Academy to clamp down on 'Oscar parties?'

The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive:

In response to an Oscar season featuring a significant uptick in campaign parties and schmooze-fests, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is preparing to impose new restrictions on lavish festivities.

A proposal for revised regulations, which sources tell The Hollywood Reporter is currently being drafted by an AMPAS committee, still must be approved by the Academy's board of governors, which next meets Aug. 2. But the plan will almost certainly include new restrictions on the number and kind of events that can be thrown, and insiders expect new regulations to be adopted.

"There will be a tightening of the rules, no question," an Academy insider tells THR.

The annual film awards season ritual has long included a gravy train of campaign parties, receptions and "celebrations" designed to court awards voters. But as THR has reported, many industry observers raised eyebrows this past season over the increasingly blatant Oscar campaigning that masqueraded as great parties. "Out of control" is how one awards consultant puts it.

In January, Sony Pictures threw a spare-no-expenses bash at Spago, ostensibly to celebrate the DVD and Blu-ray release of The Social Network but also to court voters during a neck-and-neck race for best picture with The Weinstein Company's The King's Speech. Most DVD launch parties don't feature guests like Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Scott Rudin, Michael DeLuca, David Fincher, and Aaron Sorkin.

There were plenty of King's Speech parties, too, like the one Arianna Huffington threw in February with Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hooper, Oliver Stone, Maria Bello and Jane Lynch. "If you're an Oscar voter, you can pretty much go to a party or reception or some kind of event every night from December until the voting ends," one insider says.

A popular trend this past season was the "third party endorser" party, where a well-liked Hollywood figure would host a reception honoring a close friend whose movie just happened to be in contention for awards. Julia Roberts, for example, hosted a well-timed screening and reception for Biutiful on behalf of her buddy Javier Bardem -- who later landed an Oscar nomination for best actor.

It is not yet clear how strict the new regulations will be. The Academy already outlaws certain gifts, as well as lavish events specifically hosted for voters. But bash-throwers have long skirted the party rules by inviting journalists and other industry insiders to events, and by associating the soirees with guilds or other third parties. The goal this year, says a source close to the discussions, is to limit the number and kind of functions thrown in connection with a specific film (not including screenings), to lessen the impression that voters are being constantly lobbied.

"The complaints from members were up this year," says a source in the Academy. "It was looking like vote-buying, and nobody wants that."

An Academy spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the plan. "Each year the Academy goes through a process of reviewing regulations to see what, if any, changes should be made," the rep tells THR. "Until that process is complete, we will not comment further."

Regardless, the Academy is likely to impose the most significant change of its campaigning rules since 2003, when the rules were altered from "guidelines" to the gruffer "regulations," with the threat of actually expelling offenders from the organization. Back in 1996, direct-mail advertising to members was banned as a result of over-the-top materials clogging the mailboxes of voters during the 1995-96 campaign.

Already, top awards consultants are buzzing about possible new changes. Any restriction on what's allowed could alter the campaigns—not to mention the entertainment event-planning economy in Los Angeles and, to a lesser extent, New York.

The question is whether any rule can be devised that can't be outwitted when the stakes are high. And Academy sources stress that the goal is not to eradicate awards season parties entirely. "After all," says a source, "we don't want to be perceived as disciplinarians. This is show business."

Another reason I'm not in favor of the new Academy rules for Best Picture voting...

...and it's similar to my previous issues, which will be documented in an article very soon (Clayton has the piece, it'll go up whenever he deems it appropriate). Here's Steve Pond at The Wrap breaking down the fact that a lot of voters won't have their ballots mean much for Best Picture:

A significant number of Best Picture ballots could end up essentially discarded as the result of the new Best Picture rules instituted by the Academy last week, TheWrap has discovered.

The Academy conceded that an increased number of ballots will no longer influence the slate of Best Picture nominees, but said its figures put the potential number of those ballots at less than 10 percent.

On the other hand, a simulation done by TheWrap (using critics' Top 10 lists rather than real Oscar ballots) shows the number of "unused" ballots topping 25 percent under the new rules.

