A History of Sex Workers and Oscar Wins

by Nathaniel R

Mikey Madison, Best Actress winner for "ANORA"With Mikey Madison's much buzzed about semi-surprising Best Actress win for Anora (2024) and Madison and her writer/director Sean Baker both paying tribute to sex workers in their speeches, let's talk sexworkers and the Oscars. It is a myth that playing a sex worker will get you an Oscar but it is also not wholly false that these roles are of great interest to Hollywood. Many actresses have been celebrated for playing women of ill repute whether they're traditional prostitutes, strippers, sex therapists, or it happens to be a character detail that they used to trade sex for money, or whatnot. What this says about Hollywood and the public's taste in entertainment is... well, it says many things... but they do call it 'the oldest profession' for a reason.

Male actors are not nominated for this sort of role (which also says a lot about society and Hollywood) even when they deserve to be...

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Oscar History: The Very First Ceremony!

by Nathaniel R

THE FIRST OSCAR CEREMONY (photo from the Academy)

94 years ago today (May 16th, 1929) the very first Oscars were held in Hollywood. The newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was honoring the films released in the summer of 1927 through the summer of 1928 (a full year prior!). The ceremony, held at the Roosevelt Hotel (which was then about to turn two years old and is now the oldest continually operating hotel in Los Angeles) lasted just 15 minutes.  It would be the first and only fully “private” ceremony with the Oscars broadcasting by radio the following year. It would also be the first and only ceremony ever held in May with the Oscars moving to November the next season. Unusual yes. But only to these modern eyes. It would take the Academy a decade plus to settle into many of the traditions and categories that now seem to have always existed and even longer before the television-specific rituals began (in the early 50’s.)

Let’s look at what they chose in their inaugural year and where you can now screen those films...

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Revisiting the original "A Star Is Born"

by Cláudio Alves

As the next Supporting Actress Smackdown approaches, The Film Experience is celebrating the cinematic year of 1937. It was then that Hollywood consolidated its favorite myth about itself. While the story model had been making the rounds for ages, both in gossip and on-screen (check out What Price Hollywood?), William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born is the first movie of its name. The tale of Norman Maine and Vicky Lester, his downfall and her rise to fame, would be told three more times to great effect, but one should never forget the original. Not when the movie is this pristine, written to formidable effect by a team that included the legendary Dorothy Parker and performed with utmost conviction by Fredric March and Janet Gaynor…

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Showbiz History: A Lavender Couple, Single White Female, and More...

10 random things that happened on this day in history as it relates to showbiz (Aug 14th)

1040 King Duncan is killed in battle by an army led by his cousin Macbeth, which will all later be rewritten by William Shakespeare as altogethier plottier and magically damning. Macbeth hasn't been transferred to cinema as much of some other Shakespearean tragedies which is TOTALLY fine because no one will ever top Kurosawa's Throne of Blood anyway.

1851 Outlaw Doc Holliday born in Georgia. The gambler / dentist / gunfighter / tuberculosis-victim has made for quite a scenery-chewing role for famous actors over the years, including Cesar Romero, Walter Huston, Kirk Douglas, Arhtur Kennedy, Adam West, Martin Landau, Jason Robards, Stacy Keach, Willie Nelson, Dennis Quaid, and Val Kilmer.

1928 Lina Wertmuller born in Rome. She'll become the first woman ever nominated for a directing Oscar when she's 48 years old for the masterpiece Seven Beauties. 

1939 Oscar's first Best Actress, Janet Gaynor marries a costume designer so famous, he didn't even need a last name: Adrian. Many people believe it was a "lavender marriage"...

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Months of Meryl: Defending Your Life (1991)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#18 —Julia, a quality human being awaiting her judgment in the afterlife.

JOHN: Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks’ 1991 purgatory comedy, actually contains two movies. One involves Brooks’ Daniel Miller dying in a car accident, arriving in the leisurely Judgment City, and having his entire life reviewed in a trial that will determine whether he is reincarnated as a different person or sent to a higher dimension. The other, shorter film lodged inside Brooks’ painfully vain lark is about the absolute perfection of Meryl Streep. Guess which one is more enjoyable...

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