Michelle Simone Miller:
Great. So, my name is Michelle Simone Miller. I graduated the Class of 2011. And I'm also the Performing Arts Network chair in New York City. I'm an actress and host of the podcast, Mentors on the Mic where I interview amazing people in entertainment about how they started and how they moved up. And I specifically wanted to say that because Scott Feinberg is a mentor on the podcast. So, if you want to hear more about his journey in entertainment, I'll probably put a link up at some point.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I'd also like to thank many of the people who helped put this event together. So, this is part of the Arts Alumni Council. Courtney has been so wonderful in putting these events together. We're putting monthly showbiz at DICE events. So, at this point, we've done one every month. We've interviewed TV writers like Marta Kauffman, David Gray, Matt Witten, and Mark A. Altman. We've also interviewed graphic novelists and comic book writers and graphic artists. We've also done, help me out here Arnon.
Arnon Shorr:
Film and TV executives. That was a big one.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Film and TV executive. That was an amazing one. So, all of this is available in the archival library on the website which we'll eventually put a link up as well. But. Welcome. The Brandeis Arts Network is so happy to welcome you here. It's a group exclusive to Brandeis undergraduate and graduate alumni that enables anyone involved in the arts, both professionals and enthusiasts, to engage, share, and experience the vast array of artistic endeavors of fellow Brandisians on campus across the country and abroad.
Michelle Simone Miller:
The Brandeis Arts Network also encompasses and supports the effort of the performing arts network and the Brandeis alumni in film and television. I'm so happy to have you guys here. Thank you so much for attending. This is going to be really special. The way this particular discussion is going to go. I'm going to have a couple polling questions in a bit. We're going to introduce my co-host and moderator and wonderful organizer, Arnon Shorr. And then, we're just going to go right into it. We're going to spend the first sort of part of the discussion talking about the most recent Oscars obviously.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And then, we're going to go into a deeper discussion of just Oscars as a whole, like, history of it, what we think the future of it will be like, I mean any indication of this past one. There's a lot there to unpack. And then, we have a question answered here in the last 15, 20 minutes of the event. So, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. We'll get to them during that period of time.
Michelle Simone Miller:
The first question I want to just ask you guys is how many of the best picture nominees did you guys see this year? There's no pressure. It's an anonymous thing. So, just check all that apply which ones have you seen. Yeah. Just, we're curious because I've only seen a few of them. And I've had access to all of them. So, that's not embarrassing at all specifically that we've helped put this event together. Okay. This is really interesting. So, the ones on Netflix were the easiest ones to see it seems like. Yeah. Makes sense. I saw those as well. Okay. Good to know. This is great. Okay. Very, very interesting especially since the Trial of Chicago Seven did so well, right, guys? We were all disappointed.
Arnon Shorr:
Well, I mean it's got the Brandeis connection too.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It's got the Brandeis connection.
Arnon Shorr:
I would hope.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes, we support it. And then, the next question is just are you in the film industry. If you're not, no worries. If you're just a fan, love it. We love you. But we're just curious, the people who attend this event, are they mostly fans? Are they people in the industry? This is good to know. See, look at this. This is overwhelming. Fans, thank you guys so much for attending. We appreciate this, 73%. All right. I'm going to kick this over to Arnon. Arnon, can you introduce yourself quickly?
Arnon Shorr:
Sure. Hi. I'm Arnon Shorr. I'm a filmmaker, Brandeis alum class of '05. I live in LA for the next few months. Yeah. I've been working with Michelle on these panels for a while. And I'm really excited about this one. I'm very fortunate to call Scott a friend and very fortunate to call Professor Daugherty professor. I took his class back-
Thomas Doherty:
And friend.
Arnon Shorr:
And friend, yes. Yeah. Michelle, let's just dive in and get started. There's so much to talk about.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes, can we also have maybe a slight, like a short, introduction from our panelists just in case there are people here? I'm sure they know these wonderful people. But just to have an idea, Professor Doherty, if you can go first.
Thomas Doherty:
Yeah. I'm Tom Doherty. And I'm a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, and my special interest is Hollywood cinema.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Amazing.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. I'm Scott Feinberg, an alumnus who took pretty much, I think, every class taught by Professor Doherty. And as many as I could have, Professor Whitfield who I'm so happy to see here and along with a whole bunch of Brandeis people. I know Beth and Stan Brooks and Adam Irving. And so, this is great and been very nice to get to know Arnon and Michelle since mostly since Brandeis. Arnon started the Sundays Film Festival that I was a little involved with while I was there. But we've gotten to know each other a lot more since. But, yeah. I cover the awards industrial complex for the Hollywood Reporter.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Excellent. Also, the Awards Chatter Podcast which is no joke, one of my favorite podcasts. And I geeked out when I interviewed you because I was like, "This is my mentor and podcast." So, I appreciate you and your podcasts as I know a lot of people do. All right, Arnon. Let's start. Let's just go at it. What did you guys think of the Oscars this year? Let's just start it off.
Thomas Doherty:
Me first or, Well, I think there are two things about the Oscar ceremonies this year. I mean the obvious thing is it's just so weird about the pandemic. It's the usual gripes you would have about who was nominated, who won. That's the kind of standard stuff, I think, that's any Oscar telecast you watch, you're going to be either less or more entertained depending upon the quality of the movies and the show
Thomas Doherty:
I think the thing, the next day specially, and people anticipated that the ratings were going to be bad. I don't know if they anticipated how bad the ratings were this last time. And you don't want to get too apocalyptic especially considering so much of it will be Scott's job and future. I think the last figures I read is a little over 10 million viewers for a primetime show, and that's basically what the network news shows get at 6:30 or 7:00.
Thomas Doherty:
And if this doesn't improve, I think you're really talking about the sort of centrality of Hollywood in American life which has been central in all our lives since, what, 1903, and the Great Train Robbery might be something different now that imagine if something like that happened to the Super Bowl or sports ratings, we'd be sort of questioning just the power of that entertainment in American culture.
Thomas Doherty:
And I'm a little concerned, I guess, with sort of what happened. And I've been mulling. And I want to hear Scott's thoughts on this because he's on the ground. Why? Is it the movies? Is it this cultural moment we're in which is both about the pandemic and the kind of polarization over race and politics, or is it something else going on here?
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. No, I'd love if we can talk more about that. My main reactions on the night of were just that this was another attempt to reinvent the Oscars which, every few years, a producer comes in who thinks that that's possible, and they're going to shake it all up. And they think that what they're trying has never been tried before, and it never works. It's a show that the built-in problems are that you have 23 categories of which maybe there are that six that people actually care about. And yet the Academy itself is organized in a way that there are 17 branches which all have equal representation on the board of governors which dictates a lot of what goes on, and can be taken off or put on the show. And none of them want to be told that they're less important than the others.
