Let's just put this out there: If The Hurt Locker fails to win Best Picture this Sunday, it will amount to nothing less than the ultimate, most spectacular come-from-ahead flame job in the history of the Academy Awards. Strike that -- in the history of awards, period. It would be like William Faulkner choking away the 1949 Nobel Prize to Mickey Spillane, or Dakota Fanning defeating Rosario Dawson for a 2008 NAACP Image Award. Don't snicker! It could have happened -- but it didn't, precisely there are some honors that the cosmos just isn't ready to cede to the freaks and flukes of everyday human life. But if his latest ill-advised, leaked e-mail tells us anything, Oscar-barred Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier is challenging the cosmos to a duel. And damn if this guy isn't determined to win. Or lose, depending on your perspective.
Forget that this so-called inexperienced producer was disinvited from the Academy Awards on the basis of "aggressive campaigning" -- aka appealing directly to Academy voters by badmouthing another nominee. But that's positively quaint compared to another Chartier e-mail now making the rounds, this one in response to Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver suing Hurt Locker's producers for allegedly basing the film on his work in Iraq. Never mind that the note is more than two months old and that its sudden dissemination just plays into the whole conspiracy-ness of the Locker debacle. The fact that it was even sent -- to Sarver's lawyer! -- in the first place signals a self-destructive streak someone really should have paid attention to. Courtesy of the LAT (who else?):
From: Nicolas Chartier
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 8:07 PM
To: Todd Weglarz
Subject: RE: Sgt Sarver / The Hurt Locker
Hi I'm sorry I've never heard of sergeant sarver/will james. I don't understand is he an actor named will james or jeffrey sarver, I just looked on internet movie database and neither are in the film. I can google but maybe you can tell me who is he and why he's not happy? Everyone says it's one of the best movies of the year, did he just not like the popcorn when he watched the movie? I haven't taken any grossly unfair action against him, I've never heard of him. what negative impact, who's that man? Did I steal his girlfriend? Never heard of him.
best regards,
Nicolas Chartier
Voltage Pictures, LLC
If this is real -- and the way Chartier's epistolary nuttery works, there's no reason it shouldn't be -- then this guy needs to have his e-mail taken away. In any case, heaven forbid this and Hurt Locker's myriad other trip-ups cost it the Best Picture/Best Director tandem it had locked up for the last three weeks at least. There is not enough Febreze in the world to counteract the shitshow we'd be dealing with on Monday.
ยท Nicolas Chartier's behavior is even weirder than you thought [LAT]