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| The Hurt Locker under fire |
To recap, the Los Angeles Times' blogger Peter Hammond reported on February 23rd that Nicolas Chartier was "making pleas to friends and friends of friends to get out the vote for "Hurt Locker" like it was some sort of political grass-roots campaign". Hammond also posted a copy of the email:
From: "Nicolas Chartier" Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010
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 whethere 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 initial reaction to the anti-Avatar email news was mixed. While Hammond wrote in a tone of shock as Chartier's action is a violation of Academy rules prohibiting one nominee from criticizing the film of another nominee (an Olympics bid rule, by the way) , legendary entertainment business blogger Nikke Finke wrote on Deadline this after Chertier reported that he did send the email:
Oy, now there's even more about Oscar badmouthing, and this is even more unimportant. I've learned that Hurt Locker financier and producer Nicolas Chartier today admitted to Summit Entertainment he sent more emails about Avatar. But these weren't mass mailings to Oscar voters; rather, they were simply individual messages sent to personal acquaintances, including one that specifically said Avatar should be placed No. 10 on the Best Pictures list.
And that was after Finke's initial take, which was both revealing of what's going on in Oscar competition, and classically, well, Nikke, outing the actions of AMPAS' Ryan Dekorte:
So what if on Feb 19th Chartier sent out that e-mail message asking for Hurt Locker votes and not that "$500M film". When it appeared in my email, I laughed. Not only because the Voltage Pictures partner didn’t have the guts to even mention Avatar by name. But for months now I have been sent so many emails from so many studios and filmmakers and flacks and insiders badmouthing every rival nominee this Oscar season and talking up their own. How the hell am I to tell them apart? Or tattle on them all? This is the down and dirty system which AMPAS hath wrought and doth condone. And no one is surprised by it, least of all the Academy. In fact, this morning AMPAS' Ryan Dekorte, the executive offices awards assistant, forwarded today's New York Times' "Carpetbagger" blog account of the Chartier email to every Hollywood flack and Oscar campaigner. So now the Academy was badmouthing The Hurt Locker for badmouthing Avatar! A minute later, Dekorte sent out this apology, "Sorry y’all…hit the wrong button. Feel free to toss." But, as those prosecutors on Law & Order always tell the judge, "You can't unring the bell."
And that leads to the unawered question of how much of this is the LA Times and the media fanning an email that may not have been "widely distributed" as has been reported. Moreover, what I find interesting is that both Nikke Finke and more angrily Scott Feinberg of And The Winner Is blog have inferred that others connected with Oscar nominated movies have launched email smear campaigns of their own. This is what Scott Feinberg tweeted:
ScottFeinberg The banning of THE HURT LOCKER producer from the Oscars is bullshit. If you're gonna ban him, you should ban 20 others too. RT if you agree.
about 7 hours ago via TweetDeck
The magnanimous thing to do -- which would go a long way to helping his own rep -- would be for Cameron to ask AMPAS to pardon Chartier.
about 6 hours ago via TweetDeck
If AMPAS says yes *or* no, he'd look generous/above it all... and really, does keeping Chartier away help anyone? Everyone does what he did.
about 6 hours ago via TweetDeck
And over at Awards Daily's Twitter account, Sasha Stone agrees with Feinstein:
@ScottFeinberg I am glad to see you too are outraged. Most everyone else it's like Prozac nation.
about 6 hours ago via TweetDeck in reply to ScottFeinberg
Well, not here.
While the media has been busy feeding on this story, this space included, The Hurt Locker team was busy throwing their rogue colleague under the bus. The Daily Beast's Nicole LaPorte's article is a blistering character assassination of Chartier that's boarderline criminal:
Described as a "reactive" personality prone to fits of anger, and who, at one point or another, tried to fire (The Hurt Locker Screenwriter Mark) Boal, the film's accountant, line producer, and even the travel agent, Chartier was banned from The Hurt Locker set.
LaPorte also reports that Chartier raised (she used the term "put-up") $15 million to get the film made. There's no word on who leaked the email to Peter Hammond.
And with all this, we have the new and unfolding charge by Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver that the whole story that is The Hurt Locker is actually based on this 2005 Playboy article with him by the same Mark Boal who was embedded as a journalist in Iraq with Sarver. There's a press conference to announce a lawsuit that claims the story is Sarver's and is not original.
And all of this with just five days to Oscar. Stay tuned.
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