I never watch the Oscars. That’s because I live in the UK, and for us, they’re shown at some ridiculous hour of the morning. If I’m being honest, I prefer to sleep and catch up on the news first thing the next day. Next year, however, I might well be tempted to stay up super late and watch them live. The reason for the sudden change in heart is the fascinating grass-roots campaign to get Sam Rockwell nominated for his performance in MOON.
It is notoriously difficult for small, independant movies to be noticed by the Academy voters; all due to lack of budget. A very small percentage of voters will have seen MOON during it’s theatrical release, a percentage made even smaller by the fact that the movie showed on a relatively small number of screens. In order to make those people aware of MOON, director Duncan Jones either needs to send each one of them a screener DVD and keep his fingers crossed that they watch it, or he needs to generate so much hype around the movie that the voters actively seek out MOON of their own volition. Having thousands of screener DVDs made and posted is an expensive undertaking (thanks partly to anti-piracy measures that have to be added to the disks, inflating the cost in the process) – and that’s before you start advertising. Starting a grassroots campaign on the internet to generate buzz costs nothing more than time.
Accordingly, for the last week or so, Jones has been tweeting about his grassroots campaign using the hashtag #SamRockwellOscar to generate discussion and drive traffic to his online petition, which seeks to gather 1,000,000 signatures by the time the voting for the 82nd Academy Awards closes on 2nd March 2010.
At the time of writing, the petition has attracted a paltry 359 signatures, although it is very early days yet. The movie had a very quiet release here in the UK and I know many of my friends missed the tiny window they had to go and see it, not even realising it was showing. However, MOON is released later this year on DVD and bluray, which should open up its potential audience and will hopefully cause an explosion of buzz about the movie and about Sam Rockwell’s astoundingly good performance. A quick search on the ‘net reveals that it wasn’t just my friends who couldn’t see it; many people on both sides of the Atlantic had difficulty finding it in their local cinemas and are now eagerly waiting for the opportunity to watch it at home after hearing some of the critical acclaim it gathered by those who did see it.
So if all goes to plan, with the UK release of the DVD/bluray next month the word-of-mouth on Twitter will grow exponentially and kick #SamRockwellOscar into a trending topic, bringing it to the attention of thousands and thousands more people – in turn, some of that extra buzz should rub off on the petition helping it to swell. The US release early next year will hopefully be just in time to add fuel to the fire and really get things moving.
Whether internet based buzz, even on a large scale, will be noticed by many Academy voters remains to be seen, but it certainly can’t hurt Rockwell’s chances of picking up a nomination. And, although it’s been said many times before by many different people, he really does deserve it. He is essentially alone on screen for about 90 of the 97 minutes running time, accompanied only by Kevin Spacey’s voice. During that time, the range of human emotion he manages to convey is, frankly, incredible. The fact that MOON has been so critically acclaimed is testament to the performance Rockwell turned in.
If Jones is successful and manages to bring both the movie and the performance therein to the attention of the Academy voters resulting in a nomination for his leading man, I might well sit up half the night and wait for that result.
MOON is released on DVD and bluray in the UK on 16 November 2009 and in the US on 12 January 2010 and you can read our short review of it here.
You can sign the petition here.
You can follow Duncan Jones on Twitter @manmademoon.
Sam Rockwell Oscar image courtesy of the hugely talented Bill Mudron (@mudron).
In case you haven’t seen it, and you wish to get an idea of what the fuss is about, the trailer for MOON is here:
