A week after a song from Irish film Once was nominated for an Oscar, there is confusion regarding the song's eligibility for the award.
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova wrote the song, Falling Slowly, and performed it in Once, in which they play the leading roles.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), which organises the Oscars, stipulates: "To be eligible, a song must consist of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the film."
The Carpetbagger, a film-related blog on the New York Times website, said the song "may have run afoul of those rules" and that the music branch of Ampas would be "looking into the matter" yesterday, with a decision to follow soon after.
The Ampas publicity office had not responded to an inquiry from The Irish Times at the time of going to press last night.
Last month, Ampas issued a list of 55 songs from "eligible motion pictures" and included two songs from Once. The five nominations for the best original song Oscar were chosen from that list, among them Falling Slowly.
The confusion arises from the fact that the song features on two albums recorded and released well before the film opened in the US in May last year. The song was included on Hansard and Irglova's CD, The Sweet Season, released in April 2006, and five months later on The Cost, recorded by the Frames, the Dublin band with which Hansard is lead singer.
"The song was written for the film," John Carney, the Irish director of Once, told The Irish Times yesterday. "Glen gave me the song for the film in 2004, but we did not shoot the film until January 2006."
Carney, himself a former member of the Frames, added that Hansard was originally asked to write the songs for the film, and that he only took on the leading male role in Once very soon before production began.
Once had its world premiere at Galway Film Fleadh in July 2006, six months before its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the audience award and prompted a bidding battle among US distributors.