The song “Alone Yet Not Alone,” from the Christian movie of the same name, made headlines when it snagged a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Now that its nom’s been revoked, it’s making headlines again.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rescinded its nomination because of what the Academy characterized as campaigning irregularities. Apparently the writer of the song, Bruce Broughton, emailed numerous Academy members during the nominations voting period. And because Broughton is a former Academy governor and a member of the music branch executive committee, that raised concerns about undue influence. The guy would seem to have some serious gravitas in voting circles.
“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,” said Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs in a statement.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the Academy has only revoked nominations five other times—including once after the questionable nominee had actually taken home an Oscar. (Young Americans was initially awarded the 1968 honor for documentary feature, but when the Academy discovered it was originally released in 1967, it transferred the honor to the first runner-up, Journey Into Self.)
“I’m devastated,” Broughton told Variety. “I indulged in the simplest, lamest, grass-roots campaign and it went against me when the song started getting attention. I got taken down by competition that had months of promotion and advertising behind them.”
In a statement, Broughton said he felt like “the butt of a campaign to discredit a song, the nomination of which caught people by surprise.”
Broughton isn’t alone in his suspicions. There are those who wonder whether it would’ve been so easy to pull the nom had the song been part of a big-budget, big-studio movie rather than an indie Christian flick. The movie courted evangelical moviegoers, a demographic that often feels spurned by Hollywood.
So will the controversy hurt or help the movie? Alone Yet Not Alone played in just 11 theaters during its run and made a bit more than $130,000. Even by Christian movie’s more modest standards, that’s not much. The nomination got people talking about a hardly seen Christian movie, and the revocation will have people talking even more.
And the song—whatever happened with the nomination—is worth a listen. It’s sung by well-known singer/evangelist Joni Eareckson Tada—a quadriplegic who lends this old-school hymn a power and fragility that serves it well. (According to Variety, while singing she needed her husband to push on her diaphragm in order to hit the high notes.)
I’ll miss hearing it on Oscar night, of course. But the song itself isn’t going away. In fact, you can take a listen to it right here. (For those having trouble with the embedded video, the link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWVyVMbSzM4)
[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWVyVMbSzM4:550:0]
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