you liked Hurt Locker and if you did and want us to win, please tell (name deleted) and your friends who vote for the Oscars, tell actors, directors, crew members, art directors, special effects people, if everyone tells one or two of their friends, we will win and not a $500M film, we need independent movies to win like the movies you and I do, so if you believe The Hurt Locker is the best movie of 2010, help us!

I'm sure you know plenty of people you've worked with who are academy members whether a publicist, a writer, a sound engineer, please take 5 minutes and contact them. Please call one or two persons, everything will help!

best regards,

Nicolas Chartier Voltage Pictures

The Hurt Locker could take home the biggest prize in the film industry in two weeks time: Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Should it win, The Hurt Locker will join the small collection of movies, including the likes of Casablanca, The Godfather and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which have won this prestigious title. The chances of it winning are strong too. It's already swept the Best Picture award at the BAFTAs, the Satellite awards and Writers Guild Awards along with many others.

However, not only does producer Mr. Chartier attack a fellow nominee in the above letter, he also breaks the Oscar's rules by begging the voters to consider his film when they nominate what they think should be the Best Picture winner of 2009. So will this kill it's chances of walking away with the award? We can debate the answer to that question all night long. The question I want to ask here is this: Should it affect it's chances of winning Best Picture at the Oscar's in two weeks time? Does it really matter what the producer did?

After all, the fact that he has been asking for votes, no matter how wrong it may be, doesn't make the film any less great. And isn't that what they are supposed to judge by at the end of the day? By how great a film is? The wrong-doings of a single man don't detract for Katherine Bigalow's direction, the unconventionally brilliant structure of the film or especially the stunning investigation into soldiers' psyches by it's writer Mark Boal.

No matter how meaningless the letter is to the enjoyment of The Hurt Locker, it wouldn't be the first time the Oscars have made a decision based on a movie's bad press. Martin Scorcese's classic sports drama Raging Bull, which was the most likely to win the Best Picture award in 1980, lost to Ordinary People after a man claimed the director's earlier film, Taxi Driver, influenced his decision to attempt to assassinate a politician.

If this letter does affect the chances of The Hurt Locker winning the award, what will be 2010's Ordinary People? Could it be Avatar? It is the biggest selling film of all time and has won over audiences around the globe. Could it be Precious? It's certainly got the independent cinema lovers behind it having won at Sundance in January and at Toronto this fall. Or could it even be Up In The Air seeing as it took home a number of critics awards this year?

By Daniel Sarath with No comments