Here in Hollywood, there is what is called the "Awards Season"; starting with the Golden Globes and ending pretty much with the Oscars, all manner of awards presentations happen with regularity. A by-product of this award frenzy is a whopping amount of active campaigning by the various movie studios, producers, stars and anyone else who could conceivably have a possibility to be nominated for an award. Massive billboards are erected, the sides of buses are splashed with adverts and all the periodicals carry full page adverts with the same message: "For Your Consideration...". Abbreviated to "FYC", the season is in full swing; I have seen a lot of really intensive campaigning, but rarely have I seen the all-out push being done for the movie Dunkirk; everywhere you go and every media outlet in town is deluged with adverts and promos touting Dunkirk as being near the second coming; if the film fails to get the big awards at the Oscars, it is going to be a rather big embarrassment for whoever is behind the campaign...
Sometimes an overly aggressive campaign can backfire, even when it actually succeeds: When the film Amadeus was up for awards, Tom Hulce (Mozart) and F. Murray Abraham (Salieri) were both nominated for Best Actor; Abraham launched an all-out, no prisoners campaign while Hulce took a more traditional low-key and dignified stance; Abraham won the Oscar, but, in the process offended a lot of people in the film industry with his tactics, including those who felt, in a way, Abraham had 'stolen' the Oscar from Hulce; normally, winning an Oscar gives an actor a higher profile and vastly more opportunities in casting, but the was a sort of tacit backlash towards Abraham and his career, instead of rising, stalled and faded...
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