“IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE”

Big Movie years will come again, but never again will the Oscars provide a thrilling, once-a-year-only unmediated peek into the lives of Hollywood royalty.Back when the likes of Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway reigned over the event, the Oscars were the pinnacle of celebrity culture – not that such a concept had even been invented yet. Now we have armies of prying, sanctimonious celebrity magazine editors who revel in exposing stars’ foibles and creating insta-narratives out of their everyday ups and downs.We have thuggish teams of paparazzi to provide the anywhere-any-time photographic goods. We have obsessive, lightning-fast bloggers who live to express their instantly formed opinions on celebrities’ choices in fashion and romance. When don’t we see Hollywood unmediated? It just may be that the “celebrities without makeup” movement killed the Oscars. That unglorious historical march was begun by Bonnie Fuller, when she turned Us Weekly from an earnest Hollywood-publicist-approved profile magazine into the latest word on which Oscar-winning actress has cellulite, which up-and-comer holds a Starbucks with one hand while pushing a stroller with the other.

The Wrap
Feb 21 2009