Scott Feinberg:
And so, it is no matter who's producing the show. And this year, one of the producers was Steven Soderbergh who you can't think of a more talented or intelligent guy in the business that you could go to for such a job. But the fact of the matter still is you've got essentially three hours this time with COVID challenges on top of it, but three hours to cover 23 awards of which again very few of them are of interest to the general public.
Scott Feinberg:
And then, beyond that you're hoping... Usually, there's musical numbers and clips and comedy and, most years, a host not the last three. And what I think they decided this year it was that they were going to make it play to the room and hope that that played at home. And what that meant was giving the winners a longer period to speak, giving a little biographical sketch of each of the nominees, not just in the major categories but categories where you wouldn't normally care most people, and their hope that that would make you care.
Scott Feinberg:
So, anyway, they tried a lot of things, in my opinion, and it seems like most people's opinion, did not work, especially the weirdest thing was that here we are in a pandemic when movie theaters are on the ropes, most of these movies were not seen by the large percentage of people, potential TV viewers. And yet, there was not much of an effort made to either familiarize them or give them a stake in these movies by showing clips, by talking about the movies themselves. And they did virtually nothing to support movie theaters which even here in Hollywood are the big kind of staple ones are disappearing.
Scott Feinberg:
And then, the final thing, I'll say quickly, is that obviously the biggest messing with tradition that they did this year was changing up the order of awards hoping to have it end with Chadwick Boseman winning best actor at the end which, by the way, I don't know. Was that supposed to be a fun way to end the show? It was going to be his crying widow. I don't know how that, even if it worked out, was going to work out from television purposes. But that was their plan.
Scott Feinberg:
And instead, they kind of undercut the best picture award by having it third to last. They then did actress which I thought it was well deserved. Frances McDormand won her third. But again, that was not going to set the world on fire. And then, instead of having Chadwick Boseman when the air gets sucked out of the room and the winner isn't even there, Anthony Hopkins. And then, Questlove of all people ends the show. So, anyway, that, we can talk more about it. But I just thought it was unfortunate because it didn't work, in my opinion.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So, Scott, how did you predict this? I don't know if everyone's aware we were talking about this before. But you did tweet out that you were like, "Imagine if this happens, and it ends this way." And then, it ended this way. What made you think that that was going to happen aside from just being prophetic?
Scott Feinberg:
It wasn't necessarily a prediction that it was going to happen. But in the time that I've been covering the Academy Awards, I've been taught that if something bad can happen, it often will, I was there the night of how could you have even imagined that the wrong best picture winner would be announced. If that can happen, anything can happen. And knowing these guys and just their luck in recent years, I realized you couldn't count it out.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh my god.
Thomas Doherty:
Is it true that Olivia Coleman was in the in the room ready to accept for Anthony Hopkins and Joachim just cut her off?
Scott Feinberg:
I had heard a rumbling about that. But I was then told it was actually not going to be permitted by the Academy. First of all, every lead acting winner has been there since the mid-80s. This is the first time in a long time, and they have had a rule. They didn't used to have this rule. But they don't want people accepting if it's not their award. I think that for every Olivia Coleman you might get accepting it, you also get somebody who you don't want to hear from.
Thomas Doherty:
Some Indian maiden that come up like Marlon Brando. That actually might have been fun.
Scott Feinberg:
Well, and they were going to make an exception for Chadwick Boseman interestingly enough. It was going to be his widow. And so, that poor lady had to, on top of everything else that's happening last year, had to sit through this endless show and then didn't even get to make the remarks that she was going to make. So, anyway.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's crazy. Well, what were some of your favorite moments? Were there any?
Scott Feinberg:
Professor?
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Did you have any favorites?
Thomas Doherty:
The Octopus. When the Octopus won it. And actually, Scott did a really good post-mortem on the piece. He explained it. And I thought, "That was my experience too." He said, "In the last few months, this was just a movie people felt passionate about. They really loved it." And it sort of came out of left field. It was an authentic vox populi mini-hit documentaries, and people recommended it to me. My wife loved it. She says, "I'll watch." If saw it first, I'll watch it again. You got to see this film.
Thomas Doherty:
And, I think Scott talked about how it was sort of this organic movement in the last few months that this crowd policing, really interesting magical movie with a topic that nobody would think of, managed to win this kind of coveted award which typically goes to a documentary that is, shall we say, very earnest and very sort of artistically kind of predictable. And this film was none of those things. It was really sort of a special one-of-a-kind film.
Arnon Shorr:
Absolutely. One of the theories I've heard about why was there such a reaction to this, and I don't know if it's over analyzing. But at a time when we have all been locked inside, it was particularly nice to see a movie that was about how sort of the exploring the beauty of the outdoors or whatever. But I mean there's a whole bunch of things that happen there. I think time is another excellent documentary. But again, it was getting a bit... There were political disagreements about the story it was telling.
Arnon Shorr:
Crip Camp was more in the vein of what you're talking about, the sort of traditional Oscar winner about a very important capital V capital I subject matter. And so, it was nice to see that a little movie actually can still rise even at a time when there are so much spent on kind of coaxing voters one way or the other.
Arnon Shorr:
And I'll tell you because I deal with Netflix people. A lot some of my good friends in this business are at Netflix and particularly in the documentary division there. When we were talking about the short list which precedes the nominations, they were talking about particularly Crit Camp but also the social dilemma and four or five others. And My Octopus Teacher never even came up as one of the ones that they thought was going to be in the shortlist conversation.
Arnon Shorr:
So, it really was a late swell there. But in terms of just my favorite moments, I guess, I do like a surprise. It's something that you remember. So, as sad as I was for the Boseman family and whatever, it was cool that something unexpected happened even if it messed up my prediction tally. I was-
Michelle Simone Miller:
But not your Twitter prediction.
Scott Feinberg:
Not my Twitter prediction, no. Look, Frances McDormand is a unbelievable actress and a crazy lady, and it was nice to see her. I think, look, she deserves to be in that kind of caliber of people that very small club of people who have three or more Oscars. And we can't forget. There were some really historic things that happened here that only the second time in 93 years a female best director. And in any way, it's not anything but earned. It was, to me, clearly the best movie of the year. And so, there were things like that we could go into further, if you want.
Thomas Doherty:
She had one of my favorite lines of... Oh, pardon me. I was just saying-
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, go for it. Please.
