But inside Hollywood’s film business, summer is the time for sly winks, silent nods and the barely visible ritual of an annual realignment of offices and membership at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
This year, the process — never say “campaign,” because one is invited to join or take office — is more consequential than usual.
Under a convoluted system of term limits, the academy, which includes about 6,000 filmmaking professionals, is poised to replace a president, Hawk Koch, who could serve for only one year because he had exhausted his permitted tenure on the governing board. A successor will be selected who may be in place for as long as four years.
That should be time enough to finish a $300 million movie museum whose 200 or so employees will line up with an existing academy staff about 260; to sort out contract renewals for two top executives; and to wrestle anew with perennial questions about the sustainability of the academy’s crown jewel and primary source of income, the annual Oscar ceremony. In 2012 the awards show provided nearly 87 percent of the organization’s $103.2 million in revenue.
There will also be at least a few minutes for the new president to bask in the prestige of an unpaid position near the top of Hollywood’s highly compensated pecking order. “It’s the most glorious job there is, even though the compensation is not so hot,” said Sidney Ganis, a film producer who was the academy’s president from 2005 to 2009.
When Mr. Ganis left office, the academy had about $228.8 million in net assets. By last June, that figure had grown to about $300 million, and is likely higher now, thanks to an annual profit from the awards show, and, in the good years, hefty investment gains.
Across time, in fact, steady growth in the academy’s wealth and reach changed the character of its presidency. For years it had been a largely honorary, part-time job with periodic stress points — as when it came time to negotiate a new long-term Oscar broadcast contract with ABC, a specialty of another past president, Robert Rehme. But it evolved into a nearly full-time position that kept Mr. Koch and his predecessor, Tom Sherak, in the Beverly Hills headquarters building for days on end.
Whether the academy continues to need full-time tending is being considered anew, as its 43-member board of governors prepares to meet in late July or early August to choose between two leading prospects (never say “candidates”) for the presidency.
According to people briefed on academy politics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with the group’s bent toward privacy, one school of thought holds that a paid management team headed by the chief executive Dawn Hudson and the chief operating officer Ric Robertson, who were appointed jointly two years ago, is now solid enough to manage the academy’s day-to-day business. That would allow for the selection of a part-time president with a top-flight executive day job.
At the moment, that camp is leaning toward Robert G. Friedman, 63, currently the co-chairman of Lionsgate’s busy motion picture group, and would most likely remain at that post if elected to the academy presidency.
But others within the academy contend that Ms. Hudson, who had previously run the much smaller Film Independent nonprofit, and Mr. Robertson, a longtime academy administrator, have yet to completely find their footing after a year that brought hitches in the conversion to digital Oscar voting, and a widely criticized, though much-watched, performance by a notably rude Oscar host, Seth MacFarlane.
Some of those are more inclined toward Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Ms. Isaacs, also 63, is a film marketing consultant who, like Mr. Sherak and Mr. Koch, could be expected to make the presidency her main business.
Ms. Isaacs is the academy’s first vice president, while Mr. Friedman is its treasurer. Either could stand for re-election in three succeeding years, returning a stability factor that was diminished by the one-year tenure of Mr. Koch and three-year tenure for Mr. Sherak.
Mr. Friedman brings a strong record as an executive with Lionsgate, Summit Entertainment, Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers. Ms. Isaacs, after long years of service on the academy’s boards, is seen as the consummate insider. And as an African-American, she has helped wrestle with one of the group’s thornier problems, calls for more diversity within the academy’s membership and leadership.
Whether the board chooses either, or comes up with a surprise, can be decided only after a number of retiring governors are replaced in polls now under way.
In keeping with the academy’s tradition against public campaigning, Mr. Koch, who spoke by telephone last week, said he would like to see the job go to someone “decisive” and “a leader in our industry.”
Mr. Koch said he strongly believed that both Ms. Hudson and Mr. Robertson would remain in their positions under new contracts when their current deals expire next year — though a new president will be the leading voice in any decision on that.
As for his own achievements, Mr. Koch said he was proud to have opened channels of communication with an unprecedented general meeting of the academy membership this year, and to have gotten the museum on its way to a planned opening in 2017.
Asked whether he had any regrets, he gave only one: “My disappointment is that I can’t stay.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/business/media/in-oscars-home-the-leadership-jockeying-begins.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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