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The Big Show : High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards
The Big Show High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards Author:Steve Pond An unprecedented look at the machinations behind everyone's favorite Hollywood circus and what it reveals about the business of moviemaking. — Oscar parties. Oscar pools. Oscar style. Oscar predictions. The Oscars breed their own peculiar mania and a billion people worldwide are alleged to watch the broadcast every year. While that figure ... more »may be the Academy's big white lie, the Oscars draw a viewership well into the hundreds of millions--a tremendous audience for what is essentially a television program. But this is no ordinary show. Love it or loathe it, the Oscars are an irresistible spectacle: a gloriously gaudy, glitzy, momentous, and foolish window into the unholy alliance of art and commerce that is the film industry. The Oscar statuette is a totem of such potency that millions are spent and careers laid on the line in the reckless pursuit of an eight-pound chunk of gold-plated britannium.
The Big Show is a chronicle of the past fifteen years of the Academy Awards, the most tumultuous decade in Oscar's seventy-six year history. Written by the only journalist ever given carte blanche access to the planning, production, and backstage intrigue of the Oscars, it offers an unguarded, behind-the-scenes glimpse of this singular event, along with remarkable insight into how the Oscars reflect the high-stakes politics of Hollywood, our obsession with celebrities (not to mention celebrities' obsession with themselves), and the cinematic state of the union.« less