Thomas Doherty:
Chloé Zhao had one of my favorite lines of the evening at the beginning of the show when she was asked some advice on directors, and she said she always watches Burden of Dreams and then thinks what would Werner Herzog do. And being a big Werner Herzog fan, I was teaching Aguirre, the Wrath of God the next day. It was great to be able to put that in the PowerPoint. But it also occurred to me, Scott. And I think that you should devote your life to this in the next year, is Werner Herzog has never gotten an Oscar. I mean the other kind of Oscar game we all play, I think, is I can't believe that Fill In The Blank has never received an Oscar.
Scott Feinberg:
Exactly.
Thomas Doherty:
And when she made that remark about Werner Herzog and I was looking at Aguirre again and a couple of his other documentaries, he was only nominated once for Encounters at the End of the World documentary, didn't get it. And we're talking about sort of everybody knows he's one of the great filmmakers alive. And he's gotten sort of no recognition from the Academy.
Scott Feinberg:
It's true. It's bizarre especially the documentary branch has a history of bizarre decisions. They didn't even nominate Hoop Dreams which is generally considered the greatest documentary ever now. Errol Morris, it took until The Fog of War to get recognized. And then, they tend to make up for it way after they should have, so, Michael Moore for Bowling for Columbine rather than Roger and Me or something. But Werner, I think, the problem was that that branch historically as has been very purest.
Scott Feinberg:
That's why it was sort of surprising this year that The Mole Agent which is a really great documentary from Chile, but I wasn't even sure it was a documentary. I had to really look into the fact that is this not an actor thrown into sort of almost like a Borat situation. Reenactments was the big problem with Errol Morris with The Thin Blue Line, for instance. And the thing with Werner is you don't ever really know what you're looking at. It's fun. It's great. It's fascinating. But even he says, "It's more about the essential truth rather than the actual truth." And the doc branch has never wanted to-
Thomas Doherty:
Never been into essential truths.
Scott Feinberg:
No, no, no. But he'll get... I've been waiting the last few years. They've going to give him an honorary, I think, because it's embarrassing that he hasn't.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Scott I've heard rumors that... Oh I just wanted to quickly ask. I've heard rumors that they might expand the nominee list specifically for multiple categories but specifically for documentaries. Have you heard this rumor? Do you think there's any truth to it?
Scott Feinberg:
I doubt it's going to happen. I mean there are people that certainly want it to. And, I think, whether there are enough documentaries to merit doing that, but it's taken them years to just come back around to the idea that there's no downside to having a guaranteed 10 best picture nominees. They originally did that. In the early years of the Oscars, there were 10, sometimes even more, best picture nominees. Then starting the year of Casablanca, they went to a hard five which lasted all the way until they failed to nominate the Dark Knight for best picture, and people went ballistic.
Scott Feinberg:
And then, the next year, they went to 10. And then, you had the backlash to the backlash where people were saying, "Well, what if there's a year when there's not 10 that are actually worthy?" So, then it became a formula of anywhere from five to 10. And now, when they didn't have 10 and the two that they left out this year probably were Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and One Night in Miami which would have helped with their inclusion efforts, I think they finally said, "Wait a minute, who wouldn't benefit from having more films represented more stars in the room, all of that?" And so, there are now going to be a hard 10 starting at the next.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because... Oh, go on, Arnon.
Arnon Shorr:
Well, to me, this cuts to a sort of a broader question that I wonder if we can explore. All of this stuff, Oscars, is for a reason. There's got to be a reason for it. And as we asked the question that this conversation started with about are the Oscars going to continue, can they survive this year, my sense is they can if there's a reason for or if the Academy understands the reason for them or embraces the reason for them.
Arnon Shorr:
So, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the Oscars and why they exist to begin with historically. Professor, if we can kind of dive into how they began, and then-
Scott Feinberg:
I'm glad you're going to him first because what people should know, one of his many areas of expertise as that pre-code 1930 to 1934 era which was almost exactly when they came about.
Arnon Shorr:
Oh, I've been planning this.
Thomas Doherty:
Well, actually, since there's an Alphonse Gaston kind of arrangement here that Scott's been doing a lot of work on the establishment of the Academy Awards in 1928, '29 which was put together. It's controversial to say this, I guess, at least in some quarters that the moguls got together basically to create a kind of guild to prevent the Hollywood unions from taking over much more of the business than they ended up taking over, that it was a way to sort of solidify a company union and a company guild by honoring each other.
Thomas Doherty:
And then, it morphed into something kind of that got out of their hands which is interesting and happens a lot of times, that by the 1930s, it sort of took on less of a business arrangement and more of a kind of by the '30s, we sort of know motion pictures are art, and we're going to award the people who work within our industry both in the technical side and then in the kind of the public side as well.
Thomas Doherty:
And that's kind of the nice thing about however the Academy Awards started, maybe for ruthless commercial reasons, and not commercial in the sense of putting what was then not known as the Oscar in your ad, but in sort of solidifying the studio system and the industrial power of Hollywood that it kind of got away from them, and it became this event.
Thomas Doherty:
A lot of people in Hollywood said this. And I heard it credited to Joseph Breen the head of the production code who famously said everybody has two businesses in the motion picture business. You guys who are in the industry probably know this. If you're at a table, Michelle or Arnon, and you're with seven or eight people, and they're professionals in law or medicine or law enforcement, whatever, the only thing you tend to have in common is either movies or sports because nobody wants to talk about politics now because that's so explosive.
Thomas Doherty:
So, you'll probably end up talking about motion pictures, and that's sort of, I think, Scott, some of the beginning of the Academy which began as this labor-busting enterprise and then turned into a celebration of the great American art of the 20th century.
Scott Feinberg:
Absolutely, and there are two moments prior to this one that we're in now when I think the whole thing almost fell apart. And it's interesting to just kind of look back, I think, at those. One of them was at the moment when FDR is sworn in early '33 on March '33 and I shouldn't be the one speaking about this because Professor Whitfield probably could tell me the time of day these things happen. But basically, there was the bank holiday that he declared to calm the waters as stop runs on banks, and all of that in the worst moment of the Depression.
Scott Feinberg:
And it was used by the studios as an excuse to call in all of their employees and demand or basically, through crocodile tears, say, "All of you, we're a family. The only way we're going to survive is if you all take a 50% pay cut for the next eight weeks or whatever." It ended up being nobody, of course, was checking if they took a pay cut and a pay cut for a guy making hundreds of thousands of dollars a lot less painful than somebody making $50 a week.
Scott Feinberg:
But anyway, it became a thing where the Academy which, as Professor already said, was basically propped up by the studios to give the impression that it was their mediating disputes and keeping the peace of the industry. The academy sanctioned this BS arrangement. Warner Brothers did not then agree to pay back pay when things were declared healthy again. That caused Zanuck to resign from Warner Brothers and go and start Fox with his partner there who... I mean we could go on about it.
