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-Hello and welcome to Book Lust.
I'm Nancy Pearl.
My guest today is Michael Schulman, whose new book is, “Oscar Wars,”
with a delicious subtitle, “A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears.”
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
-Thanks for having me, Nancy.
It's great to meet you.
-You as well.
I just thought your book was so interesting.
And I have to say, I stopped at most chapters many times
so I could look up the relevant references on YouTube,
which I want to talk about, a few that I saw,
just to see what you think, too.
So, Michael, where how did this book come about?
I know your earlier book was about Meryl Streep, so clearly
you're a movie person, but where did this particular book come about?
-Well, the germ of
it was a piece I wrote for The New Yorker, where I'm a staff writer,
in 2017.
This was the year following “Oscars So White,” and the Academy was trying to diversify
its membership, which was just causing so much sturm und drang in Hollywood.
And I was interested in writing about how the Academy
president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, was weathering this this storm.
So I went out to Hollywood. I spent some time with her.
I went to Academy headquarters and learned a lot about the history of the academy.
And then I went to the awards
for the first time to cover them in person for the magazine.
And I was in the press room that year.
And it just so happened, if you remember that this was the year of the big envelope
mix up with “Moonlight” and “La La Land,” and I just remember
when they finally showed the card that said “Moonlight,”
everybody in this press room just screamed like something was actually happening.
And I just saw, you know, having observed and thought a lot
about how this year had played out, I saw it as this kind of epic tale of,
you know, Hollywood having this sort of racial reckoning.
And then it all exploded with this
this insane sort of twist ending like a Hollywood twist ending.
And I saw that as like a big story.
And that's really where the germ came for the book.
You know, a lot of Oscar books exist that are kind of catalogs
of every year: who won, who lost, what records were set, who hosted.
And my idea for the book
was to just do about 12 chapters and go...
each chapter would go really deep on a particular year or a conflict
or even a single category, and kind of immerse the reader in
what happened that year and who the characters were
and how each of those moments reflected some change
in American culture or in the evolution of Hollywood.
-Well you start with the formation
of the Academy itself, and and it's
really a question about whether it was even needed
and why, you know, why it continued.
So what was it about that beginning
that made you interested in that?
Like, what did you see was the turning point for the Academy
as it marched up toward 2017 and beyond?
-Well, I mean, what's so interesting about the founding of the Academy,
I knew I'd have to start with year one, basically.
And there was so much going on.
I mean, we think of,
you know, 2017 was such a year of flux and change.
But as soon as you look at any, you know, a year like 1927
to through 1929, which is when they finally had the first Academy Awards,
that was a year of incredible upheaval in Hollywood.
You have the arrival of the talkies, you know, the first Academy Awards in ‘29.
All of the nominated movies were silent films,
and they had the jazz singer, you know,
the groundbreaking talkie that changed the entire medium.
They gave it an honorary award because it couldn't even be in competition
with the other movies. It was a completely different thing.
And then by the next year, the second Academy Awards,
all of the movies had sound.
So right away, you're starting with chaos and upheaval and uncertainty.
And that really captured my my interest because already you have a story of
these people like Louis B. Mayer and Mary Pickford, all the most powerful people
in Hollywood dealing with a seismic change right from moment one.
-Yeah.
Yeah.
And how did you end up then following that,
which was a natural beginning, the start of the Academy.
the founding of the academy?
How did you pick the particular episode?
Particular years? Not so much episodes, the particular years that you honed in on.
And were there some other time periods that you wish
that you could have included, but that would have made the book too big?
-Yeah, well, that was really the fun part is going through all nine and a
half decades of Oscar history and choosing the really, really juicy years.
And I basically had three criteria.
The first was I wanted them to be spread out, you know, essentially
at least one chapter set per decade starting in the ‘20s.
You know, a lot of crazy stuff happened in the ‘70s.
And I could have just done an entire book on the Oscars
in the ‘70s. You had Sacheen Littlefeather, the streaker,
you know, a million different crazy things were happening.
The second
criterion was
I wanted to have years
that still had movies or people that that still resonate with us today.
I didn't want them to be too obscure.
