Two grabbers in Michael Schulman’s 2.27 New Yorker piece about political strategies in the Oscar race (“Shakeup At The Oscars“):
(1) Condolences to longstanding, influential, hard-working Oscar strategist Tony Angelotti for being referred to in Schulman’s piece as “an awards consultant named Tony Angellotti” while the NY-based Cynthia Swartz and the LA-based Lisa Taback are described as “the queens of East and West.” Imagine if Schulman had described Angelotti as “a veteran Oscar strategist” while mentioning “an awards consultant named Lisa Taback.” Both are technically accurate statements, but the blowback would have been significant.
(2) “[Last] June the Academy released a list of six hundred and eighty-three new members — a record number; forty-six per cent of them were female and forty-one per cent were nonwhite, representing 59 different countries. They included the actors John Boyega, America Ferrera, Ice Cube, Idris Elba, Daniel Dae Kim and Gabrielle Union; the directors Ryan Coogler (Creed), Marjane Satrapi and the Wachowski siblings; and three Wayans brothers, Damon, Marlon and Keenen.”
But Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs‘ “mini-purge” — an attempt to get rid of the Academy deadwood that was first announced in January ’16 — “ended up affecting less than one per cent of the membership, or about seventy people.” That’s all?
Posted on 2.2.16 (“If The Academy Had Only Followed My Weighted Ballot Suggestion…”): “A lot of older Academy members have expressed outrage about losing their voting privilege because they haven’t worked or been ‘active’ within the last ten years. (Along with the Academy’s vague suggestion that their advanced age means they’re probably racist on some level.) If the Academy had only listened to my suggestion to the deadwood problem, nobody would be upset and the community would be more or less at peace.