Entertainment
One of Hollywood’s busiest weeks is grinding to a halt in light of the horrific wildfires spreading rapidly around Los Angeles County. With Oscar voting kicking off Wednesday morning, studios and strategists had a slew of events planned for contenders going into the weekend—screenings, receptions with Q&As, and general opportunities to boost word of mouth among voters. Most of these have either been postponed or canceled or soon will be, according to insiders, along with major ceremonies that were primed for A-list attendance. Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards have been pushed by two weeks, while Saturday’s BAFTA tea and the prestigious AFI luncheon are delayed until further notice.
The latest casualty is one of the most anticipated events around town, as Timothée Chalamet was set to appear at three separate events around Los Angeles as part of a career retrospective mounted by the American Cinematheque. The tickets sold out in record time and had attracted such celebrity moderators as Cameron Crowe and Andrew Garfield. The programmer announced the cancellation of in-person appearances at its Los Feliz theater through the end of the weekend, meaning that Chalamet and Luca Guadagnino will no longer be part of Thursday night’s showings of Call Me by Your Name and Bones & All. (The films will still screen.) The Cinematheque’s Aero Theater, which Chalamet was set to appear at on Saturday after a screening of A Complete Unknown, is now closed through the weekend. Friday’s event at the DGA Theater in West Hollywood, celebrating Dune with Chalamet and Denis Villeneuve, was also taken off the schedule.
The news comes on the heels of several other shifts on the Hollywood events calendar. In a Wednesday afternoon letter to Academy members viewed by Vanity Fair, CEO Bill Kramer announced that the voting window for Oscar nominations has been expanded by two days, from January 12 to January 14, “to give members more time to cast their ballots.” Accordingly, the previously scheduled nominations announcement for January 17 has been shifted, unusually, to a Sunday, January 19. Key staples of this final round of campaigning, including in-person “bake-offs” for short-listed sound designers, visual effects artists, and makeup artists and hairstylists to highlight their work, have been officially canceled, with pivots to digital showcases. The International Feature Film Shortlist Screening has been rescheduled for an unspecified date before voting concludes.
There are several reasons for the mass shifts and cancellations, not least of which is respecting the unsettled, anxious feelings shared by many in the community. Seeking safety, assessing damage, and checking on loved ones are now the priorities, rather than watching those last remaining contenders on the docket. The very neighborhoods engulfed in flames happen to be where some of the Academy’s most active members live, including music branch veteran Diane Warren, back in the race this year for her song in Six Triple Eight, whose beach home of nearly 30 years was destroyed, and recent Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, who described her terrifying evacuation experience on Instagram. Their peers have shared similar stories. And speaking anecdotally, the fear, anxiety, and mourning happening around town make Oscar noms feel very distant, even as they’re fast approaching.
“Carrying on like business as usual doesn’t feel appropriate when the lives of so many we know and love have been devastated,” says one strategist working on several films. Several industry guilds, representing specific crafts of filmmaking (cinematography, editing, etc.) were also set to announce their nominations for the best of 2024 this week, but have followed the Oscars’ lead in postponing them. The producers guild will now reveal their selections on Sunday, while the American Society of Cinematographers will wait until Monday.
On Tuesday night, as the Palisades fire exploded and the Eaton fire on Los Angeles’s east side started taking shape, Sony Pictures Classics canceled what could have been a pivotal event for its Brazilian film, I’m Still Here, to be hosted by CAA in Century City. The film’s star Fernanda Torres had just won a major Golden Globe for best actress, boosting her chances at an Oscar nod among bigger names like Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman, but the planned moderator of the Q&A, Guillermo del Toro, was unable to attend after needing to evacuate his home. The main challenge that international films face in the Oscar race is simply getting voters to prioritize them, and a post-Globes shindig would have brought plenty of new fans to the Walter Salles drama. It’ll now have to hope the Globes momentum transfers to people finding the film on the Academy’s streaming portal, unless a last-minute replacement can be scheduled.
“Can’t believe this is happening,” another senior awards strategist told me. A third campaign veteran, who expects all of their Los Angeles Q&As to be canceled through the weekend, said, “It’s awful.”
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David Canfield