Oscars 2009: 'The Reader' Changes the Game

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Days after Slumdog earned its 10 Oscar nominations, the film was beset by a flurry of news stories suggesting Boyle and his team had exploited the film's Indian child stars. The filmmakers responded with a thorough, detailed denial. No one has accused Weinstein of being involved, but he knows his reputation precedes him. ''What can I say?'' Weinstein says, on the phone from Rome. ''When you're Billy the Kid and people around you die of natural causes, everyone thinks you shot them.''

Still, anyone making a serious play for a Best Picture trophy had better show up with plenty of ammunition. Weinstein will tell you that his plan for The Reader is just to ''screen the movie.'' But you don't have to dig very deep into his back office to find someone who'll happily tell you that Slumdog has ''peaked,'' and that The Reader is the only other film in the race — never mind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, or Milk — that inspires a strong emotional response from Oscar voters. Weinstein, who is admittedly only spending a fraction of the millions he used to shell out on Oscar campaigns at Miramax, insists that his ''strategy this year is to be very low-key.'' Translation: inexpensive, targeted strikes, with perhaps the occasional rogue tactic.

Weinstein's first salvo was to home in on the Academy's aging Jewish population. Although he's been trying to get all voters to see the movie, it's no coincidence that he has screened The Reader at such Jewish cultural hot spots as the Skirball Center in Los Angeles and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, places where one is likely to find older voters with a deep connection to films about the Holocaust. ''When I went to a screening, I was one of about four people who didn't have blue hair,'' says one Academy member and former campaign engineer. ''And I was the only WASP.''

Weinstein also invited Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to The Reader's New York premiere, and courted an endorsement from the Anti-Defamation League, a group whose mission is to call attention to anti-Semitism. He's also not timid about discussing the fact that The Reader happens to be the final film of two of the most beloved director-producers in the industry — Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella — who died within months of each other last year, shortly before the film was completed. About meeting Wiesel, for instance, Weinstein says, ''It must have been the hand of Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, because Elie Wiesel asked to see me after the screening and he hugged me and said how much he loved the movie.'' (Wiesel, through his agent, declined to comment.) But suggest that mining affection for Minghella and Pollack could help The Reader, and Weinstein gets irked. ''People who say things like that underestimate Academy members,'' he barks, then adds, ''But maybe your theory's correct, because Anthony and Sydney are going to win.''

NEXT PAGE: Asked flat out if his company is running out of cash, Weinstein says, ''You gotta be kidding, right?''