Scott Feinberg:
But the point was that people began resigning on mass as they realized that the Academy was basically there as a tool of the studio chiefs. And so, at that very moment which is dealt with explicitly in Mank this season and very accurately where they have Lionel Barrymore kind of rallying people behind, "We're with you LB, and all of that."
Thomas Doherty:
But they have the date wrong.
Scott Feinberg:
They do have the date wrong. They do have, yeah it's true. But the sentiment is correct. But yeah. Right. From there, it's not a coincidence. You get the screenwriters guild. You get, shortly after the actors get all the different independent organizations, to represent the interests of the people who had previously thought they were represented by the Academy, and many of them resigned from the Academy. Academy was down to a few dozen members at one point. It was really dead until Frank Capra came in and he was at the same time the president of the Director's Guild and was able to kind of broker arrangement where it came back.
Scott Feinberg:
The extras were allowed to be voting. For a few years, the whole industry voted for the Oscars so that everybody felt they had a stake in it. That was one time. The next time, I think, I would submit was when this monster created by the studios funded by the studios. This event every year before television was being paid for by the studios. And then, in 1949, they give the best picture Oscar is voted to Hamlet, a British movie. And they start saying, "Why are we paying for to promote other people's movies?" It's not even benefiting us anymore.
Scott Feinberg:
They claimed that the reason they pulled the funding right after that Oscars was that it had already been the plan to do so. But it's very suspicious timing, and it was only really because television soon thereafter came in that the Oscars survived that. And everybody thought television would kill the Oscars because why? It would kill the movies, of course, because what do you need to pay to go to the movies when you can watch for free at home?
Scott Feinberg:
So, anyway, every time the Oscars has been written off, they found a way to survive. Unfortunately, in this era, it might be that they wind up on Netflix or something rather than on a broadcast network. But I don't think they're going to entirely go away. Sorry for such a long-winded answer.
Thomas Doherty:
No, I don't either. But I am puzzled by the precipitous decline and especially this last time. And I've been mulling it and mentioned before about is it the movies, or the time we're in? And I was thinking Bill Maher had this famous screed a couple of weeks ago that Maureen Dowd quoted the New York Times as well and the long and short of it was he says, "It seems like Hollywood is not interested in making good movies," But they want to prove they're good people.
Thomas Doherty:
And there seem now to be whole genres that Hollywood can't do. I was watching Say Anything again a couple of nights ago. And the notion of your ex-boyfriend coming over to your house with a boombox, I mean, should call the cops on him. I mean this great romantic moment from teen pics of the '80s or whatever would be utterly unacceptable now. And it seems like your traditional rom-com which is based on kind of male-female squabbling and gender difference. Have we had a rom-com in the last year? I mean that used to be a pretty important genre in Hollywood, heterosexual romance I think a lot of people still are engaged in it and kind of like might be a topic for movies.
Thomas Doherty:
And the other thing you don't see is sex. I mean didn't people go to movies to see beautiful people have sex or at least pretend to? I mean those are two whole genres that just seem to be not possible anymore, and that's going to have some kind of consequences.
Scott Feinberg:
No. And I do want to know, Arnon makes a good point in the comments. I just saw the Palm Springs.
Thomas Doherty:
I just saw a, yeah
Scott Feinberg:
Is a good exception. But, yeah. I mean everybody is walking on tiptoes the business since Me Too. Yeah. The general awakening, is that a way to describe the woke?
Thomas Doherty:
Awokening. Putting your American studies degree. Yeah, to good use. Fourth-grade awakening.
Scott Feinberg:
Yes, yes. So, it's a very weird time. And, I think I suspect that we'll come out of it a little bit where it will come back a little bit more towards the middle. I'm not saying that certain behavior will. But, I think the idea that subject matter should be entirely avoided. But look, there are bigger... It's another big debate right now that it was most notably highlighted with green book. But there are many examples where, let's say, you're a white guy. Can you make a movie about a black person? Now, there's Ron Howard's making a movie about this Chinese composer, Lang Lang. There are some people that are outraged by that. I guess, I see why you would be upset. On the other hand, there weren't a long line of people lining up to make a movie about Lang Lang.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It's a really good point.
Scott Feinberg:
So anyway, I don't know. Has there been a period like this? I guess, it would be right after the stuff like Fatty Arbuckle and stuff where people had to be very careful sort of how Hollywood came about.
Thomas Doherty:
Well, The Blacklist. I was going to say early '50s.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Do you think a lot of it is that a lot of these people are going into TV instead? So, I could name lots of television series now that is rom-com-esque and has a lot of sex in it, right? We think Bridgerton, I mean that was a huge thing the last couple of months. I feel like television is really where people are seeing a lot of those categories, not so much in film anymore.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah., I think, you're right. Look, the reality is and even we did a roundtable of actor contenders this year and Ben Affleck was the one who said essentially like, "Coming out of the pandemic, there are going to be fewer movies put out per year, period." But we were already heading in the direction where it was basically going to be a probably a couple dozen, maybe more than a couple, but, let's say, 40 movies that get a real theatrical release. Most of them are going to be from based on existing IP, so, comic books, remakes, sequels.
Scott Feinberg:
But the stuff that would have been made by Miramax or The Weinstein Company or Focus Features or Sony Classics, those are now that mid-range budget is basically gone, and that's TV.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Or limited series categories becoming huge. I feel like a lot of filmmakers are exploring that more or a lot of even future film actors that are mostly in movies, they're now like, "Well, we can now expand the same thing and make it a limited series."
Scott Feinberg:
Right, which is interesting because, I think, part of the problem with movies, Professor Doherty, tell me if you have noticed this with your students. But people don't have the attention span they used to even just to go sit through a movie for an hour and a half to two hours. We see it if you go to theater with the phones and stuff, drive people that are purists, drive us all nuts. But weirdly, they're willing to binge a 12-hour limited series because they can do it on their own terms if they need to pause it, if they need to text somebody or whatever.
Scott Feinberg:
So, I guess, it's maybe the format of the movies is what's really become the problem. But then obviously, we've seen efforts to go to the other extreme with Quibi, and that didn't quite work out. So, maybe, we're not at that little of an attention span yet. But it's not getting longer.
Thomas Doherty:
Yeah. I wondered that about. I've been making a point to go to as many theatrical movies as I can at the mall. So, I've seen like Russell Crowe going crazy, and Nobody, and all those other films. But a movie I thought that I and Scott, you know this, I really like this year that didn't seem to get any traction. And I wonder if it's because people didn't have that kind of Monday morning experience after seeing the film over the weekend.
