It sounded like a good idea at the time: Hide your awards-hopeful in the major markets, then let it fly into wide release with as much Oscar-nomination momentum as possible. Alas.

Two days after the Slum Interview Heard Round the World forced a detour upon Fox Searchlight's Oscar express, at least one other Best Picture hopeful is making its own swift move for the win.

An angry Focus Features is doing a bit of air-clearing this morning, the day after it premiered its Oscar-chasing biopic Milk to an adoring hometown crowd in San Francisco and offered its first screenings to press in L.A. and New York. But it's a few people who haven't seen the film who are of particular interest to Focus president James Schamus, who all but firebombed Hollywood Reporter headquarters Tuesday in a letter to the editor denouncing its coverage of his film — a screed conveniently CC'd to the rest of the Internet as well.The contretemps started yesterday morning when THR reporter Steven Zeitchik — who mostly sounded ticked off he wasn't invited to the first press screening — wrote about "the Milk marketing conundrum," suggesting that Focus had "eschewed publicity" while pushing director Gus Van Sant and star Sean Penn's biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the country, who was assassinated in 1978. The main point of comparison was Focus's Brokeback Mountain, which THR noted was a lightning rod for conservatives months before it was released in 2005. Citing no festival appearances, limited press exposure and, bafflingly, a Las Vegas test screening in which two senior citizens reportedly sought to leave during a love scene between Penn and co-star James Franco, THR's big picture showcased a movie that Focus depoliticized on purpose, lest the early backlash hinder its box-office and awards chances. "With all the politicking going on (not just the election but, here in California, with Proposition 8, a subject that mirrors eerily one of Harvey Milk's battles)," Zeitchik wrote in a blog follow-up, "the company was eager to avoid talk-radio defining the movie for it."

As supporters of California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative picketed last night's San Francisco premiere of Milk, producers of the film fired back at allegations that Focus Features is hiding their spiritual follow-up to Brokeback Mountain because it's too gay to promote during an election season. In a letter to The Hollywood Reporter, Focus chief James Schamus slams the report, citing the film's "most explosively received and appreciated trailer in the history of our company" along with a litany of gay tie-ins.As you'll recall, Steven Zeitchik slammed Focus' marketing approach yesterday, resulting in an angry letter from Schamus, who first cites the film's production schedule as the reason for the delay, and then tries to counter Zeitchik's criticism of the studio's gun-shy approach:

It's probably asking a lot for a Monday, but pretend for just a second that you're Focus Features, Universal's mini-major offshoot and the folks who last January made the single biggest buy in the history of the Sundance Film Festival: Hamlet 2, which sneaked into Park City at the last minute and left 10 days later with lukewarm (at best) reviews and a check for $11 million. So imagine your signature was on that check, and imagine how much weight you'll lose this week as your appetite plunges with Hamlet 2's box-office prospects: $435,000 on 103 screens, averaging $4,223 per for one of the most profound festival flops of the decade — not to mention the film that bumps Steve Coogan back to ensemble/supporting-class in American movies. To be fair, the film goes wider later this week, and Focus always has the UK release this fall and whatever slight cult audience accrues for video. So it could be worse — now imagine you're Rainn Wilson.As we anticipated last Friday, TV viewers' Wilson goodwill isn't exactly multiplex-ready. The Rocker's marketing misfires, non-existent word-of-mouth and release-date follies yielded a $2.8 million, 12th-place opening. We're not in the short-sighted camp that thinks Fox is having the Summer From Hell — not with The Happening and What Happens in Vegas finding very respectable profits overseas — but there really is no positive way to spin this one, at least not for his toplining future. Until further notice, Wilson is Dwight Schrute and the clever bit-parter who has a way with pregnancy-test pitches and other Oscar-winning patois — maybe not in that order, but at least in that zone. Maybe a few scenes in Inglorious Bastards? Our Mondays are too fragile as it is to go through this again.

Our anticipation is great for Oscar-winning, Gays-friendly director Ang Lee's next movie, Taking Woodstock; based on the memoir by Elliot Tiber, it's the unlikely tale of a closeted guy working at his parents Catskills motel inadvertently responsible for mounting the music festival that defined a generation. (OMGZ! I CAN HAZ GAI HIPPYZ?!!!) How to make an already awesome and weird project even more awesome and weird? Variety now reports that comedian Demetri Martin is who Lee wants for the lead. With shooting set to begin in late August, and a greenlight from DreamWorks for his script Will, look for 2009 to be the year that the comic makes the seemingly inevitable leap from cultish stand-up and Daily Show correspondent to full-fledged movie star. It's also going to be the year that actor-comedians go gay on film, but hopefully Martin's portrayal will be a little more nuanced, and less spray-tanned and Versaced, than Jim Carrey's.

In other Cannes program news from Todd McCarthy's Variety survey this morning, Steven Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro's Che Guevara biopic two-fer The Argentine and Guerilla will apparently join Sex and the City among the year's notable omissions. It's a bit of a surprise considering Soderbergh's lightning-fast methodology and Focus Features' high expectations for early awards momentum (the Universal subsidiary is holding the Coens' Burn After Reading until September as well); also, as we hear from McCarthy after the jump, at least one of the films is ready to go:

· They aren't done administering the defibrillator to the dead-eyed corpse of late-night TV just yet: Some are buzzing that "several hosts" plan on returning to the air by January 7, making life a little less egg-pelty for Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly. [Variety]
· After next week, however, every scripted TV series shooting in LA will have officially gone dark, explaining the eerie, silent calm throughout the city, and the longer, sadder lines at the Coffee Bean. [Variety]
· A new ceremony from The Academy of TV Arts & Sciences "will highlight and demonstrate the good things that TV does." The first lifetime achievement award goes to Fox Alternative Programming guru Mike Darnell, for his "tireless efforts in furthering the cause of people being hooked up to a lie detector and forced to answer whether or not they are still attracted to their spouse on national TV." [Variety]

Oscar season. Cue the usual chest-beating by the New York independents. Miramax has Chicago in contention; New Line funded Lord of the Rings; Focus Features bought The Pianist. Crain's quotes Amir Malin of Artisan: "People were talking about the demise of Miramax. But (tomorrow) everyone there will be smiling."
New York's Oscar [Crain's]