14 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY10, 2020
DEPT.OFH AT E-WATC H I N G
“THEOSCAR”RETURNS
T
he Oscars: Hollywood’s proudest,
most self-aggrandizing pageant, a
prom and a graduation rolled into one.
“The Oscar”: A 1966 film, with a script by
the prolific science-fiction writer Harlan
Ellison, depicting the sleazy machinations
of a vapid, selfish actor to redeem him-
self by winning a golden statuette. The
film, its cast packed with stars—Frank
Sinatra, Bob Hope, Tony Bennett, Mil-
ton Berle, Ernest Borgnine, Joseph Cot-
ten—some of them Oscar winners, was
an overblown, A-list flop, a “Gigli” for the
ages. In the Times, Bosley Crowther called
it a “cheap, synthetic film which dumps
filth upon the whole operation of Hol-
lywood.” The Academy, which lent the
film its logo and its blessing, apparently
regretted it, and has not done so since.
For decades, the practically unwatch-
able film was largely unseeable, an un-
restored embarrassment buried in the
Paramount archives. “There’s a samiz-
dat quality,” Erik Nelson, a filmmaker
who made a documentary about Ellison,
said. “Like ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ fans would
be passing around copies and reciting
the dialogue.” This Oscar week, an art-
house distributor will release a remas-
tered, wide-screen, HD version. “For
us, it’s like finding the lost reels of ‘The
Magnificent Ambersons’ or Erich von
Stroheim’s nine-hour cut of ‘Greed,’”
Nelson said. “Among comics, this film
has a real resonance. There’s a level of
complete and utter commitment: the
actors are convinced they’re delivering
Oscar-worthy material. Every scene is
dialled to eleven.” He imagines a “Rocky
Horror”-like cult future for “The Oscar.”
Several months ago, Nelson gath-
ered with a few others who love to hate
“The Oscar” at a house in the Holly-
wood Hills, to record commentary for
the DVD. Establishing his bona fides,
he said, “They film April 5, ’65—who’s a
nerd?—at the Academy Awards at Santa
Monica Civic Auditorium, where ‘My
Fair Lady’ is beating out ‘Dr. Strange-
love’ for Best Picture and Rex Harri-
son beats Peter Sellers for Best Actor.”
The house belonged to Josh Olson,
a screenwriter who collaborated with
Ellison. “The Oscar” was Ellison’s first
film, and he never managed to make
another one. Patton Oswalt, the come-
dian, arrived, wearing brick-red shorts
and a matching hoodie. He described at-tending a rare screening of “The Oscar”
at the Egyptian Theatre in the early
two-thousands: “When Harlan walked
down the aisle to go onstage, he went
down with both birds blazing, flipping
off the audience the whole way.”
Ellison died in 2018. His widow, Susan,
sat quietly in a swivel chair, sipping a
margarita. “You could not mention ‘The
Oscar’ around Harlan at all,” she said. “He
took it so personally.” Susan—Ellison’s
fifth wife— was married to him for thir-
ty-two years. He once gave her a birth-
day gift of a color-pencil drawing done of
Elke Sommer by Edith Head. (Head, who
designed the costumes for “The Oscar,”
also appeared in it; Sommer was one of
the movie’s stars.) Recently, working with
an archivist, Susan discovered her hus-
band’s original three-hundred-and-for-
ty-four-page script. Nelson had already
committed most of it to memory.
The men got miked, and “The Oscar,”
projected onto a large screen in Olson’s
living room, began to roll. “Ladies and
gentlemen, the star of ‘The Oscar,’ the
great Stephen Boyd,” Nelson said. Boyd,
as the soulless, amoral actor Frankie Fane,
ditches his stripper girlfriend, played
by Jill St. John, for Sommer, whom he
later spurns. Oswalt put in a good word
for Boyd, who played the antagonist to
Charlton Heston’s Ben-Hur in the Wil-that Republican senators might do, as
they so flagrantly fail their country, is to
clearly say that Dershowitz’s reasons for
acquittal are not theirs.
The first article of impeachment
charged Trump with abuse of power in
his dealings with Ukraine, and even a
few Republicans, such as Senator Lamar
Alexander, conceded that the managers
had proved that case. (Alexander added
that, nonetheless, the President’s actions
didn’t warrant impeachment.) The case
for the second article, charging Trump
with obstruction of Congress for deny-
ing it witnesses and documents, was more
complicated. Here, the Trump team’s ar-
guments were at least in the realm of
constitutional reality, however hypocrit-
ically they were offered. The House man-
agers couldn’t quite shake the opinion
held by many that they should have
fought the President’s defiance of their
subpoenas in court, even if it took time.
(Indeed, because Trump’s arguments are
so extreme and untenable, the House
Democrats had been on a winning path
in the lower courts.)
At the same time, the managers ham-
mered home the point that the senators
had the power to expose the full story by
calling witnesses—which they chose, in
a vote on Friday, to toss aside. In doing
so, they may have set a precedent that
will further limit future Senates in con-
straining Presidents. The managers also
made it abundantly clear that this Pres-
ident has played petty games with mo-
mentous matters of war and peace.
Unable to exonerate Trump, his law-
yers resorted to making an appeal to blind
triumphalism. Eric Herschmann, one of
the members of Trump’s team most prone
to go off on political tangents—he used
up a lot of time attacking President
Obama—reeled off a series of economic
statistics and approval ratings and told
the senators, “If all that is solely, solely,
in their words, for his personal and po-litical gain, and not in the best interest
of the American people, then I say, God
bless him. Keep doing it!” It was as if
those figures added up to a paid-in-full
purchase of impunity. Trump, for his part,
will undoubtedly see an acquittal as fur-
ther license for abuse.
Earlier in the week, Trump had held
a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, expressly
to thank the now Republican congress-
man Jeff Van Drew for having left the
Democratic Party over what Trump called
the “impeachment hoax.” He exhorted
the crowd to reëlect Van Drew—“really
a brave man, what he did was incredi-
ble”—and to throw out the Democratic
“clowns.” Perhaps the Republican sena-
tors, as they trudged toward casting their
vote, were making a calculation about
how Trump might return the favor with
one for them, or their party, or their coun-
try. Or maybe they, too, can no longer
tell the difference.
—Amy Davidson Sorkin