OSCAR SNUB SHAKES STUDIOS : EXECUTIVES ANGRY AFTER LAST WEEK'S POOR SHOWING IN NOMINATIONS.

Byline: Bernard Weinraub The New York Times

Days after the Academy Award nominations, movie executives are still riveted - and in some cases angered - by a question that cuts to the heart of the creative quagmire that appears to grip Hollywood: How could the studios have released 163 movies last year and have only one, ``Jerry Maguire,'' turn out to be a serious contender for the Oscars?

With most of the Oscar nominations going to independent films like Miramax's ``English Patient,'' Fine Line's ``Shine'' and Gramercy's ``Fargo,'' the judgment by the voters of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seemed not only an implicit criticism of studio movies but also the very system that created them.

Even executives within the major studios say the high costs of making films, the increasing importance of the overseas market, which favors action and high-tech blockbusters, and the eagerness of many studios to make franchise films to merchandise at stores or exploit in theme parks contribute to the decline of more serious, grown-up fare.

Perhaps even more important is the deepening fear among executives that making a risky film or two that fail at the box office will mean their dismissal. This leads to a bizarre business practice endemic to Hollywood: Studios like Universal prefer to make tepid but derivative action-adventure films like ``Daylight,'' which cost about $70 million, and ``Dante's Peak,'' which cost about $100 million, that may have appeal overseas, rather than a delicate $4 million film like ``Shine.''

What has emerged in Hollywood is what John Ptak, a veteran agent at the Creative Artists Agency, called ``Broadway and off-Broadway.'' That is, studios lavish most of their money and attention on spectacles while independents, some of them actually owned by conglomerates, focus on edgier, more provocative, character-driven dramas.

``It's not so much that all independent films are so great,'' Ptak said. ``It's that studios have let them loose and aren't covering that territory much anymore.''

Several of the most powerful movie executives tacitly agreed; yet they spoke with blunt anger about the criticisms against studios. Moreover, the executives said studio efforts to make riskier films were often flayed unjustly by critics, ignored by the 5,000 members of the Academy and treated with a double standard.

``I resent this; I resent this business of looking down on studios; I resent this attitude that studio executives are boorish and louts and can't wake up in the morning without tying their shoelaces wrong,'' said William Mechanic, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. ``There's something very chic to say you're an independent. It's chic of Miramax to say they're independent when they're owned by Disney. If a studio did the same pictures, they'd get killed.''

He cited various Fox films - and other studio movies - that were serious and not ``popcorn movies,'' but were largely ignored by the Oscar voters and critics. The Fox films included ``The Crucible,'' ``Courage Under Fire'' and ``Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.'' Acknowledging that the studio had, at the last moment, dropped out of making ``The English Patient'' because of budget and casting issues, Mechanic said, ``If we stayed with `The English Patient,' we'd be criticized: `What are they doing with this?' It's all pretty amazing.''

Other executives concur. ``What's a little disingenuous on the part of the independents is when they say that studios don't care about quality, that studios are stupid and couldn't tell a good-quality script from a bad-quality script,'' said Joe Roth, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. ``That's facile and not accurate.''

But he added: ``The focus of our efforts has got to be on the mainstream. The size of these companies, the amounts of money you spend to make and market a film, our agenda of distributing these films all over the world - with the size of the staff we have - puts the bulk of our attention on making movies that will be accessible to as many people as possible.''

Similarly, Robert A. Daly, a co-chairman of Warner Brothers, said the very nature of film studios made it harder and harder to make riskier films. He attributed this to hefty overhead costs and union rules, coupled with the general refusal of stars and filmmakers to take the same fee cuts they would accept if they worked on an independent film.

``People say, oh, Warner Bros. does it. They can afford to spend a lot of money,'' he said. ``But if you're working for an independent, you're doing it at a different pace and scale, with no big salaries, no big trailers, no big anything.'' Even the cost of a modest independent film would explode at a big studio, he said.

``If `Shine' costs six times as much as it did, is it a good bet?'' Daly said. ``I'm not sure.'' He added that this year Warner Bros. had initially pinned its hopes for Oscars on the Merchant-Ivory film ``Surviving Picasso,'' with Anthony Hopkins, but the movie failed. Another movie with Oscar potential, ``Michael Collins,'' with Liam Neeson, disappeared at the box office despite generally strong reviews. ``In the past, we've had `Chariots of Fire'; we've had `Driving Miss Daisy,' smaller-budget movies that win the Oscars,'' he said. ``You think we're not looking for these kinds of films? We are.''

Yet the overriding strategy of Hollywood studios is not to be on the lookout for ``Driving Miss Daisy'' so much as ``Twister.''

Even the vaunted DreamWorks SKG studio and its founders, Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, follow the trend despite having the rare clout, independence and money to do whatever they want creatively. These men are hardly worried about losing their jobs, yet they have taken a safe, predictable route in their opening ventures. Their first movie, ``The Peacemaker,'' with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, to be released in September, is an action-adventure; their second film, ``Mousehunt,'' is a modest Nathan Lane comedy.

``It's become harder and harder for studios to justify spending these levels of money to support some guy who has a crazy idea and wants to express himself,'' said James L. Brooks, the Academy Award-winning writer and director of ``Terms of Endearment,'' who was a producer of ``Jerry Maguire.'' The film was made by Tri-Star, a division of Sony. ``How many studios do you know who'll give $50 million to this guy?''

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