Detective Hired to Investigate Oscar Snub

Julie Miller

Most victims of Oscar snubbings tend to the take the high road. Like Robert Redford, who last Thursday waved off the fact that his performance in All Is Lost did not score a nod from the Academy even though he went partially deaf for the role.

So hats off to the snubbed songwriter whose publicity firm hired a private eye to figure out how he/she was elbowed out of Oscar contention by W.T.F. nominee "Alone Yet Not Alone," a theme song by Bruce Broughton that appeared in the little-seen, faith-based movie of the same name. (Broughton, coincidentally or not, is a former member of the Academy's board of governors who represented the music branch from 2003-2012.)

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the aforementioned public relations firm hired a P.I. to investigate whether the film Alone Yet Not Alone, which screened in theaters one week this fall, was even eligible for a nomination considering that Academy law requires that a film be "advertised and exploited during its Los Angeles County qualifying run in print media." And, uh, Alone Yet Not Alone's qualifying run consisted of once-daily screenings at a theater in Encino from November 15 through November 22. (Yet somehow, the project was high profile enough to beat out Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey.

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The Hollywood Reporter scoops:

The investigator emailed the producers of Alone, presenting himself as a researcher doing a piece about the Oscar nominations, to ask if the movie was advertised in the print media during its Oscar-qualifying run. [...] The Alone producers, in turn, forwarded the inquiry to their PR firm, Rogers & Cowan, which acknowledged that the producers "did not purchase any advertising for the 1 week L.A. release" of the film.

Even so, when the industry outlet confronted the Academy with this evidence, the Academy ruled that the advertisements posted by the Encino theater for those once-daily screenings were enough to qualify the song for an Oscar nomination. Better luck next year, songwriters who did not represent a branch of the Academy for nine consecutive years.

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