You call yourself a producer? Oscar isn't buying it

LOS ANGELES -- Part of the producing teams that helped launch the Academy Award-nominated films "The Departed" and "Little Miss Sunshine" will have to watch from their seats if either movie should win the best-picture Oscar next month.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has ruled that only Graham King will get the credit for the crime drama "The Departed," leaving Brad Pitt and Paramount Pictures studio chief Brad Grey out in the cold.

Similarly, the academy decided that Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa did not meet its guidelines for inclusion as producers of "Little Miss Sunshine," which has already won top honors from the Producers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild.

Producers David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub were ruled eligible.

When a film wins an Oscar, it's the producer who accepts the golden statuette and gives the acceptance speech. Rules adopted by the academy in 2000 limit credited producers to three in order to avoid handing awards to a mob of "producers," some of whom may have gained the credit for little or no effort.

That posed a problem for "Little Miss Sunshine," which has five credited producers.

The academy follows strict guidelines established by the Producers Guild of America when deciding who should get official credit.

According to guild guidelines, a producer exercises decision-making authority in one or more of four areas of filmmaking -- development, pre-production, production and post-production/marketing.

Applying those guidelines, the PGA decided that all five producers deserved credit for "Sunshine," a darkly comedic road movie.

But when the Oscar nominations were announced last week, the academy said the producer credits for "Little Miss Sunshine" were still to be determined.

Thursday night, the executive committee of the academy's producer branch decided to exclude Berger and Yerxa, who found the script and brought it to the film's directors.

The academy announced its decision in a short statement and would not explain further when contacted Monday.

Berger and Yerxa did not respond to a request for comment Monday. The PGA declined to comment.

The academy also decided that only one producer would get credit for the film "The Departed."

The PGA devised its rules after years of complaints about "credit creep" -- the tendency of filmmakers to massage the egos of actors, directors, executives and even agents by giving them undeserved on-screen credit.