Social media posts derail Oscar front-runners

Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment [File]
| Photo Credit: AP

Netflix’s hopes for claiming an Academy Award for best picture appear to have vanished after a series of embarrassing social media posts resurfaced.

The genre-bending musical crime drama “Emilia Perez” looked like the streaming service’s strongest shot yet at best picture after winning the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and garnering a total of 13 Academy Award nominations.

But prospects for the movie dimmed after a journalist found and translated a series of Spanish-language posts, dating from 2016 through 2020. In them, the film’s Spanish star, Karla Sofia Gascon, described Islam as a “hotbed of infection for humanity” and George Floyd as a “drug addict swindler.” Social media amplified the story to global proportions.

Gascon apologised, but the damage was done. “This is the year of somebody basically lighting themself on fire and taking their own movie down with them,” said veteran marketing executive Terry Press, who has worked on Oscar campaigns on behalf of directors Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and other Hollywood notables.

Gascon disappeared from the Hollywood awards circuit, though she has said she will attend the Oscars ceremony on Sunday.

Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Seemingly every film nominated for best picture this year has been embroiled in some controversy, said Michael Schulman, author of “Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears.”

Director Brady Corbet defended the use of artificial intelligence in “The Brutalist” to perfect actor Adrien Brody’s and Felicity Jones’ delivery of the Hungarian dialogue in the film.

Brazil’s Fernanda Torres, who is nominated for best actress for her portrayal of a woman searching for her disappeared husband in “I’m Still Here,” apologized for appearing in blackface in a decades-old television skit.

“I wrote a piece for the New Yorker comparing it to ‘Conclave,’ because the whole thing just reminds me of the movie, where every candidate running for Pope has some skeleton in his closet,” said Schulman.

Controversy has often dogged Oscar front-runners.

“Green Book” director Peter Farrelly apologised for being “an idiot” after The Cut reported that he had exposed himself to actress Cameron Diaz in what he called an attempt at humour. The film went on to win best picture in 2019, despite the revelation.

Sometimes, the campaigns are stoked by an opponent – as when Harvey Weinstein mounted a whispering campaign against Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic, “Saving Private Ryan,” with its acclaimed recreation of the invasion of Normandy.

“Weinstein was telling journalists ‘Don’t you think that the only really good part of the movie is the first 25 minutes, the D-Day sequence, and then the rest of it is just the standard World War II picture?’” said Schulman, who documented the campaign in his book. “This was his version of that Karl Rove credo in politics like, ‘Don’t attack your enemy’s weakness. Attack your enemy’s strength.’ He managed to take this stunning battle scene and turn it into a liability.”

Weinstein, whose Miramax film “Shakespeare in Love” won best picture that year, denied criticizing the Spielberg film.

“I would never stoop to that level,” he told New York magazine in 1999.

As in politics, the personal can be difficult to separate from the on-screen performance.

The 2016 film “The Birth of a Nation,” a story about a slave revolt that was written and directed by Nate Parker, became overshadowed by revelations Parker had been charged, and later acquitted, of raping a fellow student while at Penn State.

A Variety story that year detailing how Parker’s accuser committed suicide in 2012 sparked a box office and awards backlash.

“It was over in a second,” said one executive involved in the film, which had been seen as a best picture contender.