The good news is that the new system brings some needed unpredictability to the Best Picture race, and guarantees that every nominee has a significant level of voter support.

But the new rules could very well change Oscar campaigning, hurt consensus movies that would have fared well in the past, and essentially take the decision out of the hands of hundreds of Academy members in the Oscars' marquee category.

This impact has not been publicly discussed since the Board of Governors agreed on the new rules on June 14. But the Academy's outgoing executive director Bruce Davis, who proposed the system after consultation with the AMPAS accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, admitted to TheWrap that more voters "have lost their chance to influence the nominations slate" under the new rules, adding, "we're accepting that as one of the givens of the new system."

He also told TheWrap via email, "It's not as though those voters have been disenfranchised. They had a fair chance to help choose a nominee, but not enough other voters shared their admiration for their top-line film. Their situation is similar to that of a voter who endorses the least successful, most outlying candidate in a political primary.

"He voted his heart the first time around and lost, but he'll have another chance in the next round of voting to indicate which of the more mainstream candidates he most prefers."

Exact figures are impossible to come by, since PwC doesn't share them with the public. But under the old system, according to simulations conducted by TheWrap, the Best Picture count could last for 10 rounds or more, and eventually almost every ballot would be used. The new system ends after a single round of counting and redistribution, before many ballots can come into play.

In addition, while voters are asked to list up to 10 films in order of preference, the new system will place enormous weight on a voter's first choice, and make all but the first two or three choices meaningless in the vast majority of cases.

(An aside: I support the change to a variable slate of five to 10 nominees, and think the new rule is a smart one that corrects a flaw in the decision to move to 10 nominations.

But it comes with significant ramifications, and they need to be grasped and discussed.)

To understand how the changes will impact the process, you need to understand the existing process.

First, though, here are some of the things I found when I took 156 critics' Top 10 ballots for 2010, as compiled by Movie City News, and tallied them using both the old Best-Picture system and the new one:

THE GAP

Using the old system, my 2010 simulation took 11 rounds to produce 10 Best Picture nominees. At the end of those 11 rounds, only 10 ballots (six percent of the total) had been discarded, because those critics opted entirely for films that ended up out of the running.

The new system, though, uses just one round of counting and redistribution to come up with the nominees. Using that system, a full 43 ballots, representing almost 28 percent of the total vote, ended up having no impact on the slate of nominees.

Critics who voted for "The King's Speech" or "The Social Network" helped their top choices get nominated. Ones who went for "Biutiful" or "Shutter Island" had their ballots redistributed to help out another pick. But the ballots of critics whose top picks were "True Grit," "Blue Valentine," "The Kids Are All Right" and 17 other films were left sitting on the table.

Because they voted for the 21 films that fell into the gap between one and five percent of the vote -- which is to say, because they voted for films that narrowly missed being nominated -- they were unable to influence the outcome the way they would have under the old process, when those films would eventually have been eliminated and the ballots redistributed to help each voter's other selections.

I did the same kind of simulation with MCN's 2009 critics' lists, and the results were similar: the number of unused ballots went from well under 10 percent to more than 25 percent.

(Certainly, you can't draw direct comparisons between tallying 156 critics lists and 5,000 Oscar ballots; the critics, for one thing, are more likely to champion obscure films than Academy members, which might well lead to higher levels of unused ballots. And Davis insisted that Academy figures place their number of unused ballots at less than 10 percent under the new system. But my demonstration makes it clear that stopping after one round will increase the number of Academy voters whose ballots don't affect the results, and Davis did not dispute that finding.)

MOVIN' ON UP? NOT ANYMORE

When I tallied the ballots under the new system, "Toy Story 3" squeaked in as the eighth and final nominee, with 6.6 percent of the total.

But when I counted those same ballots using the old system, both "The Ghost Writer" and "Dogtooth" leap-frogged "Toy Story" in the later rounds of voting, landing nominations courtesy of redistributed votes from other films as they were eliminated.

Under the new count, the redistributed votes that helped those films move up and secure nominations would never have come into play.

