Harvey Weinstein Hired Obama Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter to Promote "Silver Linings Playbook"

A lot of cross promotion between DC, Hollywood for Ugly People, and Hollywood, DC for Dumb People.

Nobody announced her participation in the [Silver Linings Playbook] campaign, and to the casual observer, she just seemed like another Beltway insider who just happened to be moved to frequently declare her love for the movie on Twitter, writing on February 14, “We're a little over a week away from Oscars. Check out the making of Silver Linings Playbook. Love this movie” (and then providing a link to the trailer). Or “Oscar week – who are you routing [sic] for?” with a link to an article about SLP a week later. And for a web extra Q&A for ABC’s This Week, she was asked her favorite film. “We’re in Oscar season so I’m gonna talk about my favorite film this year,” she said. “My favorite is actually Silver Linings Playbook. That it’s so real and identifiable to everybody in life.”

With top rivals Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty both having big political angles that resonated beyond Hollywood, our sources tell us that Cutter was hired to tout SLP not just as a well-made movie, but a culturally relevant and especially politically significant film that was shaping the national conversation about mental health triggered in part by the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

Vulture also called the Best Picture for Argo a month and a half ago.

1. Hollywood finds itself fascinating.

“I thought it was always going to be Argo,” says one head of marketing at a studio who doesn’t have a financial stake in the outcome, “because it’s a movie that makes Hollywood seem far more important than it ever is thought to be or, for that matter, ever is. It’s a movie for movie people.”

While audiences can be lukewarm on movies about actors and show business, the Academy membership loves nominating them and often gives them the ultimate prize: Last year, The Artist’s tale of old Hollywood hadn’t cracked $40 million domestically by the time the Oscars were held, but it was still named Best Picture. In 2003, Chicago (showbiz and jazz hands!) won out over far more serious, somber dramas like The Hours, Gangs of New York, and The Pianist. And the aforementioned marketing chief theorizes that the reason The King’s Speech won two years ago was because, while it wasn’t about Hollywood, it was about learning how to play a role one is afraid to play, which strikes a chord with the Academy’s acting branch.

There is one more example that undoubtedly gives chilling flashbacks to Steven Spielberg, his Lincoln no longer a safe front-runner: In 1999, his Saving Private Ryan was upset in the Best Picture race by yet another comedy about the business of entertainment: Shakespeare in Love, which co-starred — damn him! — Ben Affleck, playing an actor, no less.

Makes perfect sense. If I'd bothered to read anything about the Oscar race I probably would have realized this.

And then, of course, they had the first lady come out to give it its already-known prize.

And Harvey Weinstein -- who hired Stephanie Cutter to promote his own film, pushing a fake political angle -- arranged it.

posted by Ace at 12:37 PM

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