Oscar dirty tricks unmasked
JUST because Harvey Weinstein is out of the Oscars picture, it doesn’t mean there won’t be the usual dirty tricks, smear campaigns and intense awards jockeying behind the scenes.
In a bombshell Hollywood Reporter interview, Armie Hammer — who starred in last year’s front-runner turned awards-poison “The Birth of a Nation” — accuses an unnamed industry player of sinking that movie by leaking details to the media about director Nate Parker being accused of rape. The actor predicted he’ll be hammered again this year for his latest film, “Call Me by Your Name,” a gay romance set in 1980s Italy.
Hammer claims the timing of headlines about rape allegations made in 1999 against Parker “was orchestrated for sure . . . There was another person in the industry, who had a competing film for the Academy Awards, who decided to release all of the phone records and information. I’ve been told who did it — by several people.” Hammer declined to name the culprit, but speculation has swirled that the competing leaker was uberproducer Scott Rudin, another awards mastermind, who had “Fences” up for the 2017 Oscars.
But another source insisted of the speculation, “It had nothing to do with Scott. It was literally on Nate Parker’s Wikipedia page. It was simply [distributor] Fox Searchlight’s mistake.” (Parker was acquitted in 2001.)
Yet Hammer was expecting more subterfuge this season, adding: “Given my history . . . I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
By Tuesday, perhaps it already had. BuzzFeed had posted a critical piece on Hammer, asking, “How many second chances does a handsome white male star get?” after failures including “The Lone Ranger.” Hammer tweeted in response: “Your perspective is bitter AF . . . Maybe I’m just a guy who loves his job and refuses to do anything but what he loves to do?” Then he deleted his Twitter account.
Rudin, who declined to comment, gave Hammer his big break in “The Social Network.” He also produced Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” which is rivaling Hammer’s movie for Oscar buzz.