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Define “extortion”

Posted by Guy Lodge · 2:05 pm · November 20th, 2009

A few hours ago, we mentioned James Toback’s allegations of “extortion” within the Academy’s doc branch being responsible for the failure of his film “Tyson” to make the Oscar shortlist. I wrote that the lack of detail provided made it difficult to know how seriously to take him.

As it turns out, the answer is: not very. Steve Pond has done a little digging, and come up with the following:

[The] Academy’s executive director, Bruce Davis, tells theWrap that Toback’s “concern was that one of the documentarians voting to pick the shortlist bore him a grudge and should have recused himself/herself from the balloting.”

The accounting firm, he says,” quoting PwC’s report, “has assured us that ‘no single voter was responsible for [“Tyson”’s] failure to make the shortlist….’”

Thus ends the very brief conspiracy theory. Sour grapes, anyone?

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2 responses so far

  • 1 11-20-2009 at 2:14 pm

    Suzanne said...

    What an idiot.

  • 2 11-20-2009 at 4:07 pm

    Bill Melidoneas said...

    On this topic: Only a moron would say there are no politics to the Academy Awards not sure how far bribes & extortion attempts are from the entire Oscars game.

    Personally I’d like to think extortion & bribes are not part of the system, politics YEA! we could deal with that. Stuff like a homophobic Academy base not wanting a gay film like Brokeback to win Best Picture I can swallow that, not happy but still it’s not extortion.