Yerxa, Berger Rebuttals
At yesterday’s “Movers & Shakers” (i.e., producers) panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein asked Little Miss Sunshine producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa to comment about the Academy’s grossly unfair decision to exclude them from the official group of three who, if LMS wins the Best Picture Oscar, will be allowed to go up onstage and receive a statuette, despite theirBerger and Yerxa being the film’s “real” ground-floor producers.
Yerxa gave a soft-pedalled response, saying that the Producers Guild, which approved Yerxa and Berger as one of the LMS producers, and the Academy “are not fully conversant.” Berger was more emphatic: “We produced this movie. Whatever the Academy may say or determine, we produced this movie.”
What exactly is the Academy’s agenda here? Apparently, they’ve also whacked several Departed producers (including Scorsese, Brad Pitt, Brad Grey, etc.), leaving only Graham King eligible.
I think the stated agenda is that in a time when some people are given a producer credit for little or no actual day-to-day participation (as part of a deal), the “real” producers are protected. That being said, in typical stupid academy fashion, decisions are made by formula (e.g., no more than three per flick) instead of examining what really went on…
I think the stated agenda is that in a time when some people are given a producer credit for little or no actual day-to-day participation (as part of a deal), the “real” producers are protected. That being said, in typical stupid academy fashion, decisions are made by formula (e.g., no more than three per flick) instead of examining what really went on…