THE PRIME NUMBER

In the old system, a ballot could be redistributed several times, with its vote progressively going from the movie listed first to the one listed second, third, fourth or even lower.

Under the new rules, though, the chances for those lower choices to come into play are reduced dramatically. In my 2010 simulation, fewer than half the ballots were redistributed at all -- and on the ones that were, the majority simply had their vote moved from the critic's first choice to his or her second.

A voter's first choice has always been the most important choice; now, in many cases, it's the only choice that matters. For studios and Oscar campaigners, this means that it's no longer a productive strategy to urge voters to list you among their top few choices. If you want to survive that first round and land a nomination, you need to be the first choice.

The Academy is aware of these ramifications, and I'm sure the governors took it into account in what was by all accounts a lengthy discussion before adopting the new rule. I also suspect that PwC had figures to show that stopping after one round wouldn't dramatically alter the results most years, other than creating a higher bar for Best Picture nominees to reach.

But when one of the privileges of Academy membership is the ability to influence the slate of movies that will come to represent the year's best, a move that could dramatically shrink the number of those able to do just that is a move that ought to receive some scrutiny.

*

And now, a more detailed description of the Oscar voting process, both before and after the new rules:

In the Best Picture category until now, as in most other categories, completed nominating ballots are put in stacks, based on the film ranked first on each ballot. A number is generated to determine the minimum number of votes required to assure a nomination, and any film that tops that number immediately becomes a nominee.

Films that get significantly more votes than they need for the nomination trigger the co-called "surplus rule," and the ballots for those films are redistributed to give a portion of the vote to the films listed second on each one of those ballots.

Once the surplus redistribution has taken place, the film with the smallest stack of votes is eliminated, and each of its ballots is redistributed into the pile of the film listed second on that ballot. (If that film has already been either nominated or eliminated, the vote goes to the third-place choice, or the highest-ranked choice still in the running.)

The system proceeds round after round, with the least-popular film or films eliminated in each subsequent round, until it comes up with the desired number of nominees. To arrive at 10 nominees will likely take at least half-a-dozen rounds, and often many more than that.

The new system, though, does away with those rounds of redistribution, and arrives at the slate of nominees through what Davis told TheWrap is a three-step, one-round process:

1. As in the old system, all the Best-Picture ballots are put in piles based on each voter's first choice. Based on the number of ballots received, PwC will determine the number required to guarantee a nomination in the initial count by dividing the number of ballots cast by 11 (the number of available nominations plus one), and then adding one.

In assigning this number, PwC will assume that 10 nominations are up for grabs, even though the final number may well be lower. For instance: If 5,000 of the Academy's near-6,000 members cast ballots in the Best Picture category, the magic number will be 455.

In that situation, a film with 455 votes or more is automatically a nominee.

2. Any film with 20 percent more votes than it needs triggers the surplus rule, in which the unneeded portion of each vote will go to the second-place film on that ballot, or the highest-ranked film that's still in the running.

If, for instance, you need 455 votes to be nominated but you get twice that many, 910, each of your votes will count 50 percent for you and 50 percent for the voter's next choice. If you get a third more votes than you need, that third will go to your second choice.

Note: Contrary to a recent explanation in the Hollywood Reporter, this redistribution does not take place with the ballots of all films that receive more than 5 percent of the vote. It only takes place with films getting 20 percent more than they need to guarantee a nomination. (That means you need to get just under 11 percent of the first-place votes, or 546 votes in our example, to trigger the surplus rule.)

3. Once the surplus redistribution has been made, the films that have less than 1 percent of the total -- meaning, in our hypothetical case of 5,000 ballots, all of those with fewer than 50 first-place votes -- also have their ballots redistributed. On each of those ballots, the first-place film is crossed off and the vote goes to the film listed second, or to the top-ranked film that is still in the running.

And then the vote stops.

fter this single round of redistribution, the accountants will total up all the votes. Any film that now has at least five percent of the vote -- in our example, any film with 250 votes -- becomes a Best-Picture nominee.

A PwC study of the last decade of Oscar voting says that the result will be between five and 10 nominees.

-Joey's Two Cents: I'll have more to say about this, but it just strikes me as plain unfair...thoughts?

