Oscar Screening Flip-Flop

Hollywood studios partially reversed their ban Thursday on special video copies for awards groups, capitulating to widespread criticism that the move would make it harder for smaller films to win Oscars.

The new agreement will allow "screener" copies to be sent to the approximately 5,600 Academy Awards voters, but not the far larger pool that hands out lesser honors.

That means groups that present the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, critics prizes and other movie honors will have to see films at theaters or at screenings arranged by studios. Oscar voters, meanwhile, can watch movies at home on copies sent by the films' distributors.

Trying to crack down on piracy, top studios and their trade group, the Motion Picture Association of America, pushed through an across-the-board ban on Sept. 30. MPAA President Jack Valenti said screener copies sent to awards voters had popped up for sale on eBay and had been used to duplicate bootlegged DVDs in Asia.

But the MPAA was forced to back down after widespread complaints that the ban would make it harder for independent art house films to compete against big studio movies come Oscar time.

"If the current system were in place five years ago, Hilary Swank wouldn't have her Oscar," for "Boys Don't Cry," said Tom O'Neil, author of the book "Movie Awards."

Under the new agreement, Oscar voters will have to sign a pledge that they will not pass their screener copies on to anyone else. Oscar voters would be expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences if pirated movies were traced back to their screener copy.

Valenti and Academy President Frank Pierson said studios will try the new screener policy for a year, then decide if it needs adjustment.

Only VHS copies will be distributed. There will be no screener DVDs, which can be copied much easier and at near-original quality.

Movie distributors began sending VHS screeners to Oscar voters in the late 1980s. As awards campaigning intensified through the 1990s, distributors expanded their VHS and DVD mailing lists to include voters for Golden Globes, British Academy honors and key guild awards, along with top critics and entertainment reporters.

"What began some years ago as a courtesy to academy members over time expanded to thousands of copies passed through many hands outside our industry," Valenti said.

The number of screeners sent varies depending on the studio and the film. As many as 15,000 screeners for some films have been sent to guild members, critics, reporters or other awards voters in past years.

Awards analysts say screener copies boosted prospects for art house films, which have grabbed an increasing share of Oscars in the last decade. Screeners allowed voters to see art house movies they otherwise might have missed, helping to draw attention to such eventual Oscar winners as Swank, Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" and Marcia Gay Harden in "Pollock."

Oscar buzz for Swank began after the Los Angeles Film Critics Association gave her its best-actress prize, and many of that group's members caught the movie because screener copies were available, O'Neil said.

The Los Angeles critics group last weekend voted to call off its awards this year because of the screener ban. Jean Oppenheimer, the group's president, said the awards cancellation will stand unless the MPAA rescinds the entire screener ban.

Supporters of awards screeners also say the videos leveled the playing field between independent distributors or studio-owned art house units such as Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics and big studios with huge budgets for awards marketing.

By David Germain