And then the third and most important one was that I wanted to choose
stories that would have that would be more than the sum of their parts,
in other words. Like something that gave you a window onto how
the times were changing, or that had a really compelling
personal story attached, or just like a year where
just the combination of characters was explosive in some way.
So for instance, I have a chapter on the “Best Picture”
race of 1976, which was an incredible lineup.
So tell me which one does not belong here?
You have “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,”
“Barry Lyndon,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Nashville,” and “Jaws.”
You know, it's like one of these things is not like the other.
And so you have,
you have sort of four auteurist
anti-authoritarian, new Hollywood masterpieces.
And then the first huge summer blockbuster by a 20-
something-kid named Spielberg.
And which recreated the business model for Hollywood and sort of was the death
knell for that other kind of movie that sort of, you know,
rebellious ‘70s kind of movie.
I mean, I think “Jaws” is a great movie, but it helped,
it helped shift the tide in Hollywood toward the sort of more
commercialism and big money of the ‘80s.
So just honing in on those five movies: how they got made,
you know, what the Oscar race was like,
how do they all collide?
You know, on Oscar night,
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” famously won every single major award.
It's one of only three movies to do that.
And yet “Jaws” was kind of the winner
in some larger sense because it remade the industry.
So that, for instance, is a story that I thought was
of all the crazy stories in the ‘70s from the Oscars,
that was one that told you something about the era.
-I was just
one of the things I remember about that chapter especially, was about Steven
Spielberg, who, of course, you know, plays an important role in the book
because he was such an important person in Hollywood
that his mother called him “Cecil B. De Spielberg,”
which I thought was just I have to I still chuckle
when I think about that.
Yeah.
So was there...
Was there another event that you couldn't
include from those ‘70s from that 76?
Actually, yes.
There was one chapter that I cut from the book,
which was I did a whole I did a whole chapter on the streaker.
The guy who ran across the stage in 1974,
and this guy lived an amazing life.
His name was Robert Opel.
And after he did the streak, he
he was very involved in the gay liberation movement.
He moved to San Francisco and opened an erotic art gallery.
And he exhibited people like Robert Mapplethorpe
and he knew like John Waters and Divine.
And then in 1979, five years after the streak,
he was murdered in this, you know, in this horrible event
where two guys came in with guns to his gallery
and there was a whole, you know, true crime aspect to to this story.
And I wrote the whole thing.
And when I put it all together, my editor and I thought this
this story doesn't even have anything to do with Hollywood.
It's it's incredible.
But it doesn't tell this larger tale of how how the movies evolved.
So what I did in the end was take it out of the book, and it was just published
in The New Yorker as a kind of standalone magazine piece.
So I'm happy it found a home.
But that's an example of that's really the one big thing that I
that I wrote and then took out of the book.
-Did you...I imagine you must have spent a lot of time
rewatching old Betty Davis movies. But I mean, I found her fascinating.
I think, of all the people,
she was so, so interesting.
How did you feel?
I mean, did you come to have personal feelings for some of these these people?
-Well, you'll notice that a lot of characters
every chapter has a new cast of characters.
But Betty Davis just kept coming back and coming back.
I mean, she's just a great person to write about because she's always just on fire.
She's always saying some some dramatic line.
You know, her her one of her her autobiography,
“The Lonely Life,” is just one of my favorite Hollywood memoirs.
You know, it has that voice.
You know, the first line of it is something like,
you know, “I have always been driven
by some distant music, a battle hymn no doubt.”
You know, she just comes out. She's always fighting with someone.
But here, I want to show you something
behind me.
This is a picture of my grandmother, Doris, with Betty Davis.
-Oh, my God.
Wow. How did that happen?
-So the story that I heard was that my grandmother,
who is a great beauty, this is her...
she was involved in a Jewish
organization called Port, which still exists.
And she was I don't know.
They were
Betty Davis was doing a stage show and they
she had given them tickets or they had done something with her.
And so my grandmother's presenting her with flowers as a thank you.
And I just loved the full on the stage makeup, you know,
her eyes, the famous Betty Davis eyes.
So this is sort of my
little personal connection.
-Right.
What about.
