03/21/2001

By David Germain / Associated Press

LOS ANGELES – Traffic grew more congested. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sprang upward. And Chocolat gave a boost to Junior Mint sales at theater concession stands everywhere.

Even if those movies lose the best-picture race at the Academy Awards on Sunday, they're already winners. Each has rung up tens of millions of dollars in box-office receipts since last month's Oscar nominations, which sent many moviegoers scrambling to catch them before the awards broadcast.

"It's the watercooler effect. The Oscar telecast is one of the most widely viewed entertainment events, and people like to talk about the movies,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

"Come Monday the 26th, if you haven't seen those films, you can't talk about them and you feel left out.''

Unlike many awards seasons, when all five best-picture contenders remain in wide release, the Oscar bounce this year was mainly spread among those three films. Erin Brockovich and Gladiator, the other top nominees, are long since out on video and are playing in only a handful of theaters.

"The fact that only three of the competing films are in the marketplace in any significant way means the pie's bigger for the rest of us,'' said Jack Foley, senior vice president of distribution at USA Films, which released Traffic.

Even before the Oscar nominations, Traffic and Crouching Tiger had defied the odds and become big commercial successes. Traffic is a complex drug-war drama with a huge cast and three intertwining plots. Crouching Tiger is a Chinese martial-arts epic with English subtitles for its Mandarin dialogue.

Audiences already had embraced Traffic to the tune of $71 million by the weekend before the nominations. That same weekend, Crouching Tiger hit $60 million and passed Life is Beautiful as the biggest foreign-language hit ever.

But the best-picture nomination allowed Crouching Tiger to move into many small towns where foreign-language films would not normally play, said Michael Barker, co-president of the film's distributor, Sony Pictures Classics.

"It played in my hometown, Kerrville, Texas, where a foreign-language film had never played,'' Barker said. "There's no way that would have happened if the best-picture nomination had not happened.''

Last weekend, both movies hit the $100 million mark. That performance is even more notable considering they have never played wider than about 1,800 theaters each. Big Hollywood pictures typically can run in 3,000 cinemas or more.

Chocolat, a tale of sensual freedom versus repression in a French village, has more than doubled its domestic gross since the Oscar nominations, climbing to $56 million this past weekend.

Miramax, which released Chocolat, has gained similar box-office bumps in recent years with best-picture nominees The Cider House Rules and Shakespeare in Love.

The ultimate prize is the best-picture victory. Shakespeare in Love nearly tripled its revenues, to $100 million, after getting a nomination and then winning two years ago. Last year, best-picture winner American Beauty padded its take by $55 million after the nominations, climbing to $130 million.

Acting nominations also help, particularly for small, artsier films such as Pollock, a grim biopic about painter Jackson Pollock. The film ran for a week in Los Angeles last December to qualify for the Oscars, then surprised awards analysts by grabbing a best-actor nomination for Ed Harris and a supporting-actress slot for Marcia Gay Harden.

Sony Pictures Classics put the movie into 14 theaters the weekend after the nominations. By this weekend, it will be in about 270 theaters and will have passed the $4 million mark, solid returns for such a heavy drama.

"It's really the Oscar nominations that have given the picture the major impetus it has now,'' Barker said.