Like Christmas, the Academy Awards can’t come soon enough for some folks around here.
The holiday blockbuster season is just around the corner, and “For your consideration . . . ” announcements already have begun showing up in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In uncharacteristically dignified tones, these ads invite Academy members to free screenings of new and previously released pictures– all of which, if the hype is to be believed, someday will be mentioned in the same breath with “Citizen Kane.”
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the pre-Thanksgiving lull, several documentaries have opened in local theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration under new nominating rules.
For example, Chicagoans will have to wait until 1997 to see “Microcosmos,” a wondrously intimate look at the unknown universe of plants, bugs and other tiny creatures by biologists-turned-filmmakers Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou. But viewers in L.A. and New York are able to enjoy this and other non-fiction features right now, as their distributors race to meet the Academy Awards Oct. 31 deadline for weeklong theatrical runs.
“Microcosmos” was a sensation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and, according to Nuridsany, has opened to great box-office in Switzerland.
Bouyed by the commercial success of such previously snubbed non-fiction features as “Hoop Dreams,” “Roger & Me,” “Paris Is Burning” and “Unzipped,” several distributors of documentaries now are hoping general audiences will benefit from committee reforms that have opened the doors on the voting process. Some producers, however, bemoan being forced to “four wall” (or rent out) a theater to gain commercial exposure for their films, a requirement that could cost them tens of thousands of dollars.
(Previously, a documentary film could qualify if it was shown at a festival or before a sometimes idiosyncratic committee of Academy volunteers.)
In addition to “Microcosmos,” feature-length documentaries now playing in the Los Angeles area include Discovery’s “The Leopard Son” (which opened Sept. 27 in Chicago and has since disappeared from local screens); “A Perfect Candidate,” which follows a divisive political campaign; “Tell the Truth and Run,” a portrait of journalist George Seldes; Al Pacino’s “Looking for Richard”; “When We Were Kings,” about the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight; “Paradise Lost,” an investigation of a grisly crime (which played for two weeks at the Music Box); and “Small Wonders,” which was nominated last year.
The system, most agree, still isn’t perfect, especially considering that many documentaries are created for niche audiences. But, if nothing else, the titles of Oscar-nominated films– when announced in February– shouldn’t be as obscure as they have been in previous years.
Blessed with well-heeled backers, “Microcosmos” and “The Leopard Son” certainly are pictures that would have enjoyed a commercial run in any case.
Both harken back to Disney’s “True-Life Adventures” series (“The Living Desert,” “The Vanishing Prairie,” “The African Lion”), which studied the habits of animals in their natural environment. And, like the basketball epic “Hoop Dreams,” each demonstrates how much time, effort and luck are involved in the filmmaking process.
The films also further reveal the new financial realities of the genre.
“The Leopard Son” represents Discovery Channel Pictures’ first foray into the feature-length theatrical arena. It is a textbook example of synergy in action.
According to Denise M. Baddour, senior vice president and general manager, what started out as a 90-minute special for the cable channel on the big cats of the Serengeti, evolved into an experiment on how to extend the Discovery brand beyond the small screen.
In this case, the producers teamed with naturalist Hugo van Lawick, who, for two years, followed a leopard cub, his mother and other animals, as they made their way around the Serengeti and beyond. As the cub’s odds on surviving to adulthood improved, so, too, did the probability that Discovery would be able to create a real-life, non-musical “The Lion King.”
“If it was to be for the big screen, we needed a central character,” said Baddour, over breakfast in the wilds of Bel-Aire’s Stone Canyon. “There had been a drought for two seasons and it became easier to capture the leopards’ behavior. Normally, they’re too elusive.
“In the narrative, Hugo refers to his own son, who grew up in the Serengeti, and it connected with the life cycle of the cub. A lot of things came together.”
The producers also kept in mind the axiom that “if you don’t entertain, you miss the chance to educate.”
Their process sounds remarkably similar to what happened, in 1948, when Walt Disney asked filmmakers Alfred and Elma Milotte to edit their footage on animal life in Alaska to concentrate on the life cycle of seals. As legend has it, Disney couldn’t convince RKO to distribute the resulting 27-minute featurette, so he convinced a Pasadena exhibitor to give it a short run for Oscar consideration.
“Seal Island” won that year’s best documentary award and subsequently launched a 13-film nature series that would span 12 years.
The feature-length “The Living Desert” cost $500,000 to produce in 1953, and it grossed $5 million. Now, at a time when the average studio film requires around $50 million to make and market, “The Leopard Son” could prove to be the bargain of the year.
“If you’ve got a $3 million film, which is what we have, you know what your television domestically and internationally can offset against that investment and you know what your ancillaries are,” explained Baddour. “If you have a modest success theatrically, it enhances all of those business opportunities. We end up with a 35 mm film asset, ultimately, that can go through this television network and we can create a new way of bringing it to the theaters.
“We weren’t sure if exhibitors were going to embrace us, thinking this was Discovery and would end up on television,” Baddour pointed out. “But, we found, they were people who loved Discovery and understood that experience on the big screen could work. Our original goal was 40 screens, but we opened on 100 screens in 17 markets.”
In its first week, “The Leopard Son” grossed $240,000 for a respectable $2,315 per-screen average. It now has moved into a greater number of theaters.
A 15-year dream of the filmmakers, “Microcosmos” ultimately took more than three years of intense work and $5 million to produce. Their “exploration of a new world–a simple meadow–during a summer day” was a surprise hit at Cannes.
It was picked up there for American distribution by Miramax, thus ensuring marketing clout and an afterlife on video and cable. Because it is backed, too, in part, by France’s Canal +, “Microcosmos” also is guaranteed a run on European television.
In a phone call from France, with the help of a translator, Nuridsany described a time-consuming process that involved adapting 35 mm cameras for roots-level examinations of insect behavior and plant life in their pristine Aveyron meadow.
The “Microcosmos” cast includes nearly 30 species of small critters. They appear in a series of vignettes that represent the trials encountered in a more-or-less routine day in their short lives.
The animals range in size and temperament from pollen-engorged bees, to a comparatively gargantuan (and hungry) pheasant; from pugnacious stag beetles, to the Argyronet spider, which stages a water ballet of survival.
In lieu of narration, the mesmerizing cacophony of nature is complemented by a harmonious Bruno Coulais score. The effect is simultaneously hypnotic, vastly entertaining and truly educational.
To capture the drama of an insect’s life (and owing to their short life spans), Nuridsany acknowledges that certain activities were rehearsed and shot in a studio near the field. He stressed, however, that none of the animals’ behavior patterns was altered or choreographed to produce an unnatural effect.
Similarly, in “The Leopard Son,” the filmmakers refused to interfere with nature, even when it meant that some of the key players might die in full view of the camera.
“In the original script it was much more direct about what actually happened to the (next generation of) cubs,” said Baddour. “Hugo insisted that we show it’s life and death. You can’t interfere with nature (or) intervene. We were there to capture what happened, not shape the story.”
