If you ever wanted to win an Oscar award for best original song that’s attached to a motion picture, there’s two things you’ll have to do:
First, you’ll have to write an incredible song that’s inventive, but still universal. Second, you’ll have to follow all of the Academy’s rules, because if you don’t, your song won’t even be considered, which is what happened to songwriter Bruce Broughton.
Broughton wrote the song “Alone Yet Not Alone,” for a movie with the same name, and eventually he was nominated for an Oscar. But for some reason, he chose to email people in the voting committee beforehand, and asked them to consider his song for nomination. Of course, this is a big no-no for people to do, so the Academy revoked Broughton’s nomination immediately.
But what makes this even more of a story is that Broughton used to be a part of the Oscar nominating committee himself, so one would think he would have known the rules inside and out. But whether he did or not, Broughton still chose to email people, which quickly caught word.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Academy president, said the fact that Broughton used to be part of the voting committee, made promoting his song unfair, and game him a huge leg up.
“No matter how well-intentioned the communication, using one’s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one’s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage,” she said in a statement.
Broughton then released a statement of his own, and said the promotion that he used was on a very small scale and he encouraged people to listen to the song and determine for themselves if it’s Oscar worthy or not. “I indulged in the simplest grass roots campaign, and it went against me when the song started getting attention,” he said. “I got taken down by competition that had months of promotion and advertising behind them. I simply asked people to find the song and consider it.”
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