‘Hurt Locker’ Producer Banned from the Oscars

The Academy has taken concrete action against Nicolas Chartier, one of the producers on the Oscar-nominated film “The Hurt Locker,” this year’s biggest contender at the awards ceremony, together with James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Chartier has disgraced himself with the panel by breaking the number one rule, that of promoting his own movie by disparaging other candidates, the Los Angeles Times’ The Envelope informs.

While it’s ok to promote a film, actively campaigning for Oscar votes by thrashing other nominees is a big no-no, as common sense would also dictate – especially since one also leaves a paper trail behind. This is precisely what Chartier did, sending a bunch of e-mails to industry people and telling to vote for him and his film, “The Hurt Locker,” and not for Cameron’s alien story.

“As a result of his now infamous e-mail campaign, in which he urged friends to contact academy members and tell them to support his movie over that ‘$500M film’ (an obvious reference to ‘Avatar’), ‘The Hurt Locker’ co-producer Nicolas Chartier will be denied admittance to the Academy Awards on Sunday, meaning should his film win best picture, he will not be joining the other producers – Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and Greg Shapiro – on stage to accept. Academy rules prohibit ‘casting a negative or derogatory light on a competing film.’ The executive committee of the producers’ branch, which met in a special late-night session Monday, stopped short of stripping him of his nomination, so should ‘Locker’ win, the academy says, ‘Chartier would receive his Oscar statuette at some point subsequent to the March 7 ceremonies’,” the aforementioned publication says.

“In the past, violations of strict academy rules regarding Oscar campaigning usually has resulted in the loss of some allotted tickets for the studio. It’s hard to remember another instance in which a potential Oscar recipient was actually denied entrance to the building. In 2005, the academy ruled that four of the six ‘Crash’ producers, including chief financier Bob Yari (who later sued the academy and lost), were ineligible for a nomination as producers of the best picture, but denying entrance to an actual nominee is virtually unprecedented,” the e-zine says, trying to determine whether the situation has any precedent.

Another tradition with the Academy is to have nominees who don’t win one year join the Academy the next year, if they aren’t members already. As The Envelope puts it, Chartier shouldn’t hold his breath for that to happen, especially since he came this close to being stripped of his nomination.