Looks like the Oscars is going ahead. As in going ahead in recognisable, tear-fuelled, gushy form rather than someone reading a press release announcing the winners and then sticking the statues in the post.
The Academy Awards President Sid Ganis is now positive that the ceremony, the 80th one in fact, will go ahead despite the ongoing writers strike.
‘Things are looking very, very good now,’ said Ganis at the celebration luncheon.
Concerns that the dispute – which is over royalties on DVDs, internet broadcasting and other new technologies developed since the last big walk-out in 1988 – would scuttle the biggest awards ceremony of the year is good news for the industry, but bad news for the BAFTAs, which no doubt expected to become the big self-congratulatory show this year.
Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. Besides, they’re going to give everything to Atonement, which was the visual equivalent of having your legs waxed.
‘The Oscars exists to shine the brightest possible light on you and your work,’ announced Ganis, ‘and it would be such a terrible shame, through no fault of yours and no fault of ours, if the current conditions prevented us from shining that brightest possible light.’
No fault of anyone? And there was us thinking the bosses were making huge amounts of revenue from the writers’ work without giving them a share.
Remarkable. We stand corrected Mr G.
It looks like the Writers’ Guild officials and film bosses have written up an outline agreement, but that then needs to be ratified by the Guild board and the East and West Coast branches of the Guild.
So it just needs to be agreed by 10,000 people or more. Yeah, that should happen quickly…