The Academy invites 178 new members!

Behold the press release:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is extending invitations to join the organization to 178 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures. Those who accept the invitation will be the only additions in 2011 to the Academy’s roster of members.

“These individuals are among the best filmmakers working in the industry today,” said Academy President Tom Sherak. “Their talent and creativity have entertained moviegoers around the world, and I welcome each of them to our ranks.”

The Academy’s membership policies would have allowed a maximum of 211 new members in 2011, but as in other recent years, several branch committees endorsed fewer candidates than were proposed to them. Voting membership in the organization has now held steady at just under 6,000 members since 2003.

In an unprecedented gesture, the list of new members includes documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington, who was killed in action in Libya in April. Hetherington had been a 2010 nominee for his film “Restrepo,” but died prior to the Academy’s spring meetings to select new members. The Documentary Branch proposed that Hetherington’s name be included among the year’s invitees. The governors agreed.

The 2011 invitees are:

Actors

Russell Brand – “Arthur,” “Get Him to the Greek”

Gerard Butler – “The Ugly Truth,” “300”

Vincent Cassel – “Black Swan,” “Eastern Promises”

Robbie Coltrane – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” “Mona Lisa”

Bradley Cooper – “Limitless,” “The Hangover”

John Corbett – “Sex and the City 2,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”

Rosemarie DeWitt – “The Company Men,” “Rachel Getting Married”

Peter Dinklage – “Find Me Guilty,” “The Station Agent”

David Duchovny – “Things We Lost in the Fire,” “The X-Files”

Jesse Eisenberg – “The Social Network,” “The Squid and the Whale”

Jennifer Garner – “Arthur,” “Juno”

John Hawkes – “Winter’s Bone,” “The Perfect Storm”

Thomas Jane – “The Mist,” “The Thin Red Line”

Nastassja Kinski – “An American Rhapsody,” “Tess”

Beyonce Knowles – “Dreamgirls,” “Austin Powers in Goldmember”

Mila Kunis – “Black Swan,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”

Jennifer Lawrence – “Winter’s Bone,” “The Burning Plain”

Tea Leoni – “Ghost Town,” “Spanglish”

Anthony Mackie – “The Hurt Locker,” “Million Dollar Baby”

Lesley Manville – “Another Year,” “Topsy-Turvy”

Rooney Mara – “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “The Social Network”

Dominic Monaghan – “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”

Connie Nielsen – “Brothers,” “Gladiator”

Ellen Page – “Inception,” “Juno”

Wes Studi – “Avatar,” “The Last of the Mohicans”

Mia Wasikowska – “Jane Eyre,” “The Kids Are All Right”

Jacki Weaver – “Animal Kingdom,” “Cosi”

Animators

Geefwee Boedoe – “Let’s Pollute,” “Monsters, Inc.”

Alessandro Carloni – “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Over the Hedge”

Sylvain Chomet – “The Illusionist,” “The Triplets of Belleville”

Jakob Hjort Jensen – “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Flushed Away”

Biljana Labovic – “The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger,” “Idiots and Angels”

Tomm Moore – “The Secret of Kells,” “Backwards Boy”

Teddy Newton – “Day & Night,” “Ratatouille”

Bob Peterson – “Up,” “Finding Nemo” (also invited to the Writers Branch)

Javier Recio Gracia – “The Lady and the Reaper,” “The Missing Lynx”

Andrew Ruhemann – “The Lost Thing,” “City Paradise”

Kristof Serrand – “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas”

Shaun Tan – “The Lost Thing,” “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!”

