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From: Sent: To: Subject: Peggy Siegal Saturday, March 3, 2012 4:32 PM The Oscar backstory that can not be told....or emailed to others. Here is my Oscar wrap up only sent to a few close friends....Steven, let me=know what you think...and do not think less of me for writing about you. Harvey Weinstein is a genius. He kept "The Artist" campaign going from a May premiere in Cannes all the w=y to February. His team told him he could win Best Picture back in France but he had to se= Eastwood, Spielberg, Scorsese, Daldry, Payne and Fincher's work. We had =ust seen Woody Allen and Terry Malick's films in Cannes, which were conten=ers for nominations, but not slam dunk winners.. Any one of those six brilliant directors could walk away with the gold...an= guess what? None of them handed in a film good enough to beat "The Artis=" nor could their studios run an extended convincing campaign. "The Artist" is just a delightful clever highly entertaining film...that wa= the best of a weak year. Eastwood was out of the race very early. The make-up man undermining Leo an= the production designer and/or the director forgetting to light the night=scenes did not help. "Tree of Life" has the pedigree of mysterious Malick and the Palm d'Or, but=never touched the American audience. "Midnight in Paris", Woody's highest grossing film ever, could have won the=Oscar in Harvey hands with Owen Wilson working and Woody just showing up a= the Oscars. If Woody had allowed Sony Classics to show voters the new 3 h=ur PBS documentary on his 40 films, he could have won best film. The docum=ntary shows you Woody's astonishing depth of talent. Instead, Woody insis=ed voters find the documentary on TV Thanksgiving weekend. No one noticed.=20 Harvey would have secretly slipped the dvd under ever voters door. Best Screenplay was the least the Academy could do for the recluse. How Marty could spend 170 million on a failed visual masterpiece with no pa=ing is a crime. His DP (who won an Oscar) failed him by shooting and enabl=ng endless tracking shots that stalled the story. The first 25 minutes cou=d have been 5. Film did not pick up pace till second act. Marty personally=campaigned endlessly as the revered professor of film history and a new au=hority on 3-D. Always bringing his adored Helen with him, who's physical =ondition tragically weakened everyday made everyone very sad. Spielberg's "War Horse" has fantastic combat footage in the middle and farm=ouse bookends that are too corny and slow. He told Disney to set up "epic"=film making and evoked John Ford and David Lean as his inspiration which d=d not register with voters. I saw the film five times and fell for it. Th= small amount of people who also saw the play were visually stuck with the=image of theatrical puppets and would not accept anyone's cinematic vision= Kathy Kennedy confessed to me last Thursday night in LA at The Hollywood=Reporter's Oscar nominee party that she and Steven ultimately blamed thems=lves for casting Jeremy Irvine who was too old, too pretty and could carry=the film....completely missing the schmaltz factor and length that did the= in. Ultimately, one boy and one horse in a brutal war did not ring true.=20 EFTA_R1_01706240 EFTA02550572 Daldry's film came out too late to set up his drama properly. A few found 9=1 too painful to watch and the kid's affliction disturbing. I personally a=ore Daldry and think he is extraordinarily talented. He has been nominated=four out of four, a monumental feat few have accomplished. "The Descendants" was actually number one or two to win for weeks. Their ca=paign fell apart after Xmas by over exposing George and sending a confusin= message on tv spots...first showing Clooney crying over the dying wife th=t was not convincing and then showing him running around in flip flops ind=cating a comedy. They never recognized that the key was selling Clooney as=a father....a roll on and off the screen he never played before. As smart =s George is about his own career he let bad advice get in the way...and he=also split votes with Brad. George has never won SAG in the 13 years he h=s been nominated starting with ER due to the fact starving actors think he=has it all. George was visibly shocked and hurt when he lost SAG to an unk=own French man. Clooney's campaign then became a vote to make it up to him= He is now moving into directing, where he is very talented and will be take= seriously. Next film is a thriller about Nazis stealing/hiding art. George's posing with yet another gorgeous, very nice, bombshell ex-wrestler= Stacy for months did not help his quest for gold either because every two=years there is a new girl. My heart told me George had a chance to win Best Actor on his popularity. M= mind told me voter's take evaluating performances seriously and they hone=tly didn't think he deserved this particular acting award. Although Cloone= knew going into the Kodak Theater that it was a tight race, it was hard f=r him to lose to Jean Dujardin, who barely speaks English. Also annoying to Clooney is that Jean is a one film American sensation of t=e moment. Jean has no immediate intention to work in the states, is not de=ermined to learn our language and is already filming in Europe. Dujarin, is wildly popular in his country but not well liked by some who kn=w him. Apparently he is a womanizer. (Odd for a French matinee idol) I f=und him charming...but of course my working contact was brief encounters s=nce September I think the fact the Jean is the George Clooney of Franc= did not help the real George deal with the race. Fincher's remake had a moment of Oscar buzz just as nominating ballots went=out and Rooney Mara was sprinkled with star dust...knocking beloved Tilda =winton out. Rooney, the elegant chic ingenue did not have the charm of Au=rey Hepburn on the red carpet and her sullen appearances turned the press =ff. Harvey worried for months about how to get Meryl the Oscar when he had prom=sed it to Michelle Williams for her sensational Marilyn. As much as Meryl=wanted it, she could only bring herself to do limited publicity for a bad =ilm. On "The Help" Disney overplayed the race card with Viola, over exposing her= She gave the same heart wrenching speech about her family of sharecropper= and maids, crying on cue since September. The voters finally tired of thi= especially when Viola went on Letterman 24 hours after losing the Bafta t= Meryl and asking Dave if he is a member of the academy and can he please =ote for her. I immediately emailed Harvey that she finally blew it. Harvey needed one more hat trick to push Meryl in and at the last minute se=t out the message that she shockingly hasn't won in 29 years. Literally th= ballots we still on the voter's desks on Monday, President's Day. TV spot= and columnists got the word out. In a day, voters instantly switched thei= love to Streep who brilliantly carried every scene. Every studio made a hugh effort to win this year by taking a page from Harv=y's play book and working their talent to the bone. They all ultimately fa=led to really ignite the emotions of the voters. That is the key, Harvey'= take on feelings, which is so ironic coming from a man who is so hard on =is own help. And in the end, it's Woody who resigned from the Academy years ago saying i='s crazy to pit talent against each other to evaluate each others work....=hat really says it all. 2 EFTA_R1_01706241 EFTA02550573 This is exactly how it all happened. Now I have to write my 6th Oscar Diar= and can not use a word of this very candid analysis. xoxo Peggy <?xml version=.0" encoding=TF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/Propertylist-1.0.dtd"> <plist version=.0"> <dict> <key>conversation-id</key> <integer>212655</integer> <key>date-last-viewed</key> <integer>0</integer> <key>date-receivedgkey> <integer>1330792332</integer> <key>flags</key> <integer>8590195713</integer> <key>gmail-label-ids</key> <array> <integer>6</integer> <integer>2</integer> </array> <key>remote-id</key> <string>209067</string> </dict> </plist> 3 EFTA_R1_01706242 EFTA02550574