The Oscar Battles of "Passion," "9/11"

The red-state warriors and blue-state battlers are at it again. This time, the goal isn't the White House. It's the Oscar.

In one color-coded corner: Conservative groups pushing for nominations for The Passion of the Christ. In the other color-coded corner: Proud liberal Michael Moore pushing for nominations for Fahrenheit 9/11.

If the contrast holds, Academy Award season may bare more than a passing resemblance to this fall's divisive general election.

Promises Patrick Hynes: "It will be all that and more."

Hynes is a senior account executive at the Washington, D.C.-based GOP consulting firm Marsh Copsey + Scott. This week, he launched a new campaign, Passion for Fairness (www.passionforfairness.com).

The Website is asking--"no demanding," it says up front--Academy Award voters to cast ballots for Mel Gibson's Passion in five top categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.

"I am concerned the merits of the film are not going to be considered because the film is too closely [tied] with Christianity and political conservatism," Hynes says.

Gibson has made it known that he personally won't be buying Oscar ads for his religious epic. (He didn't say he wouldn't send out screeners, though. Passion DVDs went out to Academy voters a few weeks ago.)

Though his site asserts that Gibson's account of the final hours of Jesus "had better receive a fair hearing" come Oscar time, Hynes himself stops short of issuing an ultimatum.

"I'm demanding fairness," Hynes says. "I personally don't believe in boycotts. I believe they end up hurting people who have nothing to do with the problem."

Michael Moore believes Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and "a group of top Republicans" have no aversion to issuing such calls to action.

In an email to his troops this week, Moore warned that, with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry thwarted, Moore and his President Bush-bashing documentary were the right-wing's next target.

Citing an ad that ran in USA Today, Moore said its backers have "issued a not-so-subtle threat to the Academy Award voters that, in essence, said don't even THINK about nominating Fahrenheit 9/11 for Best Picture."

O'Reilly, Moore said, also has raised the specter of a boycott against Hollywood. (Said O'Reilly on a recent O'Reilly Factor: "If Hollywood nominates this propaganda tract as Best Picture, you will see a backlash against the movie industry that you have never seen.")

What's an under-fire movie to do? Drum up votes for the People's Choice Awards. (Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of five finalists for Favorite Film of the Year.)

So, Moore's on the offensive (and on the talk-show circuit--in suit and tie, no less) and the Passion faithful are organizing. Are we headed for a final showdown in the Best Picture race?

While Hynes seems sure that 9/11's a lock ("It is going to be [the Academy's] revenge against George Bush."), award-show expert Tom O'Neil thinks it's likely neither film will make the cut.

Passion, O'Neil says, suffers from "the Jewish problem"--i.e., the Academy's Jewish members may not take to a film long perceived by some Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic. (At a recent Passion screening for Oscar voters, O'Neil says he was told, "this religious movie triggered more cussing and swearing [among the audience] than any other in the history of Academy screenings.")

To O'Neil, host of the award-show punditry site GoldDerby.com, 9/11 has its own perception problem. "I think there's the issue of liberal Hollywood shrugging off 9/11 saying, 'We lost the election. We want to move on,'" he says. (Fighting on, the Lions Gate people think they have 600 solid votes for Best Picture, O'Neil says. With about 5,800 Academy members, 9/11, by O'Neil's math, would have to score with about 20 percent of them, or 1,160, to land in the top five and net a nomination.)

Both films also share red-tape issues. When the Golden Globe Award nominations are announced Monday--kicking Oscar season into overdrive--Passion, as a whole, can't do better than a Best Foreign-Language Film nod. It was ruled ineligible for the Best Drama category because its dialogue is delivered entirely in Aramaic and Latin. Fahrenheit 9/11, meanwhile, can't do anything--the Globes doesn't do documentaries.

But if the two movies can recover from receiving little to no Globes bounce, the Oscars could be theirs for the taking. That is, with the exception of the Best Documentary Feature category for 9/11 (Moore didn't submit the film for a nomination there) and the Best Foreign Film category for Passion (by Academy rules, it's not a foreign film).

But when the movies go for the taking, will the campaign become as taxing on Hollywood as the presidential election was, say, on Ohio?

"I would hope that it wouldn't come down to politics--conservatives voting for Passion, and liberals voting for 9/11," says one Oscar voter. "I vote for what moves me both emotionally and intellectually, regardless of politics."

"Last year it was Lord of the Rings," the voter says. "This year? Still too early too tell."