Robert Duvall's 'Get Low' Yanked from Awards Season

After receiving some terrific reviews at the Toronto Film Festival, it seemed as though a fall awards push might be in the works for Robert Duvall for the film Get Low. The beauty of having Duvall in your movie, of course, is that you should never have to try very hard to get him nominated. He's been up for six Oscars, winning once for Tender Mercies, and his non-nominated work and his iconic performance in the mini-series Lonesome Dove complete the picture. But he won't be nominated this year, and that means he probably won't be nominated next year. In Contention writes that Sony Pictures Classics is looking at a mid-2010 release. While that might be a little disappointing for fans of Duvall, like me, from the studio's perspective, there are other charges to look after this year. Sony Classics has Broken Embraces, the Almodovar film with Penelope Cruz, An Education, and Coco Avant Chanel, which is currently in theaters. Of the three, Embraces probably has the most organic chance to be a contender, and with the tens of millions of dollars you normally have to spend to get in the heavily marketed Oscar race, that's a tremendous burden for this division of Sony. Certainly, it can't afford those kinds of campaigns for multiple projects. If anything, it just underscores what is a real and growing problem with the industry-wide panning for gold. The recent announcement that we'll have ten Best Picture nominees instead of five only makes it worse for movies like Get Low, which simply can't afford to be on the same playing field with a lot of these movies primed for Oscar runs before they ever go in front of cameras or audiences. Unfortunately, because even the smaller offices of the big studios put so much stock in the Oscars, a movie like this can't even be up for Independent Spirit Awards this year, which really defeats the purpose.

Comments

[Marc]

Robert Duall and Bill Murray will be back with "Get Low" for Oscars in 2010 .

I had the great privilege to watch "Get Low" this year in Toronto and I can assure you that Robert Duvall is going to be nominated next year. The performance is absolutely stunning and the movie can not be compared to anything he did before.

It´s true that SPC pushed the release until next year but obviously not because of "Broken Embraces" and "An Education" or maybe "Coco". These are all films with strong female leads. On the contrary Robert Duvall and Bill Murray would have been a perfect fit for nominations as lead actor and supporting actor. However the big challenge is to create enough buzz with the Academy members so that they watch the film. This would have been a much too short time frame to make everybody aware of it unless SPC would have liked to spend tons of money on it. This is a real gem that has to be discovered like for e.g. "The Visitor" in 2008. Therefore I believe it is the right way to have good release next year and let the audience love and embrace the movie.

The big question for me is always: Can the movie carry the actor until the Academys if you release a film that early during the year? This will all depend on the performance of the movie and the release by SPC. The audience loved the movie in Toronto and they gave several minutes of standing ovations to the cast, therefore I have no doubt that Robert and Bill are going to have good chances in 2010/2011.

[Alexis Walters]

I had the honor of working on this film and it is just incredible. It deserves its place in the awards arena.