The year’s most surprising Oscar nomination, for the song “Alone Yet Not Alone,” has been rescinded by the Academy because of illegal lobbying by songwriter Bruce Broughton.
Broughton, a former governor of the Academy’s Music Branch and head of the branch’s executive committee for four years, reportedly contacted voters in the branch to lobby for the song, the title track to a little-known Christian historical drama that played for one week in Encino but is not scheduled to open until this summer.
AMPAS campaign regulations prohibit both mailings and email that “extol[s] the merits of a film, an achievement or an individual.” They also state, “Contacting Academy members by telephone to promote a film or achievement is expressly forbidden.”
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In an interview with the Studio System News website, Broughton said, “I wrote a letter to people that I personally knew and thought were a member of the branch to ask to them to look for the song, to be aware that there’s a song there. I didn’t ask anyone to vote for it, I just didn’t want the song to be bypassed … I had a definite eye on the Academy rules [and] was respectful of the conditions.”
The nomination for “Alone Yet Not Alone,” for which Broughton wrote the music and Dennis Spiegel wrote the lyrics, was perhaps the biggest surprise of all the Oscar nominations. In a field that also included high-profile songs from Lana Del Rey, Coldplay, Taylor Swift and Diane Warren, the Broughton song was not on anybody’s radar as a contender, and the movie itself was the least-seen of all the nominees.
The nomination immediately drew a red flag inside and outside the music branch, with questions being raised about Broughton’s lobbying and about whether the film company obeyed Academy rules by advertising the film during its qualifying run. (The Academy reportedly ruled that a listing in Laemmle Theatre’s ads was enough to meet the advertising requirement.)
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