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Gascon's past posts damage Netflix's ( NFLX ) 'Emilia Perez' Oscar

hopes

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Controversies affect multiple Oscar-nominated films this

year

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Oscar campaigns often involve personal and professional

controversies

By Dawn Chmielewski

LOS ANGELES, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Netflix's ( NFLX ) hopes

for claiming an Academy Award for best picture appear to have

vanished after a series of embarrassing social media posts

resurfaced.

The genre-bending musical crime drama "Emilia Perez" looked

like the streaming service's strongest shot yet at best picture

after winning the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and

garnering a total of 13 Academy Award nominations.

But prospects for the movie dimmed after a journalist found

and translated a series of Spanish-language posts, dating from

2016 through 2020. In them, the film's Spanish star, Karla Sofia

Gascon, described Islam as a "hotbed of infection for humanity"

and George Floyd as a "drug addict swindler." Social media

amplified the story to global proportions.

Gascon apologized, but the damage was done.

"This is the year of somebody basically lighting themself on

fire and taking their own movie down with them," said veteran

marketing executive Terry Press, who has worked on Oscar

campaigns on behalf of directors Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard,

and other Hollywood notables.

Gascon disappeared from the Hollywood awards circuit, though

she has said she will attend the Oscars ceremony on Sunday.

Netflix ( NFLX ) did not immediately respond to a request for

comment.

Seemingly every film nominated for best picture this year

has been embroiled in some controversy, said Michael Schulman,

author of "Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and

Tears."

Director Brady Corbet defended the use of artificial

intelligence in "The Brutalist" to perfect actor Adrien Brody's

and Felicity Jones' delivery of the Hungarian dialogue in the

film.

Brazil's Fernanda Torres, who is nominated for best actress

for her portrayal of a woman searching for her disappeared

husband in "I'm Still Here," apologized for appearing in

blackface in a decades-old television skit.

"I wrote a piece for the New Yorker comparing it to

'Conclave,' because the whole thing just reminds me of the

movie, where every candidate running for Pope has some skeleton

in his closet," said Schulman.

Controversy has often dogged Oscar front-runners.

"Green Book" director Peter Farrelly apologized for being

"an idiot" after The Cut reported that he had exposed himself to

actress Cameron Diaz in what he called an attempt at humor. The

film went on to win best picture in 2019, despite the

revelation.

Sometimes, the campaigns are stoked by an opponent - as when

Harvey Weinstein mounted a whispering campaign against Steven

Spielberg's World War II epic, "Saving Private Ryan," with its

acclaimed recreation of the invasion of Normandy.

"Weinstein was telling journalists 'Don't you think that the

only really good part of the movie is the first 25 minutes, the

D-Day sequence, and then the rest of it is just the standard

World War II picture?'" said Schulman, who documented the

campaign in his book. "This was his version of that Karl Rove

credo in politics like, 'Don't attack your enemy's weakness.

Attack your enemy's strength.' He managed to take this stunning

battle scene and turn it into a liability."

Weinstein, whose Miramax film "Shakespeare in Love" won

best picture that year, denied criticizing the Spielberg film.

"I would never stoop to that level," he told New York

magazine in 1999.

As in politics, the personal can be difficult to separate

from the on-screen performance.

The 2016 film "The Birth of a Nation," a story about a slave

revolt that was written and directed by Nate Parker, became

overshadowed by revelations Parker had been charged, and later

acquitted, of raping a fellow student while at Penn State.

A Variety story that year detailing how Parker's accuser

committed suicide in 2012 sparked a box office and awards

backlash.

"It was over in a second," said one executive involved in

the film, which had been seen as a best picture contender.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski; additional reporting by Lisa

Richwine;

Editing by Mary Milliken and Lincoln Feast.)