

Did you miss “20th Century Women” in theaters? Maybe because there were too many options? (Merrick Morton/A24)

Oscar season is over. Let Oscar season begin?

Over the past 20 years, awards season has become an effective business model for small and mid-budget movies that otherwise might not get made within Hollywood’s blockbuster-centric system. When “Shakespeare in Love” won best picture way back in 1998, a new marketing tactic was born, one that leveraged public awareness throughout the run-up to the Oscars — culminating, if you’re lucky, in a big win on the night — to get free publicity for smart, adult-oriented movies without having to spend millions on big TV campaigns.

Canny studios have since been able to send such little-engines-that-could as “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech” and “Spotlight” into not just artistic esteem but also financial success. This year’s best picture, “Moonlight,” has already earned 20 times its minuscule $1.5 million budget, a figure that is assured to climb when it’s rereleased into 1,500 more theaters on the heels of its historic victory.

Awards season begins in September, when critics and awards prognosticators converge on festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto and emerge with pronouncements on front-runners. It has become such a boon for an otherwise endangered form of filmmaking that it has even led skeptics to grudgingly admit the Oscars’ value beyond ego-gratification and preening self-promotion. Movie stars and studio executives who support themselves making superhero movies still crave the prestige an Oscar brings; they’re happy to walk red carpets between September and the end of February — at small festivals, critics’ and guild awards and myriad premieres, parties and dinners — not only to remind academy members why they should nominate and vote for them, but also to remind audiences to see their films. It’s a symbiotic ecology, wherein ballyhoo, self-interest, artistic ambition and fan interest are harnessed in the name of movies that aren’t driven by explosions, car chases or comic-book escapism.

But as the awards-season strategy has been refined and rationalized over the years, more than a few downsides have emerged, most notably in the form of a movie-year that has become almost impossibly backloaded. The viewers these movies are aimed at — filmgoers who appreciate good writing, thoughtful direction and subtle acting rather than stunts and spectacle — are virtually starved for entertainment during the first nine months of the year, then drowned in options throughout the fall. Distributors and marketers, afraid that if they release a good movie in April it will be forgotten by the time academy members make their initial nominations the following January, hold their high-quality product back, resulting in a veritable cinematic desert for most of the year, and a logjam at the end. While a few terrific movies manage to do well during awards season — this year’s successes include “Arrival,” “Hidden Figures,” “Fences” and “La La Land” — a few are lost in the shuffle. This year, neither “Loving” nor “20th Century Women” drew the audience it deserved, most likely because of awards-season burnout.



Gwyneth Paltrow in “Shakespeare in Love,” which set the modern standard for turning Oscar buzz into big box office numbers. (Laurie Sparham/Miramax via AP)

Dev Patel, left, and Anil Kapoor in ”Slumdog Millionaire.” (Ishika Mohan/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

It’s not that good movies don’t come out the rest of the year: Woody Allen has pretty much staked out midsummer for his annual releases; summer has also become a good season for documentaries, which serve as nutritious “counterprogramming” to the usual vacation-season popcorn fare. “ Captain Fantastic ” and “ Hell or High Water ,” both of which competed for Oscars on Sunday, were released last summer, an encouraging sign that academy members are capable of remembering past a few months. But at least two other worthy movies, “ Eye in the Sky ” (released in March) and “ Love & Friendship ” (May) were ignored. As Chairman of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group Tom Rothman, a longtime advocate for a 12-month movie year, told me this week, awards season “is very good for a handful of films, and actually not good for the majority of films.”

What is to be done? Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, agreed that backloading is a problem when I asked her about it at the Middleburg Film Festival in October. But she believed there was little the academy could do, insisting that it’s on the studios to even out their offerings throughout the 12 months. I’m not so sure that the academy’s hands are that completely tied: Perhaps there’s a way that the organization could send out provisional ballots midway through the year, so that members could “nominate” the films and performers they’ve seen that they deem Oscar-worthy. Later, they could refer to the nonbinding ballot to refresh their memories and maybe bring attention to work that otherwise would have been forgotten.

For his part, Rothman has his own “wacky” ideas. “I’ve had this idea for a long time, which I can’t quite figure out how to do, but someday I might propose it to the academy,” he said, “which is to have one best picture slot that somehow favors movies released within the first six months of the year.”

Still, as the makers of “Captain Fantastic” and “Hell or High Water” can tell you, awards attention in January doesn’t help your bottom line six months earlier. That’s where the media come in. Although critics can write raves and supportive features and interviews for the films we love, it takes celebrity-oriented TV to turbocharge awareness. Whether it’s a cinematic desert or a media drought, the result is a cycle that’s virtuous for the “Moonlights” and “La La Lands” of the world but unvirtuous for dozens of others. For now, the best way to draw attention and audiences to those worthy but potentially un-laureled films is by way of good, old-fashioned reviews. So, until someone comes up with a better plan: Watch this space.