So with all of this Hollywood, all of this
Oscar stuff in your mind, and, you know, even after the book is done
and then Sacheen Littlefeather dies recently...
You know, I felt like
that was so interesting
because I had just finished the book and and was thinking about that.
So even though we think it's past,
these people still have an impact on us.
-Absolutely.
I mean, one of the things about Hollywood history, like all history, is that it
never really dies.
You know, it keeps coming back and this whole thing
with Sacheen Littlefeather, this past year was just incredible, you know?
First of all, her speech at the Academy Awards in ‘73,
I think, when she declined Marlon Brando's Oscar for “The Godfather,”
that was one of the strangest things and most unpredictable things
that have ever happened in the Oscars.
And so, you know, half a century later,
the Academy formally apologized to her
for how she was booed and how she was treated in the press.
And they do a whole
event for her at the Academy Museum, to sort of,
you know, like bring her in officially into sort of Academy history.
It was a lovely event.
I watched it on on, you know, on YouTube.
And then I think they must have known that she was very seriously ill.
She had
she had cancer for several years before that, because then she died
right after that.
And then like the next week, her sisters come out and say that she had been lying
about her heritage. And that caused a whole commotion online.
I mean, it was just it was so, you know, it was
it was really hard to wrap your mind around.
-Right. Right.
And another a couple other events
that you write about that you go into depth about.
One is Allan Carr's,
when he produced the Oscars.
Could you like could you describe that for us?
Because I have to say, I went back and looked at it,
looked at the opening number was “Snow White” and Rob Lowe
and on YouTube and and just thought, well, if they had done it
this year, nobody would have said anything.
It would have just fit into the.
So talk about that.
-Yeah.
So this was a really fun chapter to write.
Probably my favorite because it's so full of 1980s excess.
So this was 1989.
The producer, Allan Carr, who is sort of best remembered
for producing “Grease,” that was his claim to fame.
But he did several things.
He, he you know, he he was also known for wearing fabulous caftans
and throwing amazing parties.
So he produced the Oscars.
He had been waiting his whole life to produce the Oscars, finally got a chance.
And he put on this gigantic 11 minute
opening number with a woman dressed as Snow White, sort of
talking to people in the audience.
And then Rob Lowe comes on and they're at the Coconut Grove
and like the tables start dancing.
I mean, it's just it's hallucinatory.
So this year has this reputation
as the worst Oscars ever. And every year....
So there's some article that says, oh, remember this tacky Oscars?
It basically ruined Allan Carr's life.
You know, he was banned from the industry after this.
But when I went back and looked at it, it was a much more interesting story
than that.
It was actually kind of tragic.
You know, this was someone who had revered the Oscars and revered of Hollywood
for his entire life and finally had this dream come true.
But he was like Icarus, flying too close to the sun.
And, you know, part of the reason why it's remembered in that way
was this snowball effect where, because the show got terrible reviews
that set off Disney, which sued the Academy for, you know,
copyright infringement.
And and because of that whole thing, getting terrible press with the Academy,
all of these elders of the Academy, like Gregory Peck and Blake Edwards,
all came together and wrote this letter, this open letter
about what a horrible embarrassment the show had been.
So when you go back and look at it like, you know,
all the opening numbers in the ‘80s are pretty much that schlocky.
But this one just had this chain reaction that sort of cemented it
in the in pop culture memory as like a complete fiasco.
And it's so interesting to go back and reconstruct
why do we remember certain things in a certain way?
And who were the people behind it, who actually
whose lives were, you know, dramatically affected by that?
-Right. Yeah.
And and I because the woman who was a virtual unknown,
really, who played Snow White left Hollywood.
I mean. Right.
She she just couldn't take it.
-I talked to her. Her name's Eileen Bowman.
I talked to her.
She told me the whole story of her, this crazy story of her day long audition
where they drove around, they drove her to Allan Carr's house and the pool
was filled with pink and like, she didn't know what was going on.
She thought she was auditioning for a Las Vegas review.
And then they tell her she's going to be Snow
White at the Oscars like she just was completely,
as she put
it to me, she was from she was like a church girl from San Diego.
