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After a journey of more than 8,000 miles from the bustle of Mumbai to the
opulence of Hollywood, Freida Pinto faces a daunting last few steps.
Tonight, the young star of Slumdog Millionaire, the hit British film, will
walk up the red carpet to the 81st Oscars ceremony.
“I am very clumsy,” confessed Pinto, a 24-year-old who had never made a film
before. “Angelina Jolie and Kate Winslet have been looking out for me,
telling me to relax, but I am not sure whether I can breathe, wave and walk
at the same time without falling over.”
Even this graceful Bollywood-trained dancer is overwhelmed at the prospect of
Slumdog, a low-budget film that almost went straight to DVD, winning the
biggest prize in cinema: the Oscar for best picture. Produced for just £10m,
Slumdog is threatening to be one of the great Oscar upsets by beating
big-budget Hollywood and some of its most luminous superstars.
In the latest straw polls since secret voting for the Academy Awards finished
last Tuesday, Slumdog has edged ahead of The Curious Case of Benjamin
Button, a Hollywood epic starring Brad Pitt that cost 10 times as much to
make.
Its backers spent nearly as much simply flying Pitt around the world, first
for exotic location filming and then promotions, as the entire Slumdog
primary shooting budget.
Button is based on a satire by the celebrated novelist F Scott Fitzgerald
about a man ageing backwards, and took two decades to reach the silver
screen after it was first mooted as a feature film.
Slumdog, the story of a slum dweller who wins the Indian version of Who Wants
to be a Millionaire?, was based on the novel Q&A, written in the space
of a few weeks by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat.
Yet, to date it is Slumdog, directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame,
that has won 60 film festival prizes, a usually reliable indicator of Oscar
glory.
The path to Academy Award victory, however, is beset with many dangers, quite
apart from the pressures of walking the red carpet. As Slumdog has grown to
be more and more of an Oscar contender, the murky Hollywood art of “sliming”
seems to have swung into action. A spate of negative stories about Slumdog
has erupted: local Hollywood newspapers claim the film is “poverty porn”,
that it somehow insults Mumbai slum dwellers and that its actors have been
ripped off and exploited.
Then came allegations that Pinto, rather than being India’s new sweetheart,
had dumped her husband, whom she had kept secret, for a life of movie
glamour.
Yesterday, one long-time Hollywood consultant still believed Slumdog would
triumph. “If it does not win best picture, it will be the biggest upset
since Crash knocked out Brokeback Mountain three years ago,” he said. But
how had that happened? Promoters of Crash had indulged in their own tricks:
posting 100,000 DVDs of the film to people who they thought might influence
the Oscar judges. It just goes to show, slime can pay. THE art of Oscar
sliming has grown more sophisticated since the days when members of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who vote on the Oscars,
received telephone calls suggesting that Carole Lombard, a contender for
best actress for the 1936 film My Man Godfrey, was an alcoholic. She would
embarrass the Academy if she won the award, alleged the callers. Lombard,
unfairly tainted, duly lost her one shot at Oscar glory.
Such crudity is rare now. Instead, Hollywood studios employ consultants to
laud their Oscar-worthy movies and find weak spots in their rivals. They
proved remarkably diligent over the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, about a
schizophrenic mathematician played by Russell Crowe, which was based on a
dense book that few, if any, of the Academy members had read.
One consultant ploughed through the book and discovered that on one page – and
one page only – the central figure rants against Jews. That page was duly
faxed to journalists looking for an angle, and the apparent antisemitism
played badly in the heavily Jewish academy.
Though Crowe may have proven himself unlikable with some of his own later
antics, he was thought by many to have been robbed of that Oscar by the
slimers.
Have there been attempts to target Slumdog? In the shadowy world of studio
consultants, where many players prefer to remain anonymous, views are split.
Last week, one veteran said that some media allegations accusing the film of
being “poverty porn” and glamorising slum life appeared deliberately placed
to play on the liberal guilt of Oscar voters. “Someone has been spinning a
barbed idea to a journalist over lunch,” said one.
Whatever the source, a backlash gathered pace in the run-up to the Oscar vote.
“Slumdog grit draws boos from Hollywood” was the headline on one story that
reported some of Mumbai’s poor were offended by representations in the film.
“Backlash against Slumdog just in time for Oscar race” was another.
Last week, the theme was still persisting, with reports that two of the
youngest actors are still living in slum conditions in Mumbai, even though
the film has taken £93m worldwide.
However, Boyle and his team firmly reject accusations that the children were
exploited. They were paid and were enrolled in school, with the aim of
equipping them to support themselves in the long term.
Other headlines, such as speculation over Pinto’s marital status, are more the
product of modern media than any concerted campaign against the film,
claimed another Hollywood PR manipulator.
“With the net, bad news can spread in seconds. But it can take hours for good
news to catch up,” he said. Though it was reported that Pinto had secretly
married her former boyfriend and had dumped him after finding success, no
marriage certificate has surfaced.
To many, the slime factor is an inevitable part of the awards process, and in
the end quality will win through.
PEERING through the slime are the local bookies. Late last week, the favourite
for best actor was Mickey Rourke, for his role in The Wrestler, closely
followed by fellow tough guy Sean Penn for his portrayal of a gay rights
leader in Milk. Benjamin Button’s Brad Pitt was a long shot.
The favourite for best actress was Kate Winslet, for her role in the
controversial film The Reader. Though Winslet has been attacked for
appearing in a film that arguably commits the unthinkable and humanises a
Nazi, it has brought her a sixth Oscar nomination.
She may be defeated only by the fear of her making a winner’s speech as
incoherent as her emotional ramble at the Baftas.
The Reader, a £22m film, has already enjoyed its Oscar “bump”, having doubled
its ticket sales since the nomination. Frank Wuliger, a partner at the
Hollywood talent agency Gersh, said some smaller movies had shone through
the slime. “It’s all been about the movies, for once,” he said.
However, he added: “Except maybe for Heath Ledger [favourite for best
supporting actor forThe Dark Knight] and Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler –
people in Hollywood do love a comeback.”
As for Slumdog, the odds give it a narrow lead over Benjamin Button.
Behind the glitz, there is much more than a gold statuette at stake. As
Hollywood comes under pressure from Bollywood influence, the film may shape
future popular entertainment.
If Slumdog wins, it will not only prompt the spawning of a dozen westernised
Bollywood epics, most of which will probably be awful, but also boost
Hollywood globalisation: already many of its most successful directors, such
as Sir Ridley Scott, the New Zealander Peter Jackson or the Mexican
Guillermo del Toro, who is moving from Hellboy to The Hobbit, are
immigrants.
The cultural mixing is also working the other way: Steven Spielberg is
relaunching his Dream-Works studio with the help of Mumbai rupees. Dozens of
actors will follow Billy Connolly, Sylvester Stallone and Snoop Dogg to
India in search of the next great role. It will also, despite the
accusations thrown at Slumdog, plug India even more firmly into the grid of
western culture.
So, a lot could hang on victory. Will Slumdog emerge triumphant from the
slime? “This is a film which has come out of nowhere, no one expected this,
there are no precedents for this, and yet I expect it to win big on Sunday,”
said Tony Angellotti, a respected Oscar consultant in Hollywood whose
clients this year include Frost/Nixon and WALL-E.
We will only know for sure when the envelope is opened and the presenter says:
“And the winner is . . .”
