Peter Bart: Academy Meetings Intense And Urgent As They Work To Re-Energize The Oscars
07.10.2022 - 03:19
/ deadline.com
Cynics have tabbed them “The Doomsday Summits.” To believers, however, their mission is to re-energize the Oscars at a moment when award shows in general are in massive retreat.
“The show should represent an exciting battlefield where forces in our culture collide,” suggests a new book titled Oscar Wars: Gold, Sweat and Tears.
While the recent “collisions” have been studies in chaos, the ongoing meetings among the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences leaders, Oscar show producers and ABC/Disney continue to search for the keys to a renaissance. Or at least to survival. Bill Kramer, the new Academy CEO, regards himself as a consensus builder, not a collision builder.
By studying the traumas of the past, what can they learn about re-shaping the present? Viewership has been plummeting in recent years and telecast revenues (guesses put them at $120 million) are key to the survival of the Academy — its awards revenue dipped around 10.8% last year alone.
The portents are cloudy. Many of this year’s nominees were created as streamers even as theaters around the U.S. close their box offices (scores of Regals announced their obits this week alone).
Mary Pickford, the golden-curled actress and mogul, would understand the angst. Bullied into chairing the first Oscar banquet in May 1927 she fumbled her lines, mindful that her industry was under attack as a Gomorrah of crooks and addicts.
Plus she’d just had to explain to Douglas Fairbanks, her husband and partner in United Artists, that his high-pitched falsetto would undermine his future in the brave new world of sound.
Michael Schulman’s meticulously researched new book Oscar Wars takes the reader though the almost century-long parade of cultural collisions.
The New Yorker