Thomas Doherty:
And it was the Tom Hanks movie, News of the West which I saw on a big screen, and it was so great to see a western landscape on a big screen with an old-fashioned movie star who's Jimmy Stewart incarnate with this young German actress I had never seen before. And I would have watched them for two hours just sit on a buck board and try to communicate.
Thomas Doherty:
And that movie just didn't seem to get the sort of attention that I thought it might have had it been a theatrical film that's sort of like the Octopus Teacher that people might have said, "Oh, you got to go see this this weekend," where people didn't say that, and they weren't doing it in the past year.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. So, what were the alternative models of consuming a movie like that? The academy has no excuse because they're offered everything on their private streaming service for free. But out in the real world, that was one of the few big studio movies that would have gotten the kind of campaign that it just was not going to happen with people watching everything on streaming.
Scott Feinberg:
And so, I think, with Universal, I don't believe that the Peacock network, their streaming partner, I don't think it was either up or fully penetrating people's awareness by the time that would have helped that movie. And again, some of these places charge 20 bucks to watch a movie on a streaming service, which is I get it it's better than paying that five times to go with your family to movie theater. But-
Arnon Shorr:
For family films, that seemed to... Wasn't it Trolls that made $100 dollars just by these watch it at home $20-
Scott Feinberg:
Trolls did well. And Disney Plus is the big story to emerge this year because everybody needed to put their kids in front of something to get rid of them for a while, and it was great. Seoul, didn't help Seoul get a best picture nomination. Yeah. The other thing is, I think, we're seeing a cable happening all over again where originally it was pretty great. You had HBO and maybe Showtime, and people could afford to have two things that they were paying a little extra for each month. That was Netflix and then, oh, okay, I'm going to have Amazon Prime too. Now, ow I need Hulu. Oh, but I need Peacock, and I need HBO Max. And I need all these other things now.
Scott Feinberg:
And at a certain point, I think, we're going to just end up with them being bundled just like cables being bundled. What's the difference? So, Netflix has a nice advantage in that they had an early start. They had a lot of time to get build up subscribership before these others were really up and running. But how much does a person who's not in the business, how much are they going to be willing to spend on streaming services every month?
Arnon Shorr:
So, what is the Academy doing or thinking about this at the moment? And specifically in terms of the Oscars? If the Academy is there to somehow represent cinema to the world, this year, they didn't really seem to represent anything through their show. But what can they represent? How can they somehow use the Oscars which is their one big platform every year to say something about cinema about its value, about its appeal or whatever it is in next year when presumably we'll be back at the Dolby Theatre? Professor.
Thomas Doherty:
Well, Scott can answer just as well as I can. But I'll give it a shot, is one thing they can do is make it like they really like movies, and that movies are really fun. And the Oscars began with this lecture. And I had a media scholar friend who said, "You could almost literally feel the channels changing in the first 10 minutes of the show." And the Sam Goldwyn line about, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union," is over quoted. And you don't want to get too political here. But you've got to figure that if you're alienating, what, 75 million members of your audience to begin with and then, even the people who agree with you don't want to be lectured about it, that that's something I don't know how the Academy is going to handle that.
Thomas Doherty:
Of course, they can't tell people not to talk or not to give their opinion about something. But I do think that's the other factor here that might be explaining such a precipitous drop that just sort of we're in a bad time. Nobody feels especially good anyway. A lot of people didn't have affinities with some of the movies that were nominated.
Thomas Doherty:
And then, there's the political angle which in the last few years has been pretty, I don't want to say, tendentious. But it's been there in a way, I don't think it has been before. And I'm pretty sure it's contributing to the downturn in the ratings. And I think Scott knows that people have done some metrics on this where you can actually measure now when somebody changes the channel or turns off the TV, and it will often be when one of those speeches is given. Is the industry aware of that, Scott, or-
Scott Feinberg:
Very much. In the Academy is too. I can tell you, I know people that were working there on show night who, as you say, it's hard to tell somebody not to talk about something if they want to go off. If somebody wants to go off script, there's not a lot you can do. But, yeah, to have Regina King say that, I don't disagree with her underlying point. I just think that to have that be the first thing that's said on the entire show. And as some of the commentators have said, it's like, "It was almost unnecessary, it felt like, statement where it's like…" She basically said, "Had things not gone the way they went in Minneapolis this week, I would have traded in these high heels for marching boots."
Scott Feinberg:
But they did go the way everybody, I think, and most people in Hollywood wanted and hope for. And so, it's just injecting politics without a real point there. Now, there were some moments, like, I'm friends with the guys that made this movie Two Distant Strangers, the police brutality live action short, that won. It came up. It made sense that it came up that they were going to say something about police killings. And, I think, that-
Arnon Shorr:
I think it made sense if you had seen the film and knew what it was about. But it's a live action short. The vast majority of people in the country hadn't seen it, didn't notice about, probably hadn't heard of it. Still in that context, it's still a kind of a random why are you suddenly talking about-
Scott Feinberg:
And that's the fault of the producers because that's why you show clips of the movies. This was the first year that I can remember when they didn't really do that. They only did it, I think, for best picture and maybe international feature, I think. And also, I think, that the Academy and the producers also have to consider. And I have my personal views about the these topics. And most of them, I think, I'm on the same page as the people who spoke out about things on the Oscar show.
Scott Feinberg:
But the producers, I think, also made some strange decisions which is you're starting the show with Regina King who's tremendously talented. I'm the biggest Regina King fan. But even the Academy didn't nominate her movie for almost anything. She wasn't nominated aside from watchmen which wasn't really popular because she was Regina King. It was popular because it's a property that was... You start to show off with somebody that most people don't know talking about politics. And then, as part of an effort which again I support to celebrate the diversity of the business, you can almost make people feel like you're stuffing that down their throat when literally four of the 18 presenters were white males.
Scott Feinberg:
And I'm not saying feel sorry for white males at all. But that's not in any way reflective of who people are paying to see when they go to the movies, when they watch things on streaming. Again, I applaud where they're coming from. I get it. But if you're putting on a show that you want people to watch, you got to throw a few people that they are actually very excited about or they're not going to watch.
Arnon Shorr:
To me, the consequence of that was that the show wasn't about movies. I felt like it wasn't about movie. It wasn't about cinema. And why have the Oscars if they're not going to be about cinema? What purpose do they serve if the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences isn't somehow elevating or celebrating or promoting motion pictures? But the show wasn't about that at all. And it kind of felt aimless at that point.
