  Ryan Gosling in "Half Nelson."
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HOLLYWOOD (JAM! EXCLUSIVE) - None of the Oscar pollsters give Ryan Gosling a snowball's chance in Hell or Hollywood to win as best actor on Sunday.
Among typical findings, the on-line Slant magazine has the edgy actor from London, Ont., flat-lining at five percent for his nominated role as a crack-addicted, Brooklyn school teacher in Half Nelson. It is the same percentage accorded Will Smith for his work in The Pursuit Of Happyness. Forest Whitaker leads with 45 percent, virtually guaranteeing an Academy Award for his portrayal of despot Idi Amin.
The Oscar poll in Entertainment Weekly is more generous to the other best actor contenders. Whitaker leads with 35 percent. Gosling has 15 for fourth place and gets insiders praise: "He's the hippest choice by a long shot." But the kicker dooms him: "Inward performances like Gosling's almost never win." At least Gosling beats Smith in this poll. The Fresh Prince trails with 10 percent.
While percentages waver and the runners-up trade positions, other pundits follow much the same trend. So interest in Gosling seems to be more in seeing him stride up the red-carpet with his hottie lover and fellow Canadian actor, Rachel McAdams.
But, according to the modest young Brooklyn filmmakers behind Half Nelson, Gosling has already scored a triumph on the film's behalf just by getting nominated.
"Compared to (almost) every other movie that was nominated," says Anna Boden, "it made very little at the boxoffice and was a much smaller film. And I think this is amazing in terms of getting it out to a wider audience."
Told that Canadians are proud of Gosling, Boden laughes and says: "We're proud of him too!"
Boden produced and co-wrote Half Nelson with her creative and romantic partner Ryan Fleck, who also directed the movie. Half Nelson, their first fictional feature, follows an apprenticeship on shorts -- including one that gave rise to the Half Nelson feature project -- and a documentary on the hip hop scene in Cuba. These folks are nothing if not versatile and innovative.
But Half Nelson was definitely obscure before the nominations. "That's kind of how it was," Boden continues as she tag-teams with Fleck on a conference call to Toronto with Sun Media. "Now it means a lot more people will hear about it and see it."
If life is timing, Half Nelson is blessed now with good timing. Although it earned only a modest $2.7 million at the boxoffice on the arthouse circuit in North America, the film was just released on DVD (Feb. 13) with decent bonus materials. So there is no excuse for interested parties not to rent or buy in a last minute scramble to get ready for the Oscar madness on Sunday.
"I'm sure they were hoping that it would turn out like this," Boden says of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, which handled the release for ThinkFilm, the Toronto-based distributor which put it out to theatres.
"I think it's huge," Fleck says of the importance of the DVD. "It's going to have a great life on DVD that it didn't really have a chance to have in theatres."
Half Nelson is raw and intense. Gosling, now 26 but 24 when he shot the film on location in Brooklyn, New York, plays a young teacher who grew up as the son of 1960s activists. Gosling's character, Dan Dunne, shares his parents' idealism and teaches a unique and creative form of black history in an inner city school.
But he is also suffering burn-out and seeks solace in a crack pipe. His anguish is noticed by one unique, exceptional student, a teen played by Shareeka Epps, who created this character for the original short. Their friendship -- non-sexual but fraught with emotional complications -- is the heart of the film's episodic narrative.
Casting Gosling -- a rising star in Hollywood through films such as The Believer and The Notebook -- was an enormous coup for Fleck and Boden. Yet they are still not precisely sure how it happened. Gosling ended up with a copy of their script "without us really even knowing," probably through their casting director's Hollywood contacts.
"Ryan contacted us after reading the script," Fleck says. "Scripts float around and actors read them sometimes even without an offer and without being given to them by the directors. We learned that happens. But we didn't know that happens until it happened to us."
Yet there were doubts, Fleck admits. "We weren't sure he was right for the role because we hadn't seen many of his movies, only The Believer, and he seemed too young. So we weren't sure he could play a teacher. But we looked at his other movies and realized he was really terrific. He does really neat things in his movies. Then we thought he was great and we could make the teacher (in the script) younger."
Fleck says Gosling has a powerful presence, talent and way of working. "I think it is his honesty in every scene," Fleck says of the actor's most desirable quality. "He really approaches it and makes it real. He demands it -- of himself -- that it's real. That is really exciting to watch, the way he prepares for a scene and the way that he interacts with the kids. He is not going to do anything that he feels is fake. He doesn't force anything."
Gosling helped make the movie -- and his work really is one of those jaw-dropping tour de force performances that binds a viewer intimately into a tough story -- and did generate some pre-nominations buzz.
"I heard all the rumours about the six or seven actors that were in play at the Academy," says Fleck, "so I certained hoped. I had my fingers crossed. But I never counted on it until it happened."
Fleck even tried to shield Boden from the fuss. He did not tell her when the nominations were to be announced. The couple scheduled a romantic getaway to a cabin in a state park in northern New York.
"I knew Anna didn't want to know anything about when it was going to be announced, even though I knew," Fleck says with a chuckle. "So I didn't tell her and we weren't near any radio, TV or anything." There was an email service available nearby in the local library of the town of Hillsdale, however. Fleck got hyped up on the morning of the nominations and was eager to drive into town to "check his email," or so his story was to Boden.
"I was wondering the whole morning why he was so anxious to get out and go to the library: 'Are you kidding me? We're in the woods, it's beautiful, and it's all secluded, and you want to go check your email?' "
But Fleck persisted. And both of them cheered when they did find out they had become the little engine that could in the best actor race. "It was really exciting," Fleck says. "It was a thrill!"
