Waxword
Sharon Waxman On the Business of Entertainment
The founder and editor of TheWrap’s take on life on the left coast, high culture, low culture and the business of entertainment and media. Waxman writes frequently on the inside doings of Hollywood, and is is also the author of two books, Rebels on the Back Lot and Loot
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Buchwald Lives
They had a memorial today for my friend Art Buchwald, who died earlier this year, at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. I couldn’t be there, but it sounded like just the kind of event Art — Artie, as many called him — would have loved. There were loads of Kennedys, and Tom Brokaw, and […]
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Lasseter Leads
In the quiet becalming of Hollywood that occurs in the days post-Oscar, my colleague Laura Holson has weighed in with a fascinating, and fairly rare, glimpse into the style and substance of John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar, come lately the chief honcho at Disney animation. He has been charged with reinventing the place, and […]
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Hollywood Junk
This (see photo) arrived in the mail the other day in the form of a paperweight. Why a paperweight? Do I, does anyone for that matter, need a silver and pink and yellow Simpsons paperweight? Will this want to make me see the movie? No. Unfortunately, this is not the only absurd bit of junk […]
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Post-Oscar, in the Wee Hours
This is your humble correspondent on her way into Vanity Fair’s Oscar party. You’ll notice I found a last-minute replacement for the old white pantsuit. There’s a story in today’s paper about what it’s like on the inside of the celebrity circle of cool, gleaned from crumpled, inky bits of paper — that’s what I […]
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Backstage
Even the press room burst into applause when Martin Scorsese won the Oscar for best director. A lot of people have been waiting a long time for this to occur (even x-ray technicians, apparently). The volume of applause in the auditorium as the nominees were announced made clear that Scorsese would be the winner. One […]
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notes from the press room
Halfway through the ceremony, there’s still no ‘story.’ That means no clear winner, no one film dominating anything, unless you count ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ which has now taken Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup. That makes for a lot of languages other than English backstage. The Academy is clearly not in the mood for light entertainment of […]
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The Night Before Oscar
On the night before Oscar, Giorgio Armani must be adored. This is the only conclusion I can draw from the stunning assemblage of celebrity plumage that appeared at the home of local billionaire Ron Burkle for a cocktail party and fashion show on Saturday night. This is the first time I can recall seeing Armani […]
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The Day Before Oscar
On the day before Oscar, there’s lots to do. We dress up, go to the beach and eat very small amounts of food at the Independent Spirit Awards, the ceremony designed to celebrate the scrappy, independent films that are likely to be overlooked by the big, brassy Oscars. Except that now, "independent" films — which […]
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Waiting for Oscar
Oscar weekend is upon us, and your intrepid reporter is sharpening her stilettos and dusting off the same white Ralph Lauren pantsuit that takes her through the gauntlet of cocktail parties, shindigs, ceremonies and champagne receptions every darn year, all in the service of you, faithful reader. I have this to say about ye olde […]
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Don’t Cough in Hollywood
I interviewed Bob Shaye, the co-chairman of New Line, at length last week for a story in today’s Business Day section of the Times. In the piece, Shaye addressed numerous rumors swirling around Hollywood about his studio, and revealed a fairly big piece of news: that he was in a coma for six weeks in […]
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The Death Star
I went to lunch with a source in Century City this week, which incidentally now has a horrifying new area code of its own, 424. The building I went to visit is now being called “The Death Star,” but it’s actually the gleaming new home of CAA, the all-powerful talent agency that seems to gobble […]
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The Mystery of the Missing Moviemakers
FOR fans of Kimberly Peirce 2007 may be a banner year. More than seven years have passed since this 39-year-old writer-director gave the world a movie. Her first effort in 1999, ''Boys Don't Cry,'' was indelible. It won a best-actress Oscar for the unknown Hilary Swank and catapulted Ms. Peirce to a spot among the […]
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Salon.com – The revolution that failed
Quentin Tarantino and the indie rebels who followed him changed Hollywood in the '90s — but in the end, Hollywood also changed them. BY ANDREW O'HEHIR | Talent isn't democratic and doesn't play fair. That's one of the things we already know about human existence — after all, van Gogh was an insufferable pill and […]
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Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System
Reviews | Buy the Book | Autographed Copies INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING GOES HOLLYWOOD Autographed copies – You can buy a signed copy of the hardback book, which is no longer available in stores, from the author directly for $20.00 plus shipping and handling. Send requests to sharon.waxman@gmail.com for details. New York Times correspondent Sharon Waxman reveals […]
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Washington Post: Reeling them in
BY ROBERT SKLAR | For a few golden years, a generation ago, Hollywood film directors preened as artists (also known as auteurs, the French word for authors). Then the movie moguls figured out how to make big bucks producing and marketing comic-book blockbusters, and the pretense was over. Most studio directors became faceless functionaries who […]