Scott Feinberg:
I totally get what you're saying. And, I think, that it's tough because they don't get to pick the movies that are nominated and most of those were pretty bleak this year. But you can pick your presenters, and that's why they generally do recruit a few of the Avengers or different people that the average moviegoer would like to see. Where was Robert Downey, Jr? Where were some of these? So, anyway.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I always like the comedic duo they throw in there too like the Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. I always loved that duo. And I missed that as well. There was nothing.
Scott Feinberg:
Aside from Glenn Close's brief moment.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Which was very funny.
Scott Feinberg:
A little random. But that was it. That's why, to me again, they've messed with a formula that I wouldn't be totally trying to throw out the window. There's a reason they have a host usually.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. We're going to go into some questions from the audience. So, guys, you've been giving us some great questions. I'm going to go right into Andrew Douglas's question. The Academy is forever struggling to strike a balance in the best picture category between most artistic and most entertaining. In the early years of the Academy, they had two categories approximating this distinction. Would they ever return to two different best picture awards, in your opinion?
Scott Feinberg:
After you.
Thomas Doherty:
I don't think so. No. No.
Arnon Shorr:
Arnon.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. They looked at it about two or three years ago because, as you say, the first year, the artistic was sunrise. The commercial was wings. And then, they got rid of it after that then. Then, couple of years ago when they realized that nobody was nominating movies that the vast majority of people actually cared about, they said, "Well, we're going to have a special Oscar for the popular movie." And that then blew up in their face because they hadn't really thought through how that would work when they announced it which surprisingly happens a lot with these guys. And they chose to do that in the year of Black Panther which was going to be maybe the first, and it ended up being the first kind of Marvel movie that could actually hold its own in the best picture category.
Scott Feinberg:
And now, you were saying, "We're going to create a ghetto for popular movies," And they can go compete there so that we don't have to have them taking spots from the… So, that would have disincentivized the nomination of an actually popular movie. So, it got so much flack that, I think, nobody wants to go near that idea anymore.
Scott Feinberg:
I do think they could have done it in a way that would have made sense. But instead, it felt patronizing. And now, I think, it's not going to happen. Yeah.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Well said. Thank you. Allen wants to know how do you think that the qualifications that were recently added to get nominated in future years will affect the films that get made and then get nominated?
Scott Feinberg:
Is she talking about some of the diversity requirements?
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. She's nodding. Love it.
Scott Feinberg:
After you, professor. If you have anything-
Thomas Doherty:
Well, as a spectator, I don't care whose names are on the credits and especially when you see that long scroll at the end of the movie, I don't care as long as it's a good movie. And I think people in the business will tell you that there's no particular reason for, say, a stunt woman who is doubling an African-American actress to be African-American herself at that distance. And there have been some real kind of, especially in the stunt category, some real problems with that kind of diversity, equity, inclusion kind of model. So, as a spectator, I just don't care.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. And, I think, that if you pull up the Academy's requirements to be eligible, the idea initially of this diversity requirements was they want to nudge people towards doing the right thing at the studio level because, meanwhile, the Academy gets the hangover without the drink. They are the ones that get yelled at when they don't nominate any enough movies that are diverse. But they can only pick from the movies that are ever green lighted or agent. So, what this was meant to do was incentivize at the production level.
Scott Feinberg:
But when you look at these actual requirements, there are so many different ways to meet each one of them that the reality is there's almost no movie that's been nominated that wouldn't have in the last 10 years, that wouldn't have met them anyway. So, I don't expect that it's going to have much change for better or worse, much impact for better or worse.
Arnon Shorr:
I think the very small films are the ones that might be affected because they have a smaller pool of cast and crew to find the diversity within. But those films don't necessarily make it to the Oscars that often anyway.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. But you're right. Those are the ones that would probably... Like the Sundancy movies are the ones that are going to have to check their tallies. But the others, I don't think so.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I love that term, the Sundancy movies. I'm going to use that. Arun who's also on my podcast, so, I love you. You're wonderful. He wants to know what best picture nominee do you think the least number of Academy members watched this year and why? Good question.
Scott Feinberg:
Out of the best picture nominees?
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes. Out of the best picture nominees. Yes.
Thomas Doherty:
I think most people saw a promising young woman. I think most saw Chicago Seven, Judas and the Black Messiah.
Scott Feinberg:
I actually think it's The Father, weirdly. I know enough people voted for it to win. There's a lot of people who that's a little too close to home, and they said, "Life's too short. I don't need this right now."
Thomas Doherty:
That's actually what I said, Scott. I was part of The Father demo, although, actually, I might have seen it and forgotten about it.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, that's funny. Yeah. But it might be true. I mean if we're talking about the idea that a lot of these movies this year that were nominated were, in fact, a little on, let's say, depressing side, but very sad side that definitely hits home especially this year. So, that's a good question.
Scott Feinberg:
By the way, so, I heard from numerous Academy members that they were particularly drawn to another round this year because they were saying their relationship with alcohol has really improved this past year. So, they were happy to see that.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I will say I left seeing the Oscars wanting to see that movie. And I think it's because, one, I had a Dane next to me while watching this year. So, she right away was like rooting for him but also how to give me the whole back story. So, it was super interesting.
Arnon Shorr:
It was also one of the few films that they showed a clip from.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That might be it. You're absolutely right. That's true, they did. And the speech off also.
Scott Feinberg:
Fandango. Yeah, the Speech was very powerful. And then, also today, Fandango went through which people buy tickets. And, I guess, they also have streaming stats. They put out that even though the Oscar audience was weighed down, the people who did watch it apparently did still... There was still the Oscar bounce because they showed the percentage increase in terms of viewership of these different movies and another round went up 600%.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Wow. It's on my to-do list, for sure.
Arnon Shorr:
Having that clip of showing that clip.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I mean just so silly. Herbie. Hi, Herbie. He has a wonderful question about LaKeith Stanfield who gave an Oscar-worthy performance in Judas and the Black Messiah. How did the Academy determine that he was considered a supporting actor as the movies portrayed through his character's storyline point of view? What are your thoughts?
Thomas Doherty:
Well, he was great in it. And as I was watching it though, the thing that really impressed me was the Fred Hampton character took over the film, and it was the total opposite from the Assassination Of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford which kind of usually you identify with the Judas character. He's kind of the more interesting character. And somehow, the Fred Hampton guy was so magnetic that it really overpowered the other role. And, I think, as written, the Judas role is always going to be more interesting than the Christ role.
Scott Feinberg:
Absolutely. And in terms of how they wound up with two supporting actors and no lead actors, I think, that first of all, there's always been a degree of category fraud since this was introduced, since those supporting categories came about in the '30s which by the way was another thing to placate actors who were pissed off still about the Academy's behavior with the post-bank holiday. They said, "Well, we'll recognize character actors as well. And then, Walter Brennan won three and five years.
