And the Oscar goes to ... hello? Anybody out there? The ART of the SALE
Pandemic is upending movie awards season in drastic ways Pandemic art purchases: Prettying up the walls we’re staring at
In any normal Hollywood year, winter is award season, a time when hundreds of screenings, ceremonies, panel discussions and upscale cocktail receptions pack the social calendars of film professionals in Los Angeles, London and New York.
At this dizzying barrage of events - this would normally be a particularly busy week ahead of the Golden Globes on Sunday and the start of Oscar-nominations voting next Friday - contenders smile, tell war stories and patiently repeat their process to the working professionals and retirees who decide their fate while holding glasses of wine and plates of finger food. The process helps winnow the field of competing films for upcoming awards shows, a kind of hive mind forming around the season’s leading contenders.
This year, that mind looking blank.
The pandemic has upended the rites of award season, moving some panel discussions to Zoom and scrapping many others. In its place, voters are delving into films via a screen in their living rooms, watching on a portal set up by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
It is neither a social nor simple process: A voter opening up the screening app recently would have found themselves confronted with 177 films to consider, with little guidance on which to watch.
Interviews with 14 executives and consultants who lead voter-influence campaigns - many spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the competitive nature of their work - describe a is heavy toll as a business that normally gathers in glamorous settings to fete fictional calamities now finds itself trying to survive real ones. The changes have uprooted a sub-industry, and could bring a slew of dark horses and underdogs to the Oscar stage when that show airs April 25.
“Without all of these events, this might be the purest award season,” said Dave Karger, a veteran award expert and a personality on the cable network TCM. “It also might be the strangest.”
The lack of in-person gatherings already has had a surreal effect on the Globes. When the award show’s winners (decided by the roughly 90 journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association) are announced Sunday, they will come from a list that includes such top nominees as the Kate Hudson drama “Music,” a movie few pundits had even heard of before it was nominated.
“With muted campaigns, no industry events and very few seeing print trades, the usual consensus-building is gone, and voters are left to what they actually think,” tweeted Matthew Belloni, the former editor of the Hollywood Reporter, after the Globes announcement. “The Oscars might be equally shocking.”
The average film fan may be unaware of the feverish ad-spending, jet-setting, refworking and flesh-pressing that typically precedes the major awards shows - all to increase awareness and, ultimately, rustle up support from the 9,900 industrybased members of the academy who vote on the Oscars.
The effort has birthed a sub-business within the larger entertainment industry. The free-floating group includes about a dozen wellconnected industry veterans who work with studios’ inhouse departments to stage events, buy ads and place stories.
The goal is to raise their clients’ profiles and earn nominations at a host of shows, which in addition to the Oscars include the British-set BAFTAs, the independent-minded Gothams and Independent Spirit Awards, film critics’ groups, the Globes and prizes from a slew of Hollywood guilds.
The cost of a campaign can exceed $20 million per film, but executives believe the price is worth it - in marketing, talent relations and, of course, bragging rights. Campaigns serve a key fieldleveling function, particularly for many of the Los Angelesand New York-based industry insiders who, without these events, might vote simply for the movies the highest number of their friends worked on.
Last year’s stunningly outsider best-picture winner, Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” could be chalked up in part to Bong and the film’s stars repeatedly charming voters at post-screening mixers, which helped gain attention for a Korean-language film that might otherwise have escaped their notice.
A similar dynamic unfolded for Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” in 2017-2018. An Oscar season with less ballyhoo may not be as susceptible to lobbying, experts say. But it also robs underdogs of a shot.
“I’m finding it very hard this year,” said a consultant who’s worked on several successful outsider campaigns. “There just aren’t a lot of ways to make sure people know about your movie.”
Even bigger contenders can find themselves adrift, as voters swim in choices with few lane markers.
“There’s an uncertainty about what films people should be thinking about and where to find them,” said Jeffrey Sharp, producer of the Oscar-winning “Boys Don’t Cry” and executive director of the nonprofit the Gotham Film and Media Institute, which runs the Gotham Awards ceremony. “We’re missing the events that help tell us all of that.”