And she said she had
just fallen off the turnip truck and had no idea what was going on.
And suddenly she's at the center of this,
you know, kind of scandalous Oscar opening number.
-And then there is, you know, still to come in
Rob Lowe's life is the sex tape that he made.
And so that that brought back the Oscar, the whole Oscar fiasco.
Yeah, I guess the two people I felt sorriest for
in that chapter were Eileen Bowman and Allan Carr.
I, I would urge people to go back
and look at that because it is so tame,
really, compared to what we see now
that that's one of those one of those things
that makes you realize that some things
really are way ahead of their time and and if you could have just time traveled
and moved it, you know, Eileen Bowman would have been a star today.
I'm convinced of it.
-Well...
and also to give Allan Carr some credit, he invented some things that remain.
You know, he changed the line from and “the winner is,” to
and “the Oscar goes to” and that is still what they say.
You know, he was very big on the fashion.
You know, we didn't have a big red carpet thing then.
And he sort of pushed pushed the fashion.
And that, of course, evolved into, you know,
Joan Rivers, you know, doing her thing for E!
And now it's like it's basically its own show.
So, you know, I kind of wanted to redeem a little bit of Allan Carr,
but it's also, to me, a sort of human tragedy of a guy
who just kept getting in his own way, kept trying to put his name on everything.
And so when it didn't go well, there was someone to blame.
You know, it's really a story about about ostracism and blaming.
-Yeah. Yeah.
And and that kind of brings up a more serious issue that you deal with in depth.
It was the Hollywood ten,
Hollywood and the House Un-American Activities
Committee or Hollywood and the Communist Threat.
And I know there have been many books about that as well,
but I felt that the way
there were things in that chapter that I thought I hadn't read before,
I mean, I sort of think you brought Dalton Trumbo to life
in a way that that I hadn't known him as.
But could you talk about that whole period?
-Sure.
Well, I mean, I always knew I had to deal in the book
with the Hollywood blacklist, but it's a huge topic.
It's a horrible, dark chapter in Hollywood history.
And as you say, a lot has been written about it.
But I found a story within that that had to do with the Oscars
that I just loved, which was in 1957,
Deborah Kerr came out to present Best Motion
Picture Story, which is a category that no longer exists.
And it went to a guy named Robert Rich.
So someone Robert Rich wasn't there.
Someone else picked up the award for him for It's for this movie called
“The Brave One,” which is about a Mexican boy and his pet donkey or pit bull. And
people soon
realized that this Robert Rich guy did not exist.
Like they asked the producers. The producers said, “Oh, we met.
He was an ex GI we met in Munich several years ago.
We we've lost track of him.
Maybe he's in Europe somewhere or maybe he's in Australia.”
As Life magazine put it, it was a Hollywood who won it?
And it was this bizarre scandal that kind of titillated people back in 1957.
Of course, as it turned out, it was a pseudonym for Dalton Trumbo,
who was blacklisted and working on the black market.
So what he did was as soon as he realized that this thing was becoming a press
sensation, that his sort of fake persona had won an Oscar,
he realized that even though he was relatively powerless
and he could leverage this press attention against
the industry and
against the Academy and make them look ridiculous.
And just, you know,
tracing his sort of caper of sitting, you know, sitting in his office
in Hollywood, like behind his typewriter, or sometimes he would type it from the
from the bathtub, trying just with his wit and cleverness
to out to turn the tables and outwit the people who had,
you know, ruined his career because he was one of the Hollywood ten.
It was it was weirdly funny.
Like it was sort of a funny, exciting,
suspenseful way to tell the story of The Blacklist that I hadn't seen.
It's obviously a very sad subject, but
focusing on sort of
Dalton Trumbo, who was a very clever,
funny person, you just using his wiles and
he would
send in little poems to he sent a little poem into Life
magazine when they asked if he was Robert Rich, and it went,
“Come back, Robert Rich, wherever you are, do you live on the moon?
Do you live on a star?”
You know, he would just make a big joke out of it
as a way to embarrass
the this oppressive system.
And I just find it totally fascinating
and like a sort of fun way to tell this story.