Simon Wells – “Mars Needs Moms,” “The Prince of Egypt”

Art Directors

Anahid Nazarian – “The Virgin Suicides,” “The Godfather, Part III”

Lauren E. Polizzi – “Cowboys & Aliens,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

At-Large

George Aguilar

Barry Bernardi

Christopher Dodd

Ted Gagliano

James L. Honore

Dawn Hudson

Beverly Pasterczyk

Randall Poster

Ric Robertson

David Schnuelle

Randy Spendlove

Beverly Joanna Wood

Casting Directors

Nina Gold – “The King’s Speech,” “Jane Eyre”

Jina Jay – “The Reader,” “Layer Cake”

Lora Kennedy – “The Town,” “Syriana”

Cinematographers

Frank Byers – “Illegal Tender,” “Boxing Helena”

Patrick Cady – “Lottery Ticket,” “Broken Bridges”

Danny Cohen – “The King’s Speech,” “Pirate Radio”

Lukas Ettlin – “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “Middle Men”

Steven Fierberg – “Love & Other Drugs,” “Secretary”

Barry Markowitz – “Crazy Heart,” “Sling Blade”

Charles Minsky – “Valentine’s Day,” “Pretty Woman”

Lawrence Sher – “The Hangover,” “Garden State”

Eric Steelberg – “Up in the Air,” “(500) Days of Summer”

Costume Designers

Odile Dicks-Mireaux – “An Education,” “The Constant Gardener”

Sarah Edwards – “Salt,” “Michael Clayton”

Danny Glicker – “Up in the Air,” “Milk”

Directors

Gregg Araki – “Kaboom,” “Nowhere”

Susanne Bier – “In a Better World,” “After the Wedding”

Neil Burger – “Limitless,” “The Illusionist”

Lisa Cholodenko – “The Kids Are All Right,” “Laurel Canyon” (also invited to the Writers Branch)

Debra Granik – “Winter’s Bone,” “Down to the Bone” (also invited to the Writers Branch)

Tom Hooper – “The King’s Speech,” “The Damned United”

John Cameron Mitchell – “Rabbit Hole,” “Shortbus”

Yojiro Takita – “Departures,” “Himitsu”

Documentary

Jon Alpert – “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province,” “Lock-up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island”

Amir Bar-Lev – “The Tillman Story,” “Fighter”

Lesley Chilcott – “Waiting for ‘Superman’,” “It Might Get Loud”

Carl Deal – “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Trouble the Water”

Charles Ferguson – “Inside Job,” “No End in Sight”

Tim Hetherington – “Restrepo” (posthumous)

Sebastian Junger – “Restrepo”

Thomas Lennon – “The Warriors of Qiugang,” “The Blood of Yingzhou District”

Diane Weyermann – “Waiting for ‘Superman’,” “Food, Inc.”

Ruby Yang – “The Blood of Yingzhou District,” “The Warriors of Qiugang”

Executives

William J. Damaschke

Richard M. Fay

Donna Langley

Leslie Moonves

Vanessa L. Morrison

Bill Pohlad

Rich Ross

Jeff Small

Thomas Tull

Film Editors

Tariq Anwar – “The King’s Speech,” “American Beauty”

Naomi Geraghty – “Limitless,” “Reservation Road”

Jon Harris – “127 Hours,” “Layer Cake”

Darren Holmes – “How to Train Your Dragon,” “The Iron Giant”

Pamela Martin – “The Fighter,” “Little Miss Sunshine”

Joel Negron – “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” “The Karate Kid”

Terilyn A. Shropshire – “Jumping the Broom,” “Eve’s Bayou”

Angus Wall – “The Social Network,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Andrew Weisblum – “The Black Swan,” “The Wrestler”

Live Action Short Films

Luke Matheny – “God of Love,” “Earano”

Makeup Artists and Hairstylists

Judy Chin – “Black Swan,” “Requiem for a Dream”

Kathrine Gordon – “3:10 to Yuma,” “Ocean’s Eleven”

Trefor Proud – “W.,” “Topsy-Turvy”

Cindy Jane Williams – “Burlesque,” “Hancock”

Wesley Wofford – “Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son,” “A Beautiful Mind”

Music

Terence Blanchard – “Inside Man,” “Malcolm X”

Fernand Bos – “Crazy Heart,” “Cold Mountain”

Graeme Revell – “Darfur Now,” “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”

Producers

Iain Canning – “Oranges and Sunshine,” “The King’s Speech”

Cean Chaffin – “The Social Network,” “Fight Club”

Kevin Feige – “Thor,” “Iron Man”

Gary Goetzman – “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Mamma Mia!”

