Failed Oscar Campaigns: "The Front Runner" (2018)

 As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

The Front-Runner (2018)

Directed By: Jason Reitman

Written By: Matt Bai & Jay Carson & Jason Reitman (Written By), Matt Bai (Book)

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Running Time: 113 minutes

Summary: In 1987, U.S. Senator Gary Hart's presidential campaign is derailed when he's caught in a scandalous love affair.

- The Movie -

For most people, next week marks a very important date. Even if the world wasn't consumed by a pandemic and theaters were open, their attention would still be on the presidential election. It is a moment in time where the country's future gets to be voted on by the people, determining what ideals that they want to focus on, believing that it will produce the best and brightest future. It's one of the civic duties that unites all citizens, at its best symbolizing the power of democracy. Everyone reading this has likely been told by friends and strangers to get out there and vote, wait in long lines if you have to. Your voice matters and election day is the moment when everything coalesces into its eventual fate.

Of course, anyone who has focused on recent media will notice that everyone has been suggesting the same thing. Pop on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm or American Utopia, and there will be that push for change. Media has always had the ability to impact the masses, and few wanted to jump on that idea quite as literally as director Jason Reitman and Sony Pictures. With The Front Runner, he released his second 2018 film after the critically acclaimed Tully and sought to target the audience who would be most interested in voting. In this case, it became the sacrificial lamb who would release a movie about the power of elections... on election day.

Considering that Hugh Jackman is having a great 2020 thanks to a critically acclaimed role in Bad Education, it's a good reminder of the time when he tried to shoot for Oscar Nomination #2 only to fall a bit short. The film itself had the best intentions, featuring a promising cast and crew along with a premise that had the potential to be relevant to the ongoing Fake News phenomenon. However, it was a marketing ploy that maybe didn't make much sense save for its honor. Even now, it remains the only film that was released on election day or even scheduled to. As a result, its focus was less on the film itself and how there was this new release that bombed during the midterms.

The question is whether Reitman would've stood a chance if he released it at any other point. It's true that box office failure does impact an overall judgment of a film (see: Steve Jobs, Silence), but when it does it so symbolically, especially in a year that save impressive voter turnout, it does say something to a boneheaded release strategy that became its lasting legacy. While the film could be fine, it would always be remembered as the midterm movie, a release strategy that was more experimental than calculated, and it backfired greatly. Even the fact that it had to compete with more compelling political drama options like The Hate U Give made its failure feel all the more embarrassing. 

- The Campaign -

It can be argued that this campaign was years in the making. There was a time when Jason Reitman felt destined to become an Oscar darling. Following back-to-back Best Picture nominees Juno and Up in the Air, it looked like he would be producing these purposeful stories that spoke to audiences. Instead, it was a mix of dark comedies (Young Adult), misfires (Labor Day), and films that felt like a parody of who he was (Men, Women & Children). He was a director who had early success but had this hope that he would make another great movie one day. The Front Runner felt like that title, if just because of how it felt like it tapped into the contemporary zeitgeist. People who think that the tabloids were ripe with controversy now would love stories about Gary Hart: a senator whose presidential campaign fell apart over an extramarital affair.

The cards were in his favor. Beyond his subject matter, it would be his first collaboration with Vera Farmiga since her Oscar-nominated turn in Up in the Air. This would also be Hugh Jackman's first major dramatic role following his final X-Men movie Logan, making many predict it to be his first Oscar nomination since Les Miserables six years before. Among the writing staff was Mark Bai, who wrote the book on Hart's campaign following a memorable interview for The New York Times in 2003. Similarly, the screenplay featured co-writer Jay Carson, who worked as a secretary for Hillary Clinton. There was a sense that everything would be more compelling because of its accuracy.

There was talk early on of how great Jackman was in the film. In one interview, Bill Burr would talk about acting opposite him and claiming that he was so impassioned in a scene that Burr felt like he was looking at Wolverine. Overall that was the consensus. Jackman was great. The issue was that nobody in the supporting cast really left much of an impression. Given that Reitman's Up in the Air featured an incredible ensemble of actors and real people, it was a shocking development and one that felt odd when compared to his other 2018 movie Tully. Despite that film not being sold as an Oscar darling, it reteamed the Juno director and screenwriter in one of his most acclaimed films since Young Adult. It was clear that they were not pushing the film for Oscars, as all attention shifted to The Front Runner - itself named in such a way to confuse the Oscar prognosticators. 

