It's time to get on with show business - How Graydon Carter saved the movies

With the end of the WGA strike, I can say to my fellow Angelenos that our long civic nightmare is over. Show business works; our great film & television industry is one of creators and not of financiers. Here, the artists rule. Basically, the studios caved and gave the writers what they were asking for and unlike this year’s Golden Globes, Sunday night’s Academy Awards - the best ever broadcast - went ahead as scheduled. I have to agree with host Jon Stewart that the show was basically the “make-up sex” after the strike. The person who deserves the credit for ending the strike, the man who slipped both parties the proverbial rufie, was Editor Graydon Carter when he decided to cancel the Hollywood A-List event of the year: Vanity Fair’s Oscar party.

In every industry, there is one day that is far-and-away the biggest of the year, like Mother’s Day is for florists. It’s usually referred to as that business’ Super Bowl because annually, it’s the most-watched television event. The second-most watched television event of the year after the Super Bowl is the Academy Awards; and for a lot of businesses in L.A., the Academy Awards are (you guessed it) their Super Bowl.

Every year in Los Angeles, the Golden Globes are a warm-up for the Oscars. The statue is a little smaller, the venue is a little smaller, the relative prestige from winning is a little smaller, and the after-parties are a little smaller. But for the designers, stylists, tailors, hair salons, make-up artists, jewelers, chauffeurs, bodyguards, caterers, waitstaff, and cleaning crews who work to prepare the venue and the guests for the event, it’s a pretty big night. This year, the Globes were canceled and all of those people got shafted.

The resulting “event” to announce the winners was pure poetry. Usually, it’s the crème-de-la-crème of Hollywood actors walking the red carpet, taking their seats, and applauding each other’s accomplishments. This year, it was a collection of pretty meat puppets from “Extra”, “Showbiz Tonight”, “Entertainment Tonight, “Inside Edition”, E! News Daily”, and “The Insider” - people whose usual role on awards night is to ask, “who are you wearing?” – announcing the winners in a glorified press conference with commercials. Not exactly the night of Hollywood glamour that I’m sure the Foreign Press Association wanted.

One result of the evening was to put the studios on notice that SAG actors were not going to cross a WGA picket line, even to blow sunshine up each other’s butts. It’s possible the studios thought the actors were bluffing. After all, the Globes are important, but an Oscar validates an actor’s career. So the studios turned to Academy President Sid Ganis who reassured them that the show would go on and that the Screen Actor’s Guild would have to choose between their loyalty to the Writer’s Guild and the annual orgy of ego gratification that is the Academy Awards.

The studios’ little gambit may have worked, too. But we will never know because three weeks after the Globes and three weeks before the Oscars, Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair dropped the bomb. It turns out that on Oscar night (Hollywood’s biggest event) there is one man can literally tell the A-List (Hollywood’s biggest stars) where to go. That man is Graydon Carter, and usually he tells them to go to Morton’s. This year, he told them to go fly a kite. Actually, his exact words were, “Inasmuch as Vanity Fair is a collection of writers, photographers, and artists, we do feel ourselves in aligned solidarity with the writers, directors, and actors in the film business.” He also let it be known that there was no room for negotiation by saying, “and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year.”

With the prospect of an expiring contract with actors and directors, no Golden Globes, no Oscars, no post-Oscar bump in box office revenue, no end in sight to the strike by the writers (without whom no production is possible), and knowing that the whole thing could be settled for pennies on the dollar, the studios did what Hillary Clinton can’t seem to bring herself to do: they recognized that it wasn’t going to go their way and they conceded.

As a bonus, those of us who truly love movies were treated to an Academy Awards show about movies and the people who make them, nothing more. The fact that there were no writers working on the show meant it wasn’t a lame attempt at a Hollywood-themed “Daily Show”. Instead, it relied on the one thing that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences knows more about than anyone or anything else: the best moments from the best movies ever made.

Thanks, Graydon.