New rules in the Oscar documentary process are not going to make things harder for documentary filmmakers, director and AMPAS governor Michael Moore told TheWrap.
Instead, he said, the rules that go into effect this year are going to make what Moore called "a crazy, Byzantine process" more open, more democratic and more transparent – and they're going to fix a process that has led to decades of snubs, surprises and inexplicable decisions.
"I saw a headline that said documentary filmmakers were fearing the changes," Moore said in a lengthy interview. "We've feared the process for the last 20 years – this is the elimination of that fear."
And if anybody should be worried about the new rules, it's not the makers of small docs – it's a giant in the doc field, HBO (which he did not single out by name, but which is one clear target of the new rules).
Also read: 'Hoop Dreams' Director Is Snubbed Again by Academy
The changes led to some controversy when the New York Times revealed a new requirement that films need to be reviewed in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times in order to qualify for Oscar consideration.
But Moore, the architect of and prime lobbyist for the new system, described the review rule as a small part of a major overhaul. The main change is the elimination of the committees that have been responsible for nominations for decades.
In its place, the documentary branch will do what most Academy branches do: All members of the branch will vote for the nominations, and all members of the Academy will vote for the final awards.
"Why is it that year after year, so many great documentaries don't even make the shortlist?" Moore asked. "The main problem is committees, and I made it my mission to eliminate those committees."
Others, including TheWrap, have been lobbying for a change to the committee system for years. In fact, Moore said that a 2010 story in TheWrap was a particularly accurate summation of the problems with a process in which volunteers from the branch were assembled into small committees and given a number of films to score on a scale of six-to-10.
Also read: Inconvenient Truths About Oscar's Documentary Process
"It was not a democratic process, and not a transparent process," Moore said. "With some branches, you'd see the nominations and be surprised that this actor got in or that film didn't make it. With our branch, every year it was five or six or seven surprises.
"It's so jarring to think that the Maysles never got an Oscar, D.A. Pennebaker never got one, Michael Apted never got one for the '7 Up' series. And it happened again this year, when Werner Herzog ["Into the Abyss"] couldn't even make the shortlist."
The changes will also do away with a rule that said members who had a film in the running were not eligible to participate – a regulation that had the potential to knock out a hefty chunk of the electorate when you have a 166-member branch and more than 100 eligible films.
