Hello from The Middle of the Night. Yesterday's episode of Stu's Show — with guests Bob Bergen and m.e. — ran an Internet-busting four (4!) hours. Three hours and fifty-two minutes of it were spent with Bob and/or me telling our host Stu Shostak why he was wrong about one thing or another. It got a bit heated at times and my e-mail suggests that a lot of folks thought it ended with someone unwilling to speak to someone else ever again. Nonsense. Everyone was buddy-buddy in the off-air post-show chatter.
One of the louder topics was the "death reels" (aka "In Memoriam" presentations) on show biz award shows which have some folks quite incensed. Stu was and remains quite ballistic about the exclusions. Bob, who sits on the Board of Governors at the TV Academy, explained some of the constraints on these segments.
My own opinion has evolved a bit on this. I think yeah, it would be great if they included everyone who has made a significant contribution to movies or TV shows or Broadway shows or whatever the medium is for the awards show in question. But I recognize that's impossible and I've decided not to get upset when 5% of the well-known performers are omitted from a montage which excludes 60% of the directors who might have been in it, 75% of the writers, 63% of the cinematographers and art directors, 99% of the animators, etc.
I made up those percentages but I'll bet they're not far off. It's everyone but the actors who get "snubbed." At least when a Carol Channing or a Sondra Locke gets omitted, people notice. Few if any of the complainers noticed they didn't include Don Lusk (who animated on most of the great Disney features) or Gary Kurtz (who produced Star Wars and American Graffiti, among others).
And I suspect Dick Miller got more attention for not being in the Oscars reel than he would have received had he been included.
Anyway, I was so exhausted from Stu's Show that I climbed into bed shortly after it. Which explains why I'm up here in The Middle of the Night. It's not a bad time to be here. As far as I can tell, I have the whole Internet to myself…