The film acquired distribution rights at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. That's when it became clear what its intentions were. It would later play at Telluride Film Festival and eventually Toronto International Film Festival. The buzz was consistent. Jackman was good, but it would be a stretch to see any other major nominations pop up.

In one of the more cynical moves by recent Oscar-chasing movies, Jackman won the Hollywood Actor Award at Hollywood Film Awards. While every other nomination honor it received happened later, the one that made this stand out was that there was little to suggest that it was for The Front Runner itself. If anything, it was honoring the idea that Jackman was a nice guy. Still, the most offensive part about this marketing ploy was that it was handed out on November 4... TWO days before the film's actual release. Of course, this isn't as prestigious as giving him a Golden Globe or Gotham Award, but it still was designed solely to get butts in seats, but only after they voted. Given that most people likely would vote after work, it didn't seem likely that they would have movies on their minds.

The election day release was a great way to build attention. It was a political movie that was caught up in a recent string of noteworthy journalism dramas featuring the Bradlee family, including Spotlight and The Post. There was the belief that this would be a film that spoke to America's desire for the truth in every situation, and Sony knew how to target this audience. They would run ads on every major news network, trying to reach across the aisles for liberal and conservative outlets, encouraging them to see the film. They even released one of the best posters of 2018 featuring a tour van running off a cliff, which unfortunately was also symbolic of the film's Oscar campaign as well.

In one of the few memorable exchanges for the film, Jackman teamed with fake internet rival Ryan Reynolds to do some fun promotion. In a Twitter video, Reynolds created a smear campaign that existed to call Jackman a phony. Despite the slander, it ended with a promotion to go and see The Front Runner. It's easily the most clever thing that this whole campaign did, and probably one of the few resonating aspects:

How well do you really know @RealHughJackman? pic.twitter.com/cV0W7C4LE3

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) November 2, 2018

With everything in place, it was game time! How was The Front Runner going to do in theaters? The plan was for the unprecedented election day release. While this technically happened and there was a big hubbub about it, the actual turnout was a bit dismal. Averaging $1,1712 per screen, it didn't have the most encouraging opening day. With an expansion shortly after, the hope was that by the weekend the word of mouth would pick up. It would end up grossing $76,199 in its first six days, which Deadline confirmed was not great odds. This was looking to be another bomb for Reitman and would end up only earning $2 million in total.

The Front Runner was anything but by the end of 2018. With almost zero traction, its attention-grabbing release strategy failed to get attention and even the attraction of Jackman wasn't enough to keep the attention focused on them. Maybe it spoke to some people who wanted a fun campaign movie, but it was not even the only game in town. The Hate U Give was reaching a wider audience off of word of mouth, and overall Tully would prove to be Reitman's more successful 2018 movie. The film was dead in the water, and there was little to save the campaign. It would have that election day honor, but that was about it.

- The Payoff -

Unlike most movies covered in Failed Oscar Campaigns, there's more of a ceremonious fallout from its Oscar glory. In this particular instance, however, the film has zero staying power. During the time it was playing film festivals, titles like Bohemian Rhapsody soaked up its attention quickly, becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of the year and the biggest Oscar winner of that season. Similarly, Adam McKay's Vice would go on to become the most discussed political drama of the fall. While Reitman would make the rounds with Tully at critics circles and the Golden Globes, he was done with his Oscar season rather quickly.

Was this preventable? In all honesty, the numbers all suggest that it would've been a longshot no matter how things are played. Had it used a more conventional release strategy, it may have done a little better financially, but odds are that it would still be as forgotten as it quickly became. Vice had more traction over it, and other titles like Green Book and BlacKkKlansman were speaking more to where audiences were in regard to political discussion. The Front Runner may have been good, but the Rotten Tomatoes audience score was low and the idea of basing a drama around extramarital affairs seemed quaint. This was a golden age of political dramas failing to catch on, such as Chappaquidick and Mark Felt: The Man Who Took Down the White House. Certain narratives just didn't attract audiences at this time. 

While Reitman may stand a chance of eventually making the rounds to the Oscars again, it does look like it's becoming more of a challenge. His days of making hits like Juno and Up in the Air are far behind him. Now he needs to win back over audiences with dramas that have a deeper meaning and not just feel like they're riding a wave. This particular case feels unfortunate, especially since it was caught on a changing wave of how America talked about politics in film. By comparison, Reitman was a bit too old hat, and that was unfortunate. Still, there's a good chance that nobody will ever release a movie like The Front Runner again on election day. It's not because the film was bad, but because the very idea of thinking you could compete with a national election in limited release was pretty stupid to begin with.