Grantland’s Mark Harris Addresses Category Fraud

Grantland’s Mark Harris is one of the preeminent film writers of this generation and no one, I mean no one, deconstructs the “importance” of Oscar season like him. His piece this past Friday about the inherent awards-worthiness of films like Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said and Ron Howard’s Rush turned to another topic that has become more and more regular during the Oscar PR stampede: category fraud.

Category fraud is certainly nothing new during awards season. Much was made of how Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts would be campaigned for August: Osage County and whether their odds of winning were more of a factor than who was actually the lead. Harris takes a closer look at Rush to illustrate how where awards discussion about performances begins, and where it ends after the campaigning is over.

“There’s also noise about a campaign for Daniel Brühl, the magnetic German actor who gives a fine, biting performance as the testy Austrian racer Niki Lauda. Although Rush is about the competition between the by-the-book, Ivan Lendl–ish Lauda and the brash, freewheeling asshole live wire James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth, slimming down and stepping up from Thor), and the movie gives their personal lives equal attention, Brühl is for some reason being talked about as a Best Supporting Actor candidate. This is one of those category-fraud moments so brazen that you wonder if the people who made Rush even want the story they have invested so much time and effort in telling to be perceived accurately. …If Lauda is truly meant to be a supporting character in Rush, then everybody involved did a really bad job making the movie. They didn’t, and he’s not: Instead, Brühl is every Academy Award campaigner’s worst nightmare — a super-talented, little-known co-lead with an umlaut in his last name.”

Daniel Brühl is most definitely not supporting Hemsworth in Rush, the film immediately begins with Lauda speaking to the audience, not Hunt, but since Hemsworth is the better looking man and more famous from his Marvel films, any hopes for attention for the gifted German thespian will apparently have to come in supporting.

Some small comfort can be taken from the fact that it isn’t just actors like Brühl getting kicked out of a deserved slot. It happens to Hollywood’s A-list as well.

“But Mud, like Rush, is playing the category-fraud game, pitching its best Oscar hope, the top-billed Matthew McConaughey, as a supporting actor so that he can be campaigned as a lead for next month’s Dallas Buyers Club.”

This happens more often than you would think. Actors and actresses have enough difficulty campaigning for lead consideration, and with production companies not interested in actors contending against themselves, they either move a performance into supporting categories or drop attention for it all together. In a similar move five years ago, Kate Winslet saw herself marketed as a supporting actress in Revolutionary Road, a film where she was clearly a lead, so she would not split the vote against herself when she won Best Actress for The Reader.

A sympathetic ear could be lent to indies and lower-budgeted films that aren’t  based on highly prestigious material like a 12 Years a Slave or The Butler, or have the backing of a major high-roller like Harvey Weinstein to do whatever they can for some press. Yet category fraud may lead to more trouble than it is worth. Any attention isn’t always positive attention in the arena of Oscar talk, and the backlash could do more harm than good when it comes to promoting performances like those from Brühl and McConaughey.

It is understandable for films like Mud and Rush to make moves like this to garner some attention in a very crowded field. But a little honesty about categories would go a long way toward making the awards season backlash free.