In honor of the Oscars, the Atlantic Monthly has some fun reprinting a 1948 essay by Raymond Chandler about the Academy Awards voting process. My favorite part is when Chandler points out that many Academy voters don't actually see the
nominated films and rely on studio marketing campaigns for Oscar buzz. He wrote:All this is good democracy of a sort. We elect Congressmen and Presidents in much the same way, so why not actors, cameramen, writers, and all rest of the people who have to do with the making of pictures? If we permit noise, ballyhoo, and theater to influence us in the selection of the people who are to run the country, why should we object to the same methods in the selection of meritorious achievements in the film business? If we can huckster a President into the White House, why cannot we huckster the agonized Miss Joan Crawford or the hard and beautiful Miss Olivia de Havilland into possession of one of those golden statuettes which express the motion picture industry's frantic desire to kiss itself on the back of its neck?
Sixty years later, Chandler is as relevant as ever.
Meanwhile, I enjoyed Glenn Lovell's account of backstage at the Oscars.
I've only gotten to cover the awards ceremony in person once -- way
back when "Titanic" swept just about everything. (I don't know how I
lucked out and got credentialed that year, but I've never repeated the
feat.) My dominant memories are 1) trying to get my computer modem to
work; 2) a German journalist literally screaming at Kim Basinger to
look his way; and 3) finding out the next day that my paper ran my
story with an Associated Press byline left over from the first-edition
placeholder story that was used. So I covered the Oscars, but I never
had a real clip!
I'll be at home this year blogging away live. You're welcome to drop in at www.fresnobeehive.com/donald.
I'll be at home this year blogging away live. You're welcome to drop in at www.fresnobeehive.com/donald.
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