MOVIE ACADEMY RESCINDS SONG NOMINATION

The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has voted to rescind the Oscar nomination for the song “Alone Yet Not Alone,” after learning that one of its composers, Bruce Broughton, had written to fellow members of the Academy’s music branch, saying that he wanted to make them aware of it. The Academy said that the message violated its rules on promotion. “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,” Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Academy’s president, said in the statement. Broughton said that he was “devastated” by the decision and blamed unnamed competitors who, he said, “had months of promotion and advertising behind them. I simply asked people to find the song and consider it.” The Academy may have taken its action after becoming aware of Broughton’s own acknowledgement of his gambit on the website StudioSystemNews.com. “I knew people wouldn’t know what the film was so, I wrote a letter to people that I personally knew and thought were a member of the branch to ask them to look for the song, to be aware that there’s a song there. I didn’t ask for anyone to vote for it, I just didn’t want the song to be bypassed,” he said. That the song was actually nominated, he added, “caused a reaction a little stronger than I was anticipating.”