Scott Feinberg:
But the thing that happened a few years after that was with Going My Way. Barry Fitzgerald got nominated for both. He got enough votes to be nominated for both lead actor and supporting actor for the same performance, and they said, "Wait a minute. We cannot have this happen again."
Scott Feinberg:
So, at that point, they said whichever of the categories an actor gets the most votes in, they're going to then be competing in that category for the nomination. It doesn't mean they'll be nominated because you still have to be in the top five vote scores in that category. But that's the category that you would be competing in. So, what I think happened with Judas and the Black Messiah, they both theoretically could have gotten enough votes to be nominated one or both of them for lead.
Scott Feinberg:
But if they got more for supporting because people couldn't decide, they were split about which one was actually the lead, which one was supporting, if they ended up with more votes overall in supporting, that's just the way it works. But that's different also from what we've seen in recent years with something like spotlight or this year with Trial of Chicago Seven where there's a deliberate effort to kind of placate a large ensemble cast and not insult anyone by saying, "This guy's a lead, but you're supporting," when everybody's kind of a big name actor.
Scott Feinberg:
And so, they say "Everyone's supporting. There's no lead. So, everyone's supporting, and you can all feel good about that." But the problem is that you then end up with, in both of those cases, only one person actually getting nominated whereas you probably could have had multiple if you'd spread them out. So, anyway.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Professor Doherty, you can ask Michael Sugar that because you're going to be talking to very shortly who did spotlight for all of you, soon in May for alumni weekend. Is that correct? I think you're interviewing him.
Thomas Doherty:
Oh, yeah. I'm going to be talking to Michael Sugar. Yes.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Maybe, that can come up. I don't know. DO you guys foresee a possibility that either... Well, I'm going to add to this. Yeah. So, Yale asked if you foresee a possibility that the stunt category would be nominated in the future. And then, I want to add as well there's been a push for casting to get nominated as well. So, what are your thoughts on those particular categories being added to the mix?
Thomas Doherty:
I don't know if stunt would work. I know there's been a lot of talk about casting over the years. And I know there's also been a suggestion that end titles or opening title credits should also have a kind of an Oscar for their own because some of the opening and end credits are the best parts of the movie, like Saul Bass Memorial Award because when you do think of some of the great movies, some of the most memorable parts of them are the title or the end credits sequence now. So, I'd be okay with that one. How about you, Scott?
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think the reason they're unlikely to be added at a Oscar telecast level is that nobody wants more categories. They're already trying to fight the branch that represents the short filmmakers to consolidate those three into maybe one. This year, they consolidated the two sound categories finally into one because they realize that nobody outside of the sound branch knows the difference between sound editing and sound mixing.
Scott Feinberg:
And so, also, they just didn't want to waste out additional few minutes on that category. So, there is a casting director's branch that has been added in the last few years to the Academy. So, they would probably have a better shot only because they actually have advocates within the board of governors. But stunt, in some ways, makes more sense because you can... How do you know how much was the credit of the casting director versus the director, versus... A million different considerations. But stunts, you can kind of tell if it's done well or not.
Scott Feinberg:
And so, there is a SAG award for best stunts. I don't think we're going to necessarily see either added. But they have been welcoming more of both sorts of people into the Academy in recent years. I think they figure better to have them doing their business inside the tent out than the reverse.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's pretty much it for questions. There's one specifically about, Gabe Shore wants to know, Scott, what are your favorite or some of your favorite interviews for the Awards Chatter podcast. He said, "Pick three," but that might be really hard.
Scott Feinberg:
I think I know what Professor Doherty says.
Thomas Doherty:
This is an infamous story in the history of Scott podcast. So, you can tell it, Scott.
Scott Feinberg:
Well, no. I mean there's like we're coming up on 400 episodes. They've all gone pretty well and the one guy who I just... Maybe, there's always one in 400 that you're going to have a problem with. But good old David Crosby. I do see why both of his bands dumped him and why he's... Anyway, he's a struggling individual. But that's the one that I would not count as one of my three, for sure. I do recommend if you're willing to check it out. I think, the Oprah episode, the Stephen Colbert episode, and maybe the Ben Affleck episode.
Thomas Doherty:
I was just going to say that the Ben Affleck episode is, I don't want to say, surprisingly good. But I didn't expect him to be as articulate funny, self-deprecating, and informative. And it says, I think, a lot about Scott that, and like the David Crosby moment. David Crosby walked out after, what, 27 minutes or so --was thrown out--something. Well, he walked out and was thrown at it at the same time. You can argue about that. Scott's well informed. He authentically listens. He wants to bring out the best. He's kind of like our Larry King, only not quite as obsequious, right.
Thomas Doherty:
There are two that I'd recommend though. I really like the Jerry Seinfeld episode. And I thought that was very funny and also any time a comedian at that level talks about their comedy, you get a sense of just how much of a ratiocinative they are. Their minds are so sharp to do that. And when they talk about it, you really get a sense of the analytical depth of what they're doing.
Thomas Doherty:
And then, for a movie geeks, Peter Bogdanovich, the Peter Bogdanovich episode now. And I especially like that Scott asked him the interviewer question which is which was the one that got away, and in a nanosecond, Bogdanovich said, "Buster Keaton." That was the one that he didn't get to. And Scott, who's yours?
Scott Feinberg:
Well, thank you for listening to those others and saying that. I had a few that are going to haunt me because there were several where... We were saying before we started this on the air where the person died after they had said they were willing to do it. Somebody like Richard Widmark was ready to go. And then, he died right away after that.
Scott Feinberg:
I'm trying to remember. I think Tony Curtis, same thing. But early, early on, and this is pre-podcast, but just interview generally. It killed me to be alive at a time when Brando and Hepburn were… And I couldn't get them. And she lived a long time. And I kept trying. But, I think, the answer that I would probably give because, I think, she would have been the most interesting in a just a way different from anyone else would have been Shirley Temple. That one, I really wanted, and it didn't happen.
Thomas Doherty:
Yeah. And I regret that too, almost as much as you because she's such a fascinating character. Film people, I think, know the name. But her level of stardom was just so stratospheric. She was like the number one box office star in the middle of the Great Depression for four years. There had been child stars before. But there's never been anyone that had her like ascendants over this whole decade. And, remarkably, she turned into a healthy adult. I mean that's even, in some ways, as extraordinary of the stardom she had in the '30s. She turned into a productive healthy adult who could reflect back on it.
Scott Feinberg:
Absolutely.