If you’ve been watching experts and commentators appearing on television from their homes, their increased attention to decor might look familiar: In the early days of lockdown, they, like many of us, sat in front of blank white walls, while now their homes frequently display prominent artwork.
“Cinderella has nothing on these people,” said Claude Taylor, who created the Room Rater Twitter account with his fiancee, Jessie Bahrey. “I don’t think art is even something people thought of in April.”
Room Rater scores speakers’ setups on a 10-point scale for details like lighting and camera level. Good artwork can boost a score. For example, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson scored a 10/10 for appearing on Morning Joe in front of artwork by his wife, Avis Robison.
It seems many Americans who are stuck staring at their walls have decided the pandemic gives them a good reason to pretty them up.
My first hint at an uptick in art spending came last summer. When businesses shuttered and laid off employees in March, we braced for my artist husband’s sales to plummet. For a while they did. But then, his numbers didn’t just return to normal. They spiked.
I thought it might be an anomaly. My husband, John Tebeau, illustrates beloved bars; maybe people were buying his bar art because they missed their favorite watering
holes?
But then friends who work at a framing shop said they were as busy last fall as at Christmas. Artists we know said they, too, were selling more than usual.
Online arts marketplace Etsy confirmed the trend. Comparing March-December 2020 to the same nine months in 2019, Etsy reported:
• a 95% increase in searches for wall art.
• an 80% increase in searches for stained glass window or wall hangings.
• a 46% increase in searches for sculptures.
Etsy doesn’t release data on actual sales. It’s fair to assume at least some of those searches were daydreams that never led to purchases, if my own time scrolling
through listings for upstate houses I have no intention of buying is any indication.
Adobe Analytics does track purchases online, and those numbers are even more dramatic: Average daily sales of “art goods,” which includes sculptures, artworks and frames, increased 134% between the pre-COVID-19 months of 2020 and last fall. Comparing September and October 2019 to the same two months in 2020, average online daily sales increased 109%. Adobe’s analysis of e-commerce sales includes 80 of the 100 largest online retailers in the U.S.
Atiba T. Edwards has just the combination of experience to explain what’s happening. He worked in banking for several years and is also the cofounder of the arts nonprofit FOKUS, which offers arts education,
hosts art events and publishes an online magazine.
Edwards noted that many people who kept working during the lockdown suddenly weren’t spending money on travel, going out to restaurants or movies, or getting babysitters. They were probably home more than ever before, so they might have redirected some of that discretionary income to art.
Edwards is an example himself. He loves and appreciates art, but in the before times, he left his Brooklyn apartment early in the morning, went to work as chief operating officer of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, then got home late after coaching basketball or going to an art event. Now he works more at home, and misses seeing art at work and elsewhere.
“I have hung six pieces in the last three months,” he said. “People are seeing the benefit of surrounding themselves with beauty.”
Edwards has worked with hundreds of artists as executive director of FOKUS, trying to create accessible art experiences in nontraditional spaces. He believes the traditional art show or gallery experience feels intimidating to someone who doesn’t feel knowledgeable about art, while social media algorithms can serve up artists to peruse with no pressure to buy.
“The newcomer can look at art at home and not have the feeling of it being unwelcoming,” he said.
Higher unemployment rates caused by the pandemic mean many people, of course, don’t have the money to buy art now.
But for some of those still working, buying art can also be an attempt to help support others.
“I had people reaching out to buy a piece of art to save my gallery,” said Eden Stein, owner of Secession Art and Design in San Francisco, which sells the works of about 70 creators. “That money not only supported my family, it supported the artists and their communities.”
Stein said making art sales during the pandemic has felt a little like a wedding reception: She has reconnected with friends and clients from throughout the gallery’s 13-year history.
Typically, Stein would host two or three events a month, while foot traffic to nearby restaurants and a music venue next door would also bring in new visitors. Instead, for the last year, she’s talked to many buyers by phone or arranged visits by appointment.
“This year has been really personal.” Stein said. “If you can’t hug people, selling a piece of artwork feels a little like that.”