John Freeman

Matt Drudge recently appeared on the conservative talk show "Hannity & Colmes" to denounce, of all things, the selection of comedian Chris Rock to host the 2005 Academy Awards.

"I want one place left where there's not going to be anything lewd," Drudge said. "I think the Academy Awards have to be called on the carpet, preferably a red carpet, to say why he is now representing the Academy."

Drudge would have a lot less to worry about if he read Steve Pond's "The Big Show." Chronicling the last ten years of Hollywood's annual festival of self-congratulation, Pond notes that controversy--of a political sort--has been largely missing. Why? People are too busy complaining.

To read "The Big Show" is to suddenly understand how the millionaire producers who shepherd the event can be made to feel like martyrs. They must put up with stars annoyed because their gift-basket gift certificates have expiration dates, actresses who desperately need champagne after winning their first Oscar, presenters who show up minutes before they're supposed to take the stage, and publicists who desperately want to get backstage.

And then there is the tricky business of keeping Cameron Diaz's nipples from showing through her dress.

Pond began covering the Oscars in the late eighties and became an embedded journalist there in 1994, with access to both rehearsals and a night-of backstage pass. As a result, "The Big Show" feels like it's narrated by an invisible bumblebee who could flit from room to room, shoulder to shoulder, noting who smokes (everyone) and who doesn't (no one, it seems), who throws tantrums (just about everyone) and who keeps their cool (Steve Martin).

While a star-struck journalist might have been hypnotized by the megawatt talent, Pond simply reports who says what and how the night unfolds. And what happens without a script needs no gloss. After all, who could predict that Madonna would respond to the news that there would be no pop-up mic by grabbing Dick Clark's son by the throat and physically lifting him off the ground?

Pond's wry and dry attitude about all these shenanigans allows him to pull back and put the event in context. As he notes, the award ceremony was almost an afterthought to the Academy's establishment in 1927. The first awards didn't take place until 1929, and through the thirties it was really a collegial event. Gradually, however, the show changed, got bigger, glitzier and more tied to money. After a brief hiatus during World War II, when the statues were plaster, they returned to gold-plated metal ones, leading to the stipulation (which still stands) that if winners want to sell the statuette they must first offer it back to the academy for ten dollars.

Over the next five decades, the awards changed even more as the industry rebounded from the fifties, took the show onto television, survived Bob Hope's thirteen appearances (and five honorary awards), John Wayne's full-frontal assault of an Oscar campaign, a streaker at the 1974 awards, Johnny Carson's ribbing, and even a night hosted by Richard Pryor. "I'm here to explain why black people will never be nominated for anything," is how Pryor began the night.

Again and again, Pond returns to Allen Carr's lengthy and mythically terrible 1989 production of the Awards. Nothing, it seems, will be so bad, and yet no night will go off without owing something to Carr's ambitions. Even so, it is producer Gil Cates who emerges from this tale as something of a hero. Managing the stars, steering this zeppelin full of hot air into the wee hours of the night. Keeping us so free of controversy that David Letterman's use of "Stupid Pet Tricks" in 1995 seemed like a potential firestorm. "Whatever happened to restraint and decorum?" Keanu Reeves cried at the time. Indeed, Drudge has nothing to worry about.

"The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards"

By Steve Pond

Faber & Faber, $26; 423 pages

(2005-02-22)

Also by John Freeman

Fiction Review
It is awfully hard to write about a book by former prostitute and street hustler JT LeRoy without remarking upon who else is reading it
(2005-02-08)

Nonfiction Review
In March, the U.S. government released five British men from Guantánamo Bay after holding them for nearly three years
(2004-12-21)

Poetry Review
Jean Valentine made her poetic debut in 1965 with a book called "Dream Barker," a title that aptly bugled the arrival of a sensibility unlike any other in American letters
(2004-12-07)

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