Sorry, y'all, but as Triple H says, it's all about the game, and how you play it. From the L.A. Times:

>How 'Crash' went bang

In retrospect, that best picture win shouldn't come as such a shock. Here's why.

James Bates

Behind the Screens

March 6, 2006

At one point during his Sunday night Oscar monologue, host Jon Stewart rattled off the names of some of the actors he spotted in the Kodak Theatre who were in the movie "Crash": Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard and Brendan Fraser.

Then, he suggested, it might be easier for the actors in the audience who weren't in the film to raise their hands.

The joke was funny, but it made a subtle point. A big ensemble production, "Crash" is an actor's film, which probably best explains why it upset "Brokeback Mountain" to win the best picture Oscar.

Much of the morning-after punditry and blog logic have centered on whether members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had trouble giving "Brokeback Mountain" a best picture nod because of its gay love theme. Another theory: like a cinematic John Edwards, "Brokeback" peaked too early and its Oscar buzz dissipated.

In fact, the key to "Crash's" success was that the film — and the carefully orchestrated promotional campaign undertaken by its distributor, Lionsgate — appealed to the Academy's largest voting bloc: actors. With 22% of the Academy's voting members, the acting demographic is nearly three times as big as the next largest group — producers.

It was actors — specifically, those in Los Angeles — who were targeted to deliver votes. And judging by the upset, deliver they did.

Oscar voting results are known only to a couple of accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, so it is impossible to compare actors' voting habits to, say, those of writers or directors. Unlike a political election, the best anyone can do is offer educated guesses as to why any film won, or who voted for it.

Ultimately, a picture has to be popular — even one as polarizing as "Crash" that moviegoers and critics either loved or hated — because nobody votes for a movie they detest.

Still, one can't ignore the impact of the finely tuned Oscar strategy of Lionsgate and its parent, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. The company opened its wallet at key times in January and February to allocate an extra $2 million — bringing its total spend to $4 million. Targeted were Los Angeles actors, the niche it needed to emerge from a field of five films, none of which was an obvious front-runner.

Indeed, Lionsgate's targeted campaign could prove a model for Oscar marketing in that it proved more effective than the usual carpet bombing approach. Some believe that awards impresarios such as Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein pushed so hard to get his films "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator" statuettes that it turned off some voters.

"Crash" was the underdog from the start, with its difficult themes of racism and intolerance seeming no match for the love-is-universal underpinnings of the well-reviewed "Brokeback." "Crash" also had to overcome the bias Oscar voters usually show toward ensemble films. Good ensemble movies are popular with actors because they showcase the importance of subtle performances. But they rarely win best picture.

Ironically, maybe even fittingly, the same year "Crash" beat the odds, the honorary Oscar went to one of Hollywood's premiere big-cast directors: Robert Altman. It was Altman's first Oscar after a body of work that earned him Oscar nominations, but not wins, for ensemble pieces "Nashville," "MASH," "Gosford Park," "Short Cuts" and "The Player."

Critical to Lionsgate's campaign was its decision to mail out 130,000 cellophane-wrapped DVDs, including to about 110,000 actors. Not all recipients were Oscar voters. But "Crash" nonetheless won the best ensemble award from the Screen Actors Guild, an early tipoff that it might also have Oscar legs.

"Lionsgate's decision to send out the DVD to SAG was a really smart decision," one of the film's producers, Cathy Schulman, said Monday. "It was clear from the beginning of the film's release that the actors were really supporting the film.… I presume that's where a lot of the votes came from."

There were other early hints that "Crash" might go the distance. In the awards issued by Hollywood's directing, producing, art directing and writing guilds, "Crash" roughly held its own with "Brokeback" in nominations and wins.

When "Crash" received an editing Oscar nomination and "Brokeback" didn't, Lionsgate executives thought it might be a bellwether. Their research showed that the last time a film was named best picture without an editing nomination went back to the 1981 ceremony, when "Ordinary People" won. That indicated that the Academy's film editors branch, another key voting bloc, was in "Crash's" corner.

"Crash" also had in its favor a popular director and co-writer — Paul Haggis — who has worked with scores of actors during a long TV career on such shows as "The Facts of Life," "thirtysomething" and "Walker, Texas Ranger." Also popular with actors is Cheadle, who as well as starring in "Crash" was also a producer on the film.

"Crash" likely scored points with some actors because it was shot in Los Angeles at a time when runaway film production is a sore point. "Brokeback" was shot in Canada, financed in part by Canadian tax incentives.

"Crash" was also written about Los Angeles, which probably gave it additional home field advantage. Some 78% of the Academy's voting members live in California — the vast majority of them in the Los Angeles area. "Crash" won many outspoken local fans, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

By early January, Lions Gate had spent $2 million on trade ads and other promotions, but more was needed. The movie, which was released in May, was no longer in theaters, so getting the DVDs out was critical.

In the days leading up to the close of voting on Oscar nominations on Jan. 21, Lionsgate opened the spigot to spend another $500,000. Once "Crash" got its six nods on Jan. 31, including best picture, another $1.5 million was earmarked.

"The two most important things to our campaign were: Getting 'Crash' to be seen by everyone who needed to see it, and then reminding them of how 'Crash' made them feel," said Tom Ortenberg, president of Lionsgate Theatrical Films.

The logic was to first "win" the city, and then look for voters in the rest of the nation, mainly the New York contingent, to split its votes among "Crash" and the four other nominees, which also included "Capote," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Munich."

Ortenberg said that Lionsgate never intentionally ceded other parts of the country. But as a company with limited resources, he said, the focus had to be Los Angeles.

Indeed, because Lions Gate Entertainment is such a small public company, it had to own up to its additional spending -roughly 3 cents a share — last month in a conference call with Wall Street analysts. Some grilled company executives on the expenses, and whether the spending was worth it.

Hours after actor Jack Nicholson opened the envelope and announced "Crash" had won, that question appeared to be answered.

Overnight, "Crash" jumped 347% from No. 103 to No. 23 on Amazon.com's top DVD sellers. Early Monday, analyst David W. Miller of Sanders Morris Harris quickly revised his estimate that DVD sales of the reissue of "Crash" scheduled for April 4 would nearly double, to about 150,000 copies.

All told, Lions Gate Entertainment executives have estimated, the Oscar win could be worth as much as $10 million in additional money for "Crash," not only in DVD sales but in bigger payments when it is shown on TV.

But, as analyst Miller said Monday, "that might prove to be conservative."

Times staff writers Rachel Abramowitz and Robert W. Welkos contributed to this story.
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<------ And there it is.