Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Faber & Faber (2005), Paperback, 440 pages
Description
A look at the machinations behind everyone's favorite Hollywood circus and what it reveals about the business of moviemaking. The Oscars breed their own peculiar mania and a billion people worldwide are alleged to watch the broadcast every year. Love it or loathe it, the Oscars are an irresistible spectacle: a gaudy, glitzy, momentous, and foolish window into the unholy alliance of art and commerce that is the film industry. This book is a chronicle of the past fifteen years of the Academy Awards, the most tumultuous decade in Oscar's 76-year history, offering 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.--publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member ABVR
The Big Show is exactly the kind of book you’d expect from a leading movie-magazine journalist who’d been given an all-access backstage pass to the Academy Awards ceremony for eleven years. It’s an “inside look” at an event most of us only see the outside of, but a carefully managed one.
The backstage personnel come across as so uniformly competent, dedicated, and funny that they begin to feel like characters from Singin’ in the Rain or Argo. Anecdotes about the stars never cut too close to the bone or stray too far from their public images: Russell Crowe is grumpy, Judi Dench is classy, Tom Hanks is unfailingly nice, Robin Williams is unpredictable. The most emotionally revealing moments are invariably flattering: Kevin Spacey being courtly to a stunned Julia Roberts in the wings, or Michael Douglas earnestly thanking the show’s producers for the “respect and honor” they showed his aging father, Kirk. The high points of every show are lauded, and the misfires—like host David Letterman’s dead-on-arrival “Uma . . . Oprah” joke—handled briefly and gently. Pond is a sharp-eyed observer and a graceful writer, but he has no interest in biting—or even aggressively nibbling—the hand that feeds him.
The Big Show excels, however, in its depiction of the technical side of the story. Aware that he is, in effect, telling the same story fifteen times, Pond uses his first several chapters to introduce the reader to the rhythms of planning, rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and the show itself. The later chapters cover these structural elements more lightly, allowing room for sidebar discussions of topics like seat-fillers, stand-ins, acceptance speeches, gift baskets, and a dozen other subjects . . . all fascinating for the movie fans who are the book’s target audience. I found myself repeatedly, delightedly saying: “So that’s how they do it . . .”
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The backstage personnel come across as so uniformly competent, dedicated, and funny that they begin to feel like characters from Singin’ in the Rain or Argo. Anecdotes about the stars never cut too close to the bone or stray too far from their public images: Russell Crowe is grumpy, Judi Dench is classy, Tom Hanks is unfailingly nice, Robin Williams is unpredictable. The most emotionally revealing moments are invariably flattering: Kevin Spacey being courtly to a stunned Julia Roberts in the wings, or Michael Douglas earnestly thanking the show’s producers for the “respect and honor” they showed his aging father, Kirk. The high points of every show are lauded, and the misfires—like host David Letterman’s dead-on-arrival “Uma . . . Oprah” joke—handled briefly and gently. Pond is a sharp-eyed observer and a graceful writer, but he has no interest in biting—or even aggressively nibbling—the hand that feeds him.
The Big Show excels, however, in its depiction of the technical side of the story. Aware that he is, in effect, telling the same story fifteen times, Pond uses his first several chapters to introduce the reader to the rhythms of planning, rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and the show itself. The later chapters cover these structural elements more lightly, allowing room for sidebar discussions of topics like seat-fillers, stand-ins, acceptance speeches, gift baskets, and a dozen other subjects . . . all fascinating for the movie fans who are the book’s target audience. I found myself repeatedly, delightedly saying: “So that’s how they do it . . .”
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LibraryThing member judye
A very detailed examination of mounting the Oscars from an insiders point of view. Very informative but a bit too dense.
LibraryThing member ThatsFresh
I started reading this book before the 2006 Oscars, but got board quickly. It’s pretty interesting, but…not enough to hold me for all its pages. I didn’t even get to the color pictures, located in the middle of the book.
There’s lots of history to learn about the Oscar’s past, but unless
There’s lots of history to learn about the Oscar’s past, but unless
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you’re super into it, you may lose interest. So now it just sits on my bookshelf looking pretty. Show Less
LibraryThing member Code51
The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards by Steve Pond (2005) is an excellent treatise of the past 11 years (1994-2004) of the Academy Awards. In his book, he gives the reader an informative, comprehensive introduction to the planning, production, and backstage
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intrigue of the Oscars. Not only giving a behind-the-scenes look at this spectacular event, Pond delivers astonishing insight into how the Oscars portray the high-stakes politics of Hollywood. He is very successful in providing a glimpse of the happenings backstage with individual chapters dedicated to the 66th through the 76th Academy Awards (for Oscar winning films produced between 1993 through 2004). Show Less
LibraryThing member BookConcierge
Backstage at the Oscars can't really be this boring ... can it? I finished it, but I was really mostly skimming after the first three chapters.
Subjects
Language
Physical description
440 p.; 8.19 inches
ISBN
0571211909 / 9780571211906