Thomas Doherty:
I mean it's really an amazing story. Yeah.
Scott Feinberg:
Totally.
Thomas Doherty:
I always think of Allan Dwan's line about her. She was one in 10 million.
Scott Feinberg:
At least for you, I know you would have probably... Breen would have been the one.
Thomas Doherty:
I guess. Yeah. Just in terms of the information I could get from. I'd like to talk to somebody who is in the Berlin office of MGM. Those kind of guys that are sort of somebody whose name I don't know, who is a little below the radar, but would have been a position to know exactly what was going on in 1935 in the Berlin office where they using the office as the listening post as I've already always suspected for American intelligence or we didn't have intelligence then, but just for information sent back to America What was the atmosphere like?
Scott Feinberg:
Well, you know what? Just arrived today. So, crazy that we're talking about this, is that new book of Billy Wilder's reporting from-
Thomas Doherty:
Oh yeah. I just reviewed that by Noah Isenberg.
Scott Feinberg:
Was it good?
Thomas Doherty:
Oh yeah. It's terrific because it's Billy Wilder's reporting. Before it was Billy Wilder, he started B-I-L-L-I-E. And you can see it. You can still see he tells these great stories about being a taxi dancer at the Hotel Eden, and it's all there, and some interesting interviews and personal anecdotes. And then, he does people on Sunday which is this classic from 1930. And then moves right into screenwriting. And then, at the end of 1933, when every Viennese Jew needs to get out of Germany really quickly, he gets the call they all want from Colombia to come to Hollywood.
Scott Feinberg:
Who was the one though that literally, was it Lang, Fritz Lang, that was approached and then fled that night or something?
Thomas Doherty:
That's a story he made up. It's a great story. But the Patrick McGilligan. The story he's talking about is the one that the German director, Fritz Lang told in 1933 when the Nazis take over UFA in the German film industry. Lang is the most famous director and Gerbils invites him in and wants him to take over the Rights Film Comma for the Nazis. And Lang says, "But my mother's Jewish." And Gerbil says, "I decide who's Jewish and not."
Thomas Doherty:
And story Lang always told was that he didn't pass go. He didn't collect... From Gerbil's office, he went to the Berlin station and got on the train to Paris. But apparently not. He put his affairs in order, sent his artwork overseas. The story's a little better. Fritz's a legend.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Probably should close this off because we did say it would be close to eight. It's already 10 minutes after. I did want to just ask Professor Doherty quickly to just talk about the book that he recently published just to give people an idea of what they can get. And I'll put in a link in the chat about it.
Thomas Doherty:
Oh you mean, the Lindbergh book?
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes.
Thomas Doherty:
Oh yeah. Well, thanks for the plug, Michelle. I appreciate it. Yeah. I just completed a project on media coverage of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932. And it's not a true crime book. It's mostly a book about sort of how the three pillars of the modern media, the press, radio and the newsreels really were created at this moment involving what I truly believe is the crime of the century. The phrase is used a lot, and some people say, "OJ or Leopold and Loeb or whatever."
Thomas Doherty:
But this case really did transform American law enforcement, American law, because all the interstate anti-kidnapping laws happened because of the Lindbergh baby. And then, also the media, the radio had just reached a level of penetration in '32 where, for the first time in history, we could all listen to the same story at the same moment which has been what's true ever since, right?
Thomas Doherty:
So, radio happened first, then television. And now, of course, we all live in the digital age of Twitter and other forms of instantaneous universal communication. So, thanks for mentioning that, Michelle. I appreciate it.
Scott Feinberg:
Great book. People should grab it. And also, I want to quickly, I know we're trying to wrap it up. So, in my variation of that, what's the interview? The interview that got away, my question and I want to bring in not only Professor Doherty but also Professor Whitfield for this on, you guys are such students of history. If there was one year that you could go back in time and actually experience that year, which would it have been?
Scott Feinberg:
I think Professor Doherty's years seem all like the interest is so much for all the books within that pre-COVID period, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. You guys, I'd love to hear.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Of course, Scott's ending this interview with him interviewing people. I love this.
Thomas Doherty:
Yeah. See, he just can't stop.
Scott Feinberg:
Sorry. Sorry.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Don’t be sorry. It's a great question.
Thomas Doherty:
Well, I'd like to be in Weimar, Germany before the Nazis got clicking. Even though I'm interested in the '30s, the '30s is a really depressing decade. But when we all play the time traveling game, I always think, "How great it would have been to be in Weimar, Germany," when Potemkin was premiering, and you could go out to the nightclubs and maybe run into Louise Brooks. It'd be really cool. How about you, Scott?
Stephen Whitfield:
But also a horrible time.
Thomas Doherty:
Oh, hi, Steve.
Stephen Whitfield:
Obviously dancing at the edge of a volcano.
Thomas Doherty:
I said before the Nazi stuff, Steve. I don't wanna, yeah, If we're playing the time travel game, I get to sort of say like 27. How about you, Steve?
Stephen Whitfield:
Tom, I still can't help but say the volcano was still there. Scott, I have to fudge it. I'm sorry I appreciate the question. It's unanswerable really in the sense that how old am I when this is allegedly occurring, what do I know before and after? It's t's tough. If you ask strictly speaking to Hollywood, I would have to say what was so phenomenal. The obvious year would be 1939 what was, in some way, so remarkable about it, and that we're still living in its wake. That would probably, within that narrow framework, leaving my place out of it. But that's a mystery to still be, I assume in some ways, resolved.
Scott Feinberg:
I just picture you with... This is not 1939 specific. But, I think, you would be in your element with Menken. And who are some of your other favorites? Your round table would be interesting.
Stephen Whitfield:
Yeah. That's back to Tom's 1920s, we're soul brothers. Anyway, thanks for a terrific conversation.
Scott Feinberg:
Thank you.
Thomas Doherty:
Thank you.
Stephen Whitfield:
Yeah. It was great.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Thank you, guys. Really appreciate it.
Thomas Doherty:
Thank you, Michelle, Arnon.
Scott Feinberg:
Yeah. Michelle and Arnon, thank you.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Our next event, our next show, of the DICE Events will be May 26th. It's going to be all about sort of the future of theater, if you will, with some really great people from Brandeis. And again, we put up the archival library site with all of our past panels. So, definitely, check those out. We also have the Facebook groups out there so, you can hear about future events that we're doing. Anything else, Arnon, that I might have missed?
Arnon Shorr:
No. I think, that covers it.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Cool.
Scott Feinberg:
Thank you Michelle and Arnon. Nice to see you, guys.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Thank you, guys so much. Thanks for everyone for attending. We'll see you next time.