A History of the Oscars at the Emmys (Can They Win Variety Special, Live, for the First Time?)

by Christopher James

Could continued fervor for the Oscars that awarded Everything Everywhere All At Once lead to an Emmy win for the Oscars ceremony?

The Academy may hand out awards, but they also compete for them! The Oscars regularly compete at the Emmys in the Variety Special categories, having won 7 Emmys from 68 nominations over the past 10 years. This flies in the face of the common joke that the Oscars are regularly the most maligned awards show on the block. Still, Hollywood's big show has never won the Variety Special (Live) prize, nor the Special Class Program award before it. This year’s Oscars got above average reviews, including from The Film Experience. It contends in four categories, including Directing (which it has won twice previously). 

Could a strong show and a great winner with Everything Everywhere All At Once propel the Oscars to a big Emmys win?

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For "The Humans" to Err is Human and to Forget Divine

by Jason Adams

Erik (Richard Jenkins), the patriarch of the Blake family, stands staring out a dingy window into the gray light of the alleyway -- excuse me, the "interior courtyard" -- behind his daughter's unfurnished and water-logged Chinatown apartment. His thoughts are clearly elsewhere, new worries freshly lining his already lined face, as something catches his eye, and then another -- is that snow? It's lovely, in its way, but distressing all the same -- having traveled into the big city for this Housewarming slash Thanksgiving dinner from the wilds of distant Scranton he's got to think about getting everybody home at a decent hour, and a snow-storm would have them trapped here, nary a bed in sight. (Having lugged a Mary figure there as their Housewarming gift the soft Biblical allusions to "no room at the Inn" seem let's say non-accidental.) He brings up this his most recent distress to Richard (Steven Yeun), his daughter's boyfriend, who doesn't see snow at all, instead offering the thesis that someone on an upper floor has just emptied their ashtray.

Snow to ash, and just like that beauty to death, a recurring happening in Stephen Karam's Tony-winning play turned A24's darkly funny and emotionally cataclysmic awards-season contender The Humans, out this week...

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Six Degrees of Stockard Channing

By Spencer Coile 

John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation is a finely tuned satire of the rich and elite, inviting its audience into the lives of Flan and Ouisa Kittredge, an art dealer and his wife. Through a mixture of broad comedy, close examination of "how the other half lives," and an honest depiction of race relations in the 20th century, his work was not only a Best Play nominee at the 1990 Tony Awards, but was a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It is no surprise that his creation would soon find its home on the screen as well, being adapted into a 1993 film of the same name, directed by Fred Schepisi and written for the screen by Guare. 

Indeed, much can be said about both its stage and screen representation (Nathaniel even wrote about the play's current revival here), from its kooky premise to the performances. Considering the revival's Tony success (nominations for Best Revival of a Play and Best Leading Actor in a Play), not to mention many of its timeless qualities, let's dive into Guare's work and find out what connects us all. 

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