Gangs Adverts Axed

Harvey Weinstein is widely recognised as one of the sharpest tools in the box when it comes to making an Oscar push. But all of Weinstein's clout couldn't prevent Miramax's most recent ad campaign in America for Gangs of New York from being pulled. Academy voters were outraged when an ad campaign for Gangs was run in the trade press featuring an opinions column in which Academy member and former Academy head Robert Wise urged members to award the gong for Best Director to Martin Scorsese. Apparently that goes against Academy rules which state that members shouldn't reveal how they're going to cast their votes. 'It's an outright violation of academy rules,' Academy honcho Frank Pierson told the Los Angeles Times. 'It's a corruption of the process.' Miramax, who promptly withdrew the ad campaign, contended that they had no idea they'd done anything wrong. 'We were completely unaware that this was something academy members found offensive,' explained the company's chief operating officer. 'and since there is nothing that addresses this in the academy marketing guidelines, we certainly did not know this practice was a violation of academy rules.'