A Tuesday Wish For The Film Academy: Elect A Great Communicator
01.08.2022 - 18:05
/ deadline.com
Here’s a wish for Tuesday:
Sometime during the day, governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will meet to elect new officers, including a president to replace termed-out David Rubin. I wish they would choose a Great Communicator for the top job.
The film Academy already has a Great Operator running its staff in the person of recently appointed Bill Kramer. Less than a month on the job, Kramer has already restructured management (a new 14-member ‘masthead’ on the Oscars.org Web site integrates Academy and Museum officers), re-ordered priorities (appointment of an executive vice-president for revenue and business development points toward fiscal rigor), and laid track for a possible repositioning of the Oscar ceremony (the Academy having quietly trimmed about four years off of a long-term commitment to the Dolby Theater, perhaps in return for waiving a one-time out that might have let it dump the Dolby altogether after the 2024 show).
There’s every reason to believe that Kramer, who is articulate and not shy, could also serve as principal spokesman for the Academy in his role as chief executive.
But the members, around 10,000 of them at this point, deserve to have an elected president, one of their own, serving as their collective voice—to be their Communicator.
It’s a function that has become considerably diminished in the last decade, as a series of presidents—Rubin, John Bailey, Cheryl Boone-Isaacs—retreated from the more freewheeling public posture of previous top officers—Hawk Koch, Tom Sherak, Sidney Ganis.
Partly, it was a matter of professional background. Rubin, a casting director, and Bailey, a cinematographer, were clearly rooted in a Hollywood tradition that has restricted most