OSCAR WARS: AHISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD IN GOLD, SWEAT, AND TEARS
★★★★★
MICHAEL SCHULMAN HARPER
Recent Oscars have been defined by their debacles: 2017’s Envelopegate, The Slap from 2022, this year’s Al Pacino fumble. As this highly entertaining chronicle of the role the Academy and its awards have played in Hollywood over the past 95 years shows, though, a ceremony cooked up by studio moguls as a placatory sop for their underpaid underlings has always had a habit of making trouble for itself.
Take 1957 for example, when the non-existent Robert Rich – a front for blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo – was awarded a writing prize. Or 1989, when a camp opening number starring Rob Lowe and Snow White led to Disney calling its lawyers. Schulman sniffs out the rivalries and frictions behind the glitz and glamour: Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine’s sibling antagonism, for instance, or the outrage that greeted Gregory Peck’s attempts to freshen up the Academy membership. A chapter on the Shakespeare in Love-Saving Private Ryan dogfight of 1999, meanwhile, delves into the tactics Harvey Weinstein used to nab the Best Picture trophy, and the even nastier things he got up to away from the TV cameras.
As its title implies, this is an Americentric affair that largely ignores the global phenomenon of the Oscars. If you’ve ever stayed up late to see what’s won Best Documentary Short, though, there’s something for you within its 600-plus pages.
