ID LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMYisnt that how Oscar thank-yous always begin? And in this case, I certainly would like to thank the Academy. But plenty of others also deserve my gratitude, and since theres no flashing TelePrompTer and no stickman to play me off, Im going to violate protocol by pulling out a long list.
This book began with Howard Karren, an editor at Premiere magazine, who in early 1994 asked if Id be interested in writing about the inner workings of the Academy Awards show. As I recall, the story was assigned to be five thousand words in length, though Howard and I both knew that if we got the access we wanted, it would end up far longer than that. Six months and about thirty thousand words later, Howard found himself staring at a manuscript considerably heftier than hed expected, or wanted. But he liked it enough to go to bat for itand to my surprise and great pleasure, Susan Lyne, the founder and editor-in-chief of Premiere, wanted not only to run the story relatively intact, but to turn it into an annual feature. I must start by thanking both Howard and Susan. At Premiere, thanks also to ChrisConnelly, Anne Thompson, James Meigs, Kathy Heintzelman, Leslie Van Buskirk, Sean Smith, Kristin Lootens, Christine Spines, Charlie Holland, Catriona Ni Aolain and Peter Herbstplus, of course, the many fact-checkers who every year waded through page after page of indecipherable scrawls from dozens of reporters notebooks.
The photographers who shot the Oscars for Premiere put up with far more restriction and interference than I did, and continually produced remarkable work despite the many obstacles. Thanks to Lara Jo Regan, who inaugurated the assignment and shot the first four years; to David Strick and Antonin Kratochvil, each of whom took over for a year; and to Art Streiber, who adroitly handled the gig for the last five years. Additional thanks to Arts assistant, Armando Gonzalez, and to their intrepid Academy escort, Steve Streich. Several others also helped secure the photographs used in this book: Aaron Roth, Lori Reese, Marion Durand, Helene Lagrange, and Gabriela Kratochvil.
My agent, Sarah Lazin, helped focus my thinking and offered invaluable advice on how to turn a batch of magazine articles into a book. Denise Oswald, my wonderfully sympathetic and supportive editor at Faber and Faber, understood what I wanted to do and kept me on track as I tried to figure out how to do it. Thanks also to Sarah Almond at Faber and Faber.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not authorize or approve this book. All the same, I could not have written it without the support and cooperation of the Academy. My thanks go to Academy presidents Arthur Hiller, Robert Rehme, Frank Pierson, and Richard Kahn, to executive director Bruce Davis, and to executive administrator Ric Robertson. Particular thanks are due to John Pavlik, a reliable, honest, and effective supporter of the project for more than a decade. Thanks also to Leslie Unger, Toni Thompson, Kim Tamny, Jane La Bonte, Frank Lieberman, and Bob Werden; I know that many times their publicists instincts argued against giving a writer the kind of access I had, but they did so anyway. At the Academys archives, thanks to Jeff Gough and Snowden Becker.
Many of the staff and crew who worked on the Oscars were of invaluable assistance, both by sharing stories and by not kicking me out when I got in the way. They include Louis J. Horvitz, Jeff Margolis, Robert Z. Shapiro, Bruce Vilanch, Buz Kohan, Hal Kanter, Carrie Fisher, Roy Christopher,Robert Dickinson, Chuck Workman, Mike Shapiro, and Douglass M. Stewart. Also Don Was, Boyce Miller, Eva Demergian, Mike Thomas, Anat Reichman, Daniel Salzman, Lynn Padilla, Capucine Lyons, Dina Michelle, Julie Kaneko Hall, Angela Pierce, Colleen King, and many others over the years, a few of whom Im sure Ive forgotten. Special thanks to the stage managers, in whose domain I spent a great deal of time: Garry Hood, Dency Nelson, Rita Cossette, Peter Margolis, and particularly Debbie Williams.
Danette Herman is admirably zealous in protecting the stars who trust and depend on her, but she nonetheless granted me access to her terrain with grace and good humor. Michael Seligman likewise made sure I always had what I neededthis despite the fact that he was inexplicably and unfortunately edited out of my first Premiere story back in 1995.
This book could not exist without the cooperation and forbearance of the men and women who have produced the Oscar show: Joe Roth, Laura Ziskin, Quincy Jones and David Salzman, and Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck.
The most essential producer to the project, though, was Gilbert Cates. I met Gil in January 1994, when he was in the midst of producing the sixty-sixth Oscars and I had the task of persuading him to give me unfettered access; after we spoke for about fifteen minutes, he shrugged and said, Okay, lets do this. From that point on, Gils commitment was as total as it was crucial. He is a man of integrity and class, without whose help this book would have been impossible. I also owe an enormous debt to Gils press rep, Chuck Warn, who shepherded me through the complexities of the Oscars with an insight and wit I could not have found elsewhere. If my errors of misinterpretation and indiscretion occasionally made things difficult for Gil and Chuckand I know that there were times when they didI can only offer my apologies, and offer profound thanks for making this possible.
Final thanks, of course, have to go to the two people who learned many years ago that they wouldnt be seeing me very much come mid-March (later mid-February)and that when they did see me, likely as not Id be distracted by production schedules and unreturned phone calls. This is for my wife, Mary, and my son, Adam.
The Oscar Gods
ITS A STRANGE SHOW, said Frank Pierson slowly. Sitting in his office on the top floor of the Academy headquarters, flanked by framed posters from his films Cool Hand Luke, Cat Ballou, and Dog-Day Afternoon, the president of the Academy thought about the three Oscar shows that had taken place during his tenure, and the countless others hed seen during his forty-six years in the business. I think that its gotten better over the yearsand if it has, the one who deserves the most credit is Gil because hes really developed the awards show format. But its strange.
He trailed off, then chuckled. Mike Nichols and I were going to do the show one year, and we both quit, he said, remembering the forty-second Oscar show, in April 1970, for which he and the noted stage and film director Nichols had originally been hired. We were still conceptualizing, very early in the process, when we started feeling that we were failing, and that we werent going to be able to do what we wanted to do.
Pierson grinned. We couldnt figure out how to do it, he said. AsMike said, Every time we got a show going, some asshole had to hand out an Oscar.
JOE ROTH tried to figure it out. He did what he could to put his stamp on the Academy Awards, to give the evening a shot of adrenaline. Hed booked young comics, pushed hard on the promotional front, even turned the presentation of an honorary Oscar into a sight gag. Hed won over some critics without alienating the stodgier side of the Academy, and gotten through it all in a reasonable amount of time, at least by Oscar standards.
And yet
And yet Roths Academy Awards looked a lot like Gil Catess Academy Awards, which looked a lot like Laura Ziskins Academy Awards, which looked a lot like Richard and Lili Zanucks and Quincy Joness Academy Awards. The format was inescapable and to a large degree inalterable: two dozen awards, film clips, five songs you cant choose. Roth thought about it a month later, and conceded the point. You are constrained somewhat, he said, by the elements youre given and the things you cant change.