-You. Oh, you know, I don't think that I certainly didn't
remember the name Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who was the president of the Academy.
But the earlier in earlier years, the presidents
often came out of the acting community.
Right?
Like Gregory Peck and and Mary Pickford
was an early president.
Why do you think those early early years were those
those heads of the Academy were much better
known...sort of changed. If you think it did?
-Yeah.
Well, actually, the first president was her husband, Douglas.
-Douglas Fairbanks. Right.
-But I think that, you know, they when they started the Academy,
the producers like Louis B Mayer, they didn't want it to seem like they were
using the Academy to sort of control labor relations, which they were.
So they kind of had Fairbanks step up as a figurehead.
And, you know, he was this beloved star and swashbuckler.
You know, from the “Three Musketeers” or whatever.
And I don't know, you know, over the years,
I think the most famous Academy presidents have been actors.
You know, I would say Gregory Peck.
But also, you know, Frank Capra was a transformative president.
Betty Davis had a short and tumultuous tenure,
which is covered in the 1941-42 chapter.
I don't know.
I mean, there's a lot of presidents that we forget
because they're they're less known to us now.
But certainly, you know, Cheryl Boone Isaacs is a
it was a longtime publicist and sort of Oscar strategist
by the time she got that job in 2013.
I don't know.
I think maybe we remember the famous ones.
But I mean, so many people have been academy presidents
over the years.
You know, it kind of changes around with the different branches.
-Right.
So.
Are there some other Oscar books that you recommend
or other Hollywood books that you recommend?
-Absolutely. -Yeah. Good.
-Yeah. Well, let's see.
Some of my favorite authors to read on Hollywood are Mark Harris,
who wrote a wonderful book
about the Academy Awards called Picture “Pictures at a Revolution,”
which just traces the five movies
that were nominated for Best Picture in 1968.
It's a really great book, really. You know,
I took a lot of inspiration from that because he really sees
the Oscars as a prism to understand culture.
Although because he had written this great book, I had to skip that year in mine.
You know, it had been covered.
I love the author, Sam Wasson, who
just released this gigantic
tomb called
“Hollywood” The Oral History,” which he did with Jeanine Basinger.
And one of my favorite books of his is called “Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.”
which is about the making of “Breakfast at Tiffany.”
He's just such a charming writer.
And and then Peter Biskind, who is famous for “Easy Riders Raging Bulls,”
he also wrote a really great book about the ‘90s
indy era called
Oh My gosh, I'm blanking. It's called
“Down and Dirty Pictures.”
So yeah, those are three authors I just think are, you know,
they write about movies and Hollywood history
in this way that makes you feel like you're
at a sports game, almost like it's exciting.
It's personalities, big personalities,
you know, epic changes in culture.
And it just it all feels exciting and present.
And that's sort of really what I wanted to do is to make the reader
feel like they were in the Oscar race of 1942.
And you almost don't know what's going to happen next
in the same way that every year we are immersed in every twist
and turn of the Oscar race as it's happening.
I kind of wanted you to feel that way about these these these old races.
-And I felt that way.
So I think you absolutely succeeded in your book.
And I love that it's “Oscar Wars.”
I think that was a great, you know, just a great title.
So before we end, can you is there one movie are you movied out
or are you still going to films?
-Oh, my gosh, I had such a great time just watching movies, writing this book.
I mean, it took me it was over the course of four years.
So but I rewatched a lot of movies.
I, I saw a lot of movies for the first time I had not seen before.
And now I'm covering the Oscar race this year for The New Yorker.
So I've been trying to see every single thing that's nominated this year.
So I guess,
no, I'm not moving out.
I'm, you know.
Yeah, I know it was a great time.
And I love hearing that you read the book and kept going to YouTube.
You know, I hope people
I hope people read it and take a break and watch one of the movies.
You know, you read about Betty Davis’s big snub
in 1935 for “Of Human Bondage.”
And you can go watch it.
-Right?
Absolutely.
Michael, thank you so much for taking time from your Oscar
writing this year to be on the show with us.
It was great talking to you and thank you for the book.
It was wonderful.
- Well, thank you for having me, Nancy.
It was great talking with you.
-Thank you.
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