Academy limits ad bidding for Oscars

LOS ANGELES -- Academy Awards overseers plan to write new rules to restrain Oscar campaigning, which has become more aggressive as distributors target the industry with ads and special events to plug their films.\nFrank Pierson, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said Thursday the group's board is appointing a committee to draft new guidelines that should be in place well before awards season begins late this year.\nThe new rules might include harsher penalties for violations, Pierson said. The most common penalty now is to reduce a studio's allotment of tickets to the Oscar ceremony, which Pierson said amounts to a "slap on the wrist."\nCurrent academy rules are intended to minimize efforts to influence Oscar voters and maintain a level playing field between studios with big awards budgets and smaller distributors with less to spend during Oscar season.\nAcademy officials say those rules helped curtail excessive campaigning in the mid-1990s, when studios were showering voters with elaborately packaged sets containing videotapes of Oscar-contending films. Studios now are limited to sending academy members packaged tapes or DVDs containing only the movie, with no extra features.\nOver the last few years, though, campaigning has grown more competitive, with distributors sometimes spending millions of dollars to boost the awards prospects of a single film.\nFor example, current rules prohibit distributors from inviting academy members to receptions or other events to promote a film specifically for Oscar consideration. Distributors get around that by holding private parties and screenings as general industry events, to which academy members often are invited.\nBad blood arose this year as some studios complained that Miramax was trying to influence voters by suggesting Martin Scorsese deserved the best-director prize for "Gangs of New York" as a career award because he had never won an Oscar. Roman Polanski wound up winning for "The Pianist."\nLast year, Universal executives claimed rivals were secretly bad-mouthing the studio's "A Beautiful Mind," the eventual best-picture winner.\n"This sort of takes the fun out of the issue. This should be a celebration and a party, the whole Oscar thing, and when it begins to get nasty, it takes the edge off for all the participants," Pierson said.\nEven studios have told academy executives that campaigning has gotten out of hand, Pierson said.