Wanna join the winners’ circle?

On the eve of this year’s Oscar nominations, one of the industry’s top executives lamented to me about how dispiriting it was to see his studio out of the running for any statuettes, saying, “I’m tired of watching awards shows from the balcony.” In fact, one of the big stories behind this year’s Oscars was how poorly the major studios fared with academy voters. Warner Bros. and MGM had zero nominations, Universal had two, Disney had three, 20th Century Fox had four and Sony had six.

The big winners were all independently operated studios with considerable autonomy from their corporate overlords. Miramax Films had a hand in 40 nominations. Focus Films, the tiny new art-house wing of Vivendi Universal, had 11. Among the majors, only Paramount had a strong showing, earning 10 nominations, nine of those from “The Hours,” a co-production with Miramax.

More than ever, studio movies are geared toward teen audiences, whose tastes gravitate toward action-adventure heroes and lowbrow comedies. Adult drama, which consistently generates the most Oscar contenders, is the very genre studios have abandoned, citing a variety of expensive failures. The worst thing about adult dramas, studio execs say, isn’t just that they are dependent on costly stars but that they actually have to be good movies! Teen filmgoers can be seduced by cool TV spots and marketing gimmickry. But with adult dramas, if they don’t get good reviews and positive word of mouth, audiences won’t go see them.

Some studios aren’t taking this Oscar drought lying down. Warner Bros. has been so frustrated by its lack of Oscar success that it is actively trying to establish a classics division that would allow the studio to make academy-worthy films.

Tired of being relegated to the nosebleed seats at the Kodak Theatre, the top studios recently hired a hard-charging Oscar consultant to recommend ways they could get back into the game. The resulting memo somehow fell into my hands. I guarantee it’s at least as authentic as Roberto Benigni’s nose in “Pinocchio.”

Tips from an insider

Dear Moguls: Let me just say I feel your pain. It must be awful having to take out those congratulatory ads for Oscar losers like “The Emperor’s Club” and “White Oleander” and “Moonlight Mile,” knowing all those dollars could go for a Thursday- night TV spot for a picture that can make some real dough, like “Agent Cody Banks” or “The Core.” But the thing to remember here is that at Oscar time you’re not in the box office business, you’re n the prestige business.

The Oscars are about class, not cash -- there’s a reason why it’s called the academy ya know. To win, you need to understand the kind of movies the academy values. So after doing some serious polling of academy members -- hey, the BLT sandwiches they serve at the Motion Picture Home are better than anything I had at any of your commissaries -- I’ve got a few helpful tips. If you want to get those tuxes and party dresses out of mothballs, listen up!

* Embrace the past! In the real world, period pictures are box office poison. For kids today, ancient history is knowing what band Justin Timberlake was in before he went solo. But in Oscar Land, going back in time means going to the Governors Ball. “8 Mile” was a wonderful movie, but if you’re trying to strike an emotional chord with the average academy member, you should be thinking less about Eminem and more about Betty Grable.

With the exception of one segment of “The Hours,” all five of this year’s best picture nominees are set in the past. Let’s face it -- most of the pictures that didn’t make the cut, films like “Adaptation,” “About Schmidt” or “Talk to Her,” were just as good as the five finalists. But the academy found them too jarring or unsettling -- dare we say too modern -- for their tastes. The academy prefers films that are comforting and life affirming -- dare we say familiar -- hence such recent best picture nominees as “Chocolat,” “The Green Mile” and “The Cider House Rules,” which, it goes without saying, were all set in the past. This is no fluke. Think of the recent best picture winners: “A Beautiful Mind,” “Gladiator,” “Shakespeare in Love,” “Titanic,” “The English Patient,” “Braveheart.” Not an iPod in any of them. An added plus: Going back in time lends itself to eye-catching work in art direction, costume design and makeup, which of course leads to even more nominations!

* Hire actors who can do accents! Academy voters have a lot on their plates and how on Earth are they going to necessarily know there’s some real acting going on unless they hear someone doing an accent? At least it shows they put some effort into it. To this day, no one has any idea what accent Russell Crowe was using in “A Beautiful Mind,” but he still got a nomination for it. Ditto for Daniel Day-Lewis, who is a best actor favorite, in part thanks to sounding like an Ebbets Field peanut vendor playing Bill the Butcher in “Gangs of New York.”

Being a sucker for class, the academy loves English accents, which is one reason Michael Caine is always a contender and last year’s field was full of British nominees from “Gosford Park,” even though almost no one in the academy could understand the dialogue in the picture. This can work in the most improbable of places -- almost everyone in “The Pianist” speaks in a British accent, even though they’re supposed to be Polish Jews!

* Make your movie really long! Teenagers like short movies -- they have other things to do with their lives. If we fed them, academy members would never leave the screening room. Plus, they want movies to feel important and, let’s face it, how important could the movie be if it’s only 97 minutes long? Three of this year’s best picture nominees run at least 2 1/2 hours; I bet they don’t have any extra scenes left for the DVD! You’d have to go back to “Silence of the Lambs” in 1991 to find a best picture winner that ran less than two hours. If only Harvey Weinstein had remembered that, maybe he wouldn’t have had to spend 14 months yelling at Martin Scorsese to cut an hour out of “Gangs of New York.”

* Dying wins Oscars! Obviously I would never say any of this publicly, because it would be too politically incorrect, but Jewish historical sagas, especially involving the Holocaust, are Oscar bait, from “Schindler’s List” to “Life Is Beautiful,” which got an Oscar nomination despite being dismissed by a host of critics as a forced slapstick contrivance. I can’t tell you why the suffering of Jewish people has more resonance with the academy than blacks, Latinos or other minorities -- all I can tell you is it works! . The academy loves tragic heroes, whether it’s people who endure the Holocaust, fight bravely in wartime, battle AIDS or struggle with mental illness. (Just a thought, but ya think it’s too soon to remake “Shine”?)

* Don’t be shy! You have to campaign. The days when you could stay out of sight are over -- you don’t see any Oscars on Dick Cheney’s mantel, do you? Michael Caine may not win this year, but no one can say the man didn’t give it his best, even pitching camp in Los Angeles so he’d be available for a Spago lunch on short notice. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger have been on “Charlie Rose” more than Gen. Tommy Franks. Jack Nicholson had everyone but KABC-TV “entertainment guru” George Pennacchio up to the house. And someone should give Scorsese an Oscar just for trying. He hasn’t been to L.A. this much since Sam Yorty was mayor. The poor guy has been to so many awards banquets he’s beginning to look like Robert De Niro at the end of “Raging Bull.”

Make the movie no one else has the guts to make! I know you guys are trained to be cautious. But remember -- no one but Harvey was willing to make “Chicago”; now it’s an Oscar front-runner. No one, even Harvey, would make “Lord of the Rings,” which could be a best picture nominee three years in a row. Everyone passed on “The English Patient” and “American Beauty,” but they turned out to be winners too. So if you have a script that all your overpaid Ivy League production execs can’t stand, be a real smarty -- put it on the top of the stack and tell ‘em, “This isn’t going into turnaround. This is our Oscar picture!” While you’re doing “Agent Cody Banks 2,” of course.

*

“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to [email protected].