Campaigning for the Oscars is a tale almost as old as the award’s ceremony itself.
Today, it's typical for studios to shell out millions of dollars on billboards, magazine ads, and orchestrated Q+A screenings as a way to sway the thousands of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters their way.
If you venture into Hollywood during award season, the phrase “for your consideration” pops up on ads like clockwork, towering over the city streets as a polite but firm reminder to cast your ballots.
Randy Haberkamp, Senior Vice President of Preservation and Foundation Programs at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says Hollywood history puts the origin of the "for your consideration" phrase around 1947-48.
"RKO used that terminology for the first time," he said in an episode of LAist's The Academy Museum Podcast. "And everybody saw that and said, you know, that's a very polite way of saying vote for me. [laughing] Just, just consider me. Don't, you know, I'm not saying you got to do this. I'm just saying consider this. Yeah. And it's stuck."
Jacqueline Stewart is the director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and host of the Academy Museum Podcast, a collaboration with LAist studios.
She said while campaigning has always been part of the process, the 1999 award season completely changed the game.
In the summer of 1998, the first episodes of Sex and the City were airing on HBO, Leonardo DiCaprio was a 24-year-old heartthrob, and Saving Private Ryan was taking the world by storm.
Steven Spielberg’s film was a favorite to win one of the highest honors at the Oscars — Best Picture. But when the award went to Shakespeare in Love instead, that night went down as one of the biggest upsets in award show history.
The romantic period piece was certainly well liked at the time, but it was the campaigning and marketing for the movie that secured the shocking win.
Scott Feinberg is a veteran awards columnist for the Hollywood Reporter. He told the Academy Museum Podcast that Miramax, then under the leadership of Harvey Weinstein, was the first company to hire an in-house publicist who was specifically devoted to awards campaigning.
Feinberg said Miramax was also the first to host private screenings for Academy members in Aspen and other popular vacation destinations over holiday breaks, which made it easier for voters to catch up on their choices.
Miramax invested a lot of time, money, and resources into that Oscars campaign, and when it paid off, other studios took note.
Stewart said the 1999 win essentially made it a requirement to compete for the awards, and it became increasingly common to have entire teams of publicists and consultants dedicated to the season.
“All of the people who were at the center of the Shakespeare in Love Oscar campaign for Miramax have since kind of fanned out across town and now run the awards campaigns for all the different places that are in the game,” Feinberg said. “So all of the things that were happening that season have had reverberations for now, over two decades since.”
In 2010, Mo'Nique was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing Mary Lee Johnston, an abusive mother, in Precious.
But the actor has said she was “blackballed” because she refused to go above and beyond to promote the film.
Mo'Nique told the Academy Museum Podcast she was encouraged to schmooze and spend time with Academy voters, even though it put a serious strain on her personal life.
“The performance is on the screen,” she said. “Y'all are making this now personal. I don't need to have a personal relationship with any of these people, nor do they need to have one with me. They're judging the performance.”
Mo'Nique said campaigning as a Black woman is different for her than it is for a male or white actor. She got paid $50,000 for Precious, and Mo'Nique said she was expected to pay for all the extra hair, makeup, and wardrobe for campaign events out of pocket.
Even though she refused to play the campaign game, Mo'Nique won her first Oscar that year.
“The Academy did prove — it's not about the politics,” she said. “It is about the performance. That's what the Academy was saying when they called my name.”
But for many people in Hollywood like Mo'Nique, the real award is getting to see the impact of their best work.
After a screening of Precious at the Sundance film festival, Mo'Nique said a man approached her in tears to compliment her performance.
“Awards baby, they grow dust, and they sit on a shelf,” she said. “But that man's life is forever changed. So an award can't touch that for me.”
Stewart said Miramax’s aggressive tactics from 25 years ago have become the unwritten rules that are critical for Oscar campaigns, especially when there’s so many movies fighting for voters’ attention.
But what happens when Hollywood can’t campaign, like during the double strikes?
Angelique Jackson is a senior entertainment writer for Variety. She told AirTalk the strikes have affected the Oscar field significantly.
Jackson said if you look back at the way it played out, the summer blockbusters Barbie and Oppenheimer were some of the last films to get their big red carpet debuts.
But even they weren’t able to escape unscathed.
The London premiere for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer last June should have been a textbook campaign event for the cast. But when SAG-AFTRA called the strike just before the screening, Nolan told the audience the stars left early to start making picket signs.
But for The Color Purple, Jackson noted the movie didn’t get its first major screening for Academy voters until after the strike ended in early November.
“Enough people had kind of been able to see it for Danielle [Brooks] to get in, but because of the strikes and people not being able to promote their films for so long, a lot of things either flew under the radar or they kind of got their wings a little bit late,” Jackson said.
She added that it’s been a very different season so far, and it’s only going to continue as the ceremony gets closer.
Donna Gigliotti, a film producer who took home an Oscar for her work on Shakespeare in Love, said it was clear to her that campaigning moved the needle. That night, in addition to Best Picture, Gwyneth Paltrow won for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Judi Dench won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
"I don't think he'll mind my saying this, but Joe Fiennes did not, he didn't want to participate and he doesn't have an Oscar," Gigliotti said. "You can see where it works, because Judi Dench for her 12 minutes of film does in fact have an Oscar on her show."
Asked by Stewart if campaigning should play an important role in the film industry, Gigliotti said this:
"No, I think it's, I think it's absolutely out of control. And I wish no one would campaign."
