Oscar Night In Hollywood (by Raymond Chandler)

So tonight is the Oscars. I still haven't decided if I will watch them. I may tune in for the opening monologue and funny video stuff. I have seen a few of the films, not enough to judge if any of them are better than any of the others.

The Atlantic has this article up, written by the amazing, talented Raymond Chandler (who wrote the script for Double Indemnity, which is a superb movie). Chandler wrote it in 1948, and though a few things have changed (the studio system, some of the ways the Oscars are presented) the meat of the article is still applicable to today.

Not only is the article interesting, it is well written, and that is a very "entertaining" thing:)

In painting, music, and architecture we are not even second-rate by comparison with the best work of the past. In sculpture we are just funny. In prose literature we not only lack style but we lack the educational and historical background to know what style is. Our fiction and drama are adept, empty, often intriguing, and so mechanical that in another fifty years at most they will be produced by machines with rows of push buttons. We have no popular poetry in the grand style, merely delicate or witty or bitter or obscure verses. Our novels are transient propaganda when they are what is called "significant," and bedtime reading when they are not.

But in the motion picture we possess an art medium whose glories are not all behind us. It has already produced great work, and if, comparatively and proportionately, far too little of that great work has been achieved in Hollywood, I think that is all the more reason why in its annual tribal dance of the stars and the big-shot producers Hollywood should contrive a little quiet awareness of the fact. Of course it won't. I'm just daydreaming

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His point is well taken. Film is an art form, but unfortunately it is so expensive that much of the "art" gets pushed under the bus of commercialism.

On the occasion I attended [the Oscars], however, one of the Masters of Ceremony (I forget which—there was a steady stream of them, like bus passengers) announced that there would be no intermission this year and that they would proceed immediately to the important part of the program.

Let me repeat, the important part of the program.

Perverse fellow that I am, I found myself intrigued by the unimportant part of the program also. I found my sympathies engaged by the lesser ingredients of picture-making, some of which have been enumerated above. I was intrigued by the efficiently quick on-and-off that was given to these minnows of the picture business; by their nervous attempts via the microphone to give most of the credit for their work to some stuffed shirt in a corner office; by the fact that technical developments which may mean many millions of dollars to the industry, and may on occasion influence the whole procedure of picture-making, are just not worth explaining to the audience at all; by the casual, cavalier treatment given to film-editing and to camera work, two of the essential arts of film-making, almost and sometimes quite equal to direction, and much more important than all but the very best acting; intrigued most of all perhaps by the formal tribute which is invariably made to the importance of the writer, without whom, my dear, dear friends, nothing could be done at all, but who is for all that merely the climax of the unimportant part of the program.

I think (hope really) that Hollywood has realized the importance of the writer. I certainly had that importance reinforced as I saw all the shows on TV I enjoyed replaced by "reality" TV... and just wait till next season. We will also see the results of the strike on the movie business, but not for several months.

So... that's my Oscar night post:) Enjoy if you watch, if not... it really isn't that important!

Oh, hat tip to The Daily Dish...