People keep writing to ask me about the Joan Rivers "snub" from the Oscars' In Memoriam segment. The word "snub" is getting way overused on the Internet these days, its definition now being broadened to include any time you think the wrong person got selected for something. It's like when a casting director has to pick which of ten actors who were considered (or even which of fifty who were submitted) will get a part. He picks the one he'll hire and then folks say they others were "snubbed."
Sometimes, they say they were "banned." If you host Saturday Night Live only once and then Lorne Michaels decides once is enough, or you get turned down to guest with David Letterman, you're likely to wind up on a list of people who are (gasp!) "banned" from those shows.
Or even "blacklisted." That's another one. A comedian I met at a party a few years ago was complaining that he couldn't get on The Tonight Show, which of course has always been the fate of well over 99.9999999% of all people who consider themselves professional comedians. He was saying he'd been "blacklisted," likening his non-selection to the injustice done to actors and writers who were persecuted by a conspiracy involving multiple employers who did not question their ability, only their exercise of free speech and free association.
So here's the deal with the Oscars segment. Each year, a committee at the Academy — not the producers of the telecast — has to make up the roster of who's in and who's out. They start with a list of maybe 400 names — everyone in show business who died in the last twelve months and had anything to do with a movie. Probably that list isn't even complete but they have to start somewhere. Then they whittle it down to 40-50 names.
You might ask, "Why don't they cut some musical number or a commercial or two and put in more names?" Well, they'd sooner not give out Best Picture than cut a commercial but even that wouldn't solve the problem. If they put 100 dead folks on the screen, the fans and family of others on the master list would still say, "Hey, you included the caterer on a movie made in 1974 but you left out the caterer on a movie made in 1969!" The more you include, the more you lower the bar on how important a person has to be to make the reel.
The committee considers fame and importance. You get more points if you were nominated for an Oscar or won one, which is not to suggest they have an actual points system. They may or may not.
They used to only put up actors and an occasional director but there were too many complaints about "snubbing" other job descriptions. So now they make sure to include some writers, some make-up folks, some studio execs, some cinematographers, etc. I would guess that the one or two most important costume designers who die each year will always make the final list because it would be viewed as an insult to all costume designers if at least one wasn't included.
I am told the official Academy site says that the honor is only for actual members of the Academy but I don't believe that rule, if it exists, is followed religiously. I mean, do we think some huge star who never actually joined would be omitted for that reason? It may matter in the case of those who are on the cusp.
And then the committee decides what they decide. I would assume there is discussion of whether someone is a TV person or a stage person and whether they did enough of their careers in movies that they belong. On Shelly Goldstein's Facebook page, Bruce Vilanch posted…
it ain't the people's choice, it's the academy's choice, and they tend to choose people who actually are in the movie business, not the fashion business or the television business.
Bruce has been involved in enough Oscar telecasts to know of what he writes.
Each year, we have this controversy and folks read way too much into the decision to include A but exclude B. Sooner or later, the Academy is probably going to tell whoever constructs and designs the montage, "Look, here's a list of 423 people who died since the last Oscars. We'll give you four minutes instead of three. Get every one of these names on the screen for a few seconds, even if for some, it's just putting up a crawl or twenty names at a time with no pictures."
Then there will instead be complaints about who got a picture and who didn't, and why someone's name was on longer than someone else's, and putting up 423 names will just about guarantee that someone's is misspelled. And then we'll hear about how someone whose name wasn't on the initial list of 423 was snubbed…or maybe even banned or blacklisted.