Sisse Graum Jorgensen – “In a Better World,” “After the Wedding”

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte – “The Kids Are All Right,” “Laurel Canyon”

Todd Lieberman – “The Fighter,” “The Proposal”

Robert Lorenz – “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Mystic River”

Celine Rattray – “The Kids Are All Right,” “Grace Is Gone”

Emile Sherman – “The King’s Speech,” “Candy”

Emma Thomas – “Inception,” “The Dark Knight”

Gareth Unwin – “The King’s Speech,” “Exam”

Production Designers

Howard Cummings – “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” “John Grisham’s The Rainmaker”

Therese DePrez – “Black Swan,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”

Guy Hendrix Dyas – “Inception,” “The Brothers Grimm”

Jess Gonchor – “True Grit,” “Capote”

Jane Musky – “Something Borrowed,” “Finding Forrester”

Eve Stewart – “The King’s Speech,” “Topsy-Turvy”

Public Relations

Susan Ciccone

Alissa Grayson

Jeffrey Hall

Jill Ann Jones

Mark Markline

Carmelo Pirrone

Ira Rubenstein

David Schneiderman

Loren Schwartz

Lance Volland

Set Decorators

Judy Farr – “The King’s Speech,” “Death at a Funeral”

Gene Serdena – “The Fighter,” “House of Sand and Fog”

Sound

Andrew DeCristofaro – “Hall Pass,” “Crazy Heart”

Joe Dorn – “The Wolfman,” “Spider-Man 3”

Marc Fishman – “Bridesmaids,” “Crash”

Lora Hirschberg – “Inception,” “The Dark Knight”

Chris Jargo – “Robin Hood,” “American Gangster”

John Midgley – “The King’s Speech,” “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace”

Ed Novick – “Inception,” “The Dark Knight”

Hammond Peek – “King Kong,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”

Brian Vessa – “Nemesis,” “Lambada”

Mark Weingarten – “The Social Network,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Visual Effects

Tim Alexander – “Rango,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”

Rob Bredow – “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” “The Polar Express”

Tim Burke – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” “Gladiator”

Peter Chesney – “No Country for Old Men,” “Men in Black”

Paul Franklin – “Inception,” “The Dark Knight”

Kevin Tod Haug – “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” “Quantum of Solace”

Florian Kainz – “Mission: Impossible III,” “The Perfect Storm”

Marshall Krasser – “Iron Man 2,” “Titanic”

Sean Phillips – “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Polar Express”

Peter G. Travers – “Watchmen,” “The Matrix Reloaded”

Brian Van't Hul – “Coraline,” “I, Robot”

Mark H. Weingartner – “Sex and the City 2,” “Inception”

Writers

Stuart Blumberg – “The Kids Are All Right,” “Keeping the Faith”

Lisa Cholodenko – “The Kids Are All Right,” “Laurel Canyon” (also invited to the Directors Branch)

Debra Granik – “Winter’s Bone,” “Down to the Bone” (also invited to the Directors Branch)

Karen McCullah Lutz – “The Ugly Truth,” “Legally Blonde”

Aline Brosh McKenna – “27 Dresses,” “The Devil Wears Prada”

Bob Peterson – “Up,” “Finding Nemo” (also invited to the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch)

David Rabe – “The Firm,” “Casualties of War”

Anne Rosellini – “Winter’s Bone”

David Seidler – “The King’s Speech,” “The King & I”

Scott Silver – “The Fighter,” “8 Mile”

Kirsten Smith – “The Ugly Truth,” “Legally Blonde”

Aaron Sorkin – “The Social Network,” “A Few Good Men”

Daniel Waters – “Batman Returns,” “Heathers”

Additionally, the Academy invited John Coffey, Risa Gertner and Robert C. Rosenthal to Associate membership. Associate members are not represented on the Board and do not have Academy Awards® voting privileges.

Individuals invited to join multiple branches must select one branch upon accepting membership. New members will be welcomed into the Academy at an invitation-only reception in September.

-Joey's Two Cents: Congrats to the new members!