Not every studio embraces this strategy. One studio home video executive said that -- with certain exceptions, such as smaller films -- DVD sales begin to decline five months after a film's theatrical release, even with an Oscar.
But how does an Oscar campaign end up costing $15 million? Let us count the ways:
* Teams of Oscar consultants: $15,000 a month per person.
* Catered screenings: $10,000 per showing.
* One DVD mailer to each of the 5,808 Oscar voters: as much as $10 a screener.
* A four-page gatefold ad in Variety: $137,660.
* A three-day, two-page color ad in the Los Angeles Times: as much as $255,727.
* Clothes and hair stylist for an actress: $10,000 a day.
If you're a smaller film with less cash to spend, you cut your cocktail parties (or serve only beer and wine), trim your screenings (and rely on DVDs), and insist that all of your talent fly commercial (but still in first class, of course).
If you're lucky enough to have a film like "Sideways," people are happy to lend their names and wares. Winemakers queued up to donate cases of wine, directors Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers held a question-and-answer session with the filmmakers, and the New York Public Theater sponsored the Vibrato party and a similar event in New York.
"Hotel Rwanda" has also benefited from the political nature of the film, as Cheadle ended up touring Sudan with a congressional delegation, then served as the primary correspondent for a two-part special report on that nation on ABC's "Nightline."
The cost is not purely financial: Stars of the movies can do little else but travel the world promoting their films and by extension their own Oscar chances.
On the day the nominations were announced, Okonedo said she began doing interviews "in my jogging bottoms" and hasn't stopped since, separately flying back and forth between her native England and New York and L.A. several times. Forty minutes after the nominations were announced, the British tabloids had staked out her grandmother's house. "This kind of attention is so unusual," said the actress. "I don't have a million assistants to sort me out."
Fine Line Features not only played host to 100 screenings of "Vera Drake" for women's groups, but also brought best actress nominee Imelda Staunton to a junket for the upcoming Kevin Costner/Joan Allen film "The Upside of Anger" (in which she does not appear), offering her up as a freebie interview to the world's media. Even after being interviewed every 45 minutes, the indefatigable Staunton refused to concede exhaustion, or heaven forbid, boredom.
