A three-hour tour, a three-hour tour. (Academy, left; David Niven)
Academy president: John Bailey
Academy CEO: Dawn Hudson
Telecast producers: Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss
ABC Entertainment President: Karey Burke
And Bob Iger.These are the people who have made the Oscar mess and the people who need to fix it.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) February 12, 2019
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Alicia Keyes love for her fellow musicians set the tone for a Grammy love-in last night. Really entertaining show.
The Awards season is too long.
this alternate timeline blows
I am actually looking forward to this years telecast, the no host thing has got me curious on how they are going to present this. No treats falling from the sky, no awkward interactions with regular movie goers, this could be a big step forward.
But when you’re excising major awards from the telecast it’s a huge step backwards. I’m disgusted. This seems so easy to fix. BE THE OSCARS. Be long, pompous, self-congratulatory and go all out celebrating movies. I agree on cutting out host antics. Billy Crystal didn’t need those stunts to be entertaining. It’s so freaking obvious to me. I guess I don’t understand the politics behind it.
The presentations during commercials are shameful. Especially since we will still see best song and best cartoon, which are much less important
The Academy, are a bunch of goofs. It’s all self-inflicted wounds at this point, and they aren’t going to stop. Seriously. WHO CARES ABOUT THE LENGTH OF THE OSCARS? No one cares. No one is complaining. Hell. Wrestling PPVs are now longer than the Oscars, and if wrestling fans can deal with it. The Academy should be able to do so as well. It’s just… this shouldn’t be that damn hard, but apparently it is.
I am so glad, that I stopped giving a damn.
A Variety writer actually had a pretty smart idea.
They suggested presenting the three short awards in a separate ceremony (like the lifetime achievement honorees), and to incorporate highlights in the Oscar telecast.
And to combine the two sound awards into one like they did with art/production design many years ago.
Personally I wouldn’t mind scrapping the performances of nominated songs since they’re a huge time-suck and usually awful.
Everything is becoming winner take all. If you’re not some huge celebrity, you don’t get to be in the telecast, which is ironic since it’s arguably the first year you have a celebrity who is nominated for cinematography.: Alfonso Cuaron!
Most baffling to me is that the President of AMPAS is a cinematographer himself! Why he of all people would agree to this is really weird.
It’s just so fucking dumb. Absolutely. Fucking dumb.
seems like the acting branch, by far the largest and thus the most influential in the Academy membership, could put the brakes on these absurd shenanigans if they spoke out en masse and with activist intentions…(i think i saw a russell crowe tweet about it amounting to ‘fuck this shit’ but somehow i don’t think that’ll cut it, maybe more have spoken out and i’ve missed it).
photography and splicing together of said images to tell a story IS moviemaking. relegation of these categories to some winners montage ‘after the break’ is mental and it kinda makes me nuts that i keep seeing these described as ‘behind the scenes’ like some secondary achievement.
(not to take anything away from make-up/hair as a creative skill intrinsic to the design of characters in film-making)
The length and self-indulgence of the Oscars is part of it’s charm. Always has been. People look back at Rob Lowe and Snow White with a kind of nostalgia as well as embarrassment.
Finally it happened. But it ain’t over yet. Let’s see how many more unforced errors they have up their sleeves.
John Bailey’s Bobby Darin-style crooning is supposed to be something else.
“And to combine the two sound awards into one like they did with art/production design many years ago.”
Sound did use to be a single category, but I don’t think art/production design was ever separated. It’s always been one category, though the name has changed over the years.
Given this years nominees it seems to me most movie fans would prefer to watch cinematography announced and have best picture announced during the commercials.
Was only going by what Variety said in their article, Yancy.
Who else has the feeling that this year’s telecast is going to run much longer than three hours?
Should put a crimp on ABC’s plans to air the premiere episode of their midseason series “Whiskey Cavalier” after the Oscars, lol.
Cripes, is that the whole reason for this nonsense, so Disney can try to launch a show Superbowl style after the event? That’s just terrible, yanking what will be the professional achievement of someone’s lifetime so they can keep viewers up to watch some piece of crap that won’t be around in eight weeks.
If that’s true, that’s the dumbest thing ever. When the Oscars are over, the last thing I want to do is watch a new random show. They’re better off playing Rain Man or Titanic or something vaguely Oscar-related afterwards, because if I have to engage with something, it’d better be something familiar that doesn’t require much effort.
Didn’t they used to have a Baba Wawas interview or an Oprah special after the Oscars? Shouldn’t be too hard to re-brand something like that. Although, off the top of my head I couldn’t tell you who they have in-house to host it.
I’m surprised this hadn’t come out earlier, the reason why to hard 3 hrs. Makes perfect sense. Even if it’s not the reason, it seems like it should’ve been floated around before. Generally, I’m all for greed getting smacked down in it’s place, but there is a part of me that’s sympathetic to the Academy. They’re told for years that they’re out of touch with the gen public so they specifically come up with a popular award and that’s shot down. They’re told the show is too long and they put a hard clock on it and that gets blown up. Every year after each broadcast you’ve got a nation full of armchair critics telling what should be done to improve the show, but as soon as someone says or does anything different there’s the massive cry of “Don’t mess with tradition!”
We always got the Walters special prior to the show, but I was in central time zone at the time. It was a good pregame, then 30 minutes of red carpet and on to the show. I guess the cable channels devoting 6 hours of red carpet programing prior probably ate into the interviews audience.