Christopher Nolan Once Blamed Harvey Weinstein For Compromising Oscars Integrity With Aggressive Campaign To Defeat Steven Spielberg: “He Constructed A Business Model”
Christopher Nolan once opened up about how Oscars were not the same after Harvey Weinstein's aggressive marketing campaign to beat Steven Spielberg in the 1999.
Christopher Nolan Once Blamed Harvey Weinstein For Compromising Oscars Integrity. (Photo Credit – Instagram)
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Long before taking home the coveted Academy Award for Best Director for Oppenheimer, Nolan slammed the ceremony and blamed Harvey Weinstein’s aggressive 1999 Oscar campaign for compromising its integrity. Nolan believed Oscar compromised their core values and succumbed to the disgraced Miramax producer’s marketing campaign.
Christopher Nolan was first nominated for the Oscars in 1999 for the Original Screenplay of Memento, which he lost to Gosford Park. He was again nominated for Best Director for 2016 Dunkirk and again lost to Guillermo Del Toro for The Shape of Water. After a string of losses, despite making blockbuster films, Christopher Nolan finally won the Academy Award for Best Director for his WWII biopic Oppenheimer.
However, given Nolan’s past derision toward the award ceremony, we have to assume the award mattered less to the filmmaker. In a 2020 book, Nolan Variations, the filmmaker expressed his opinion about how the Academy Awards were not the same after Harvey Weinstein’s aggressive marketing campaign to beat Steven Spielberg in the 1999 Oscars.
Nolan said Weinstein ruined the award ceremony by constructing a business model in which awards became part of a marketing campaign. “I think one thing that Harvey Weinstein did is he constructed a business model in which the awards were part of the marketing campaign.”
Instead of representing the genius of the film, the award became a marketing tool to promote the film. He added, “It used to be rewarding a film, and now it’s helping a film. The awards are part of a patronage system, you might say, and with Dunkirk, we were lucky enough not to need it.”
Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar campaign explored
Christopher Nolan was referencing the 1999 Oscars ceremony, in which Harvey Weinstein changed the award ceremony for the worse. Per BBC, in 1999, Harvey Weinstein launched an aggressive marketing campaign for his Miramax Films to make their title Shakespeare in Love win many of the coveted categories.
When the Oscar nominations were announced, Shakespeare in Love was a trailer for promotion in theaters. Weinstein sought to draw the audience into theaters by winning coveted awards. Sources at Miramax told BBC Weinstein showed the press VHS copies of the unfinished film to ensure the film was promoted.
In 1999, Spielberg’s War drama Saving Private Ryan was a top contender for Best Picture. Many believed Spielberg, who won the Best Director Oscar, would also take home Best Picture. However, the award went to Gwyneth Paltrow starrer Shakespeare in Love.
