La Salla’s Oscar nomination has already scored it a 50-screen win, and the immortal lines ‘Moments ago I had everything, now there’s a cow in my nose’ are being sung in Italian to Famous Players’ audiences.

The National Film Board’s Howard Krosnick says it ‘took 30 seconds’ to do the deal with Famous that saw director Richard Condie’s short film open with fellow Oscar hopefuls, Shine, Marvin’s Room and Secrets and Lies, on Feb. 21.

Krosnick, head of English Program marketing, credits past Oscar winner Bob’s Birthday with opening the door for nfb shorts at Famous Players, and creating the sort of ongoing relationship where an instant deal is possible. In April 1996 Bob’s Birthday played on 66 Famous Players screens, paired with Don Juan De Marco.

How much is an Oscar worth? The nfb has had 61 Oscar nominations, surely ample opportunity to do the math. ‘In terms of sales,’ says Krosnick, ‘it means it will be a best seller, especially right off the bat.’

For example, Bob’s Birthday, an nfb short by Alison Snowden and David Fine, was picked up by ‘just about every broadcaster in Canada,’ says Krosnick, ‘and sold well internationally.’ Home video sales were also wooed by its Oscar win. Bob’s Birthday fronted Neurotica, an animation compilation which was ‘one of our best-selling home video animation packages over the last year,’ opines Krosnick.

As to pinning down a formula, Krosnick estimates that a nomination has possibly a doubling effect, while a win quadruples the interest for broadcasters everywhere, as well as for video sales.

On March 24, Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will reveal which exponential will apply to the eight-minute computer-animated comic opera out of Winnipeg, produced by Condie (The Big Snit, a 1986 Oscar nominee) for the nfb with Ches Yetman (exec prod on The Cat Came Back, 1989 Academy Award nominee on which Condie was producer/singer/voice).

The short was produced using Softimage, developed by Daniel Langlois in Montreal, which Condie describes as an ‘excellent 3D program.’ The remaining ingredients were ‘a fancy sgi Extreme computerand 58509395345857875983498 cigarettes and Coca-Colas.’ Condie pegs three years as a rough estimate of time the production took, barring ‘hardware failures and all the other tech hell stuff.’

La Salla will be at mip-tv in April, however, the nfb is holding off on a tv release here as a single for now, as it’s developing a one-hour Condie retrospective and looking for a broadcast partner. The proposal is being helmed by Animated Children Interactive division West executive producer Svend-Erik Ericksen.

Some words from Condie, via e-mail, on what’s next animation-wise:

‘I haven’t a clue what’s next – I no longer have access to the 3D technology so I’m playing around with my Mac and a paint program and now the animation on the Internet looks like an interesting area. Sometimes I think I would like to make another imax film or maybe another short film or whatever presents itself. Patrick Godfrey (who did the music for La Salla and all my other films) and I are thinking about a nutty Web page but we are not certain how to get development funding. I seem to be in a holding pattern. I need a break too’