Interview: Author Michael Schulman on Oscar twists and psychodramas
Photo by Ethan James Green
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Michael Schulman is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering arts and culture. He is the author of Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep and, most recently, Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears.
In this conversation, Michael talks about The Muppets, being at the Moonlight/La La Land Oscars, the musical he’d love to see as a movie, one change he’d make to the Oscars, the Shakespeare in Love vs. Saving Private Ryan psychodrama, and much more!
1. What is the Michael Schulman origin story?
A lot of my humor was inherited from The Muppets when I was little. They’re the spider that bit me. I love the absurdity and chaos and showbiz of The Muppets. I was an actor in high school musicals and then directed plays in college, and I became really obsessed with absurdist playwrights like Christopher Durang and John Guare and Tom Stoppard. I vaguely wanted to pursue directing after college but instead I got a job at The New Yorker. Once I was there I was desperate to write for Talk of the Town because those stories kind of remind me of funny one-act plays, except everything in them is real, and I felt like I understood that kind of writing because of those playwrights I had loved. So I never really studied journalism or even took a journalism class. I got into it completely sideways.
2. Among many other things, you’ve written about theater for The New Yorker. What play or musical would you love to see adapted for the big screen?
Spring Awakening. The music in that show by Duncan Sheik was so groundbreaking and it blew my mind when I first saw it on Broadway. It’s a very timely tale about what happens when we don’t tell teenagers things and let them figure it out for themselves. And I think that’s happening a lot now, like Florida, for instance, banning books and “Don’t Say Gay.” I think that musical has gotten even more timely since 2006 when it opened.
3. I just finished Oscar Wars and loved it. As you were pondering what your next book might be, what was the aha moment that made you want to pursue this one?
The book more or less grew out of a New Yorker story I did in 2017 about how the Academy was navigating the aftermath of #OscarsSoWhite. I went out to Hollywood and I spent time with Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who was the president of the Academy at the time. I learned a lot about Academy history and what they actually do besides give out awards. I talked to all these Academy members who were very against the diversity initiative that Cheryl Boone Isaacs was the face of, so it was this really interesting conflict happening in Hollywood against the backdrop of the 2016 election.
So then that story came out for the Oscars. I went to the Oscars for the first time in 2017 and covered them for the magazine. I was very wide-eyed and awed to be there in person, having watched the Oscars my whole life. And then it just so happened that that was the year of the envelope mix-up with Moonlight and La La Land. So I was sitting there for what I immediately realized was a historic Oscar event. I was in the press room when they showed the Moonlight card. Everyone screamed. It was just so dramatic and exciting and wild, and I felt like I had watched this epic tale with a twist Hollywood ending of a transformation of the culture through the Academy Awards.
And that is really the premise of the book, that each of these dozen or so chapters goes really deep on just one moment in time—a year at the Oscars or category or some conflict that tells a larger story of cultural change—and it ends with that year of #OscarsSoWhite through Envelopegate.
Scene from the infamous envelope mix-up between Moonlight and La La Land for Best Picture in 2017.
4. One thing the book does really well is interweave the narratives of each Oscar season you feature with the movie industry at large at the time. What’s the most fascinating thing you learned while researching the book?
It is hard to pick, but I was really entranced by the research for the blacklist chapter, which is titled “Who Is Robert Rich?” It starts with this mostly forgotten Oscars scandal in 1957 when this man named Robert Rich won Best Motion Picture Story—a category that no longer exists—and he wasn’t there and no one can find him. He turned out to be a phantom because he was a front for Dalton Trumbo. I just loved that because there were so many weird little details, like Life magazine ran this story where they included an illustration of Robert Rich based on what the producers said he looked like. And through this little keyhole you get a glimpse into this world of the people who are on the blacklist, and the screenwriters who were fighting for their lives and careers and suddenly winning Oscars for screenplays they couldn’t take credit for.
5. Which chapter was the hardest to research or write, and why?
I would say the chapter on Harvey Weinstein in the ‘90s, which culminates in the 1999 Best Picture race between Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love, known as the ugliest Best Picture fight of all time. I really fell into quite a wormhole for that research. I ended up interviewing 40 people just for that chapter alone because I wanted to talk to everyone who had worked at Miramax at the time and at DreamWorks. Because the lesser told part of that story is about DreamWorks and Spielberg and Saving Private Ryan, and they had their own sort of psychodrama going on as well. It wasn’t just the story of Harvey and his bullying campaign tactics. A lot of people had told that story, but I felt like the real story was in this dynamic between these two new studios and the bad chemistry between them. Everyone who was part of that race in 1999 is still so emotional about it. It’s like they were in an actual war.
“Everyone who was part of that race in 1999 is still so emotional about it. It’s like they were in an actual war.”
6. Shakespeare in Love or Saving Private Ryan?
Here’s the thing. Part of how people remember that year is: “Harvey cheated and the wrong movie won because Saving Private Ryan is obviously the better movie.” And that just proves that it was stolen and something horribly wrong happened. But as I said before, I’m a theater kid, and I love Shakespeare in Love. It’s about art and romance and Elizabethan England and show business, and it has this sparkling, witty script that was rewritten by Tom Stoppard with Shakespeare jokes. I just think it’s great.
Revisiting Saving Private Ryan, it’s a major achievement but it’s also a little sappy. It really tries to make you cry at the end, puffing up the John Williams music. So when I rewatched them, it kind of affirmed that I’m more of a Shakespeare in Love person. And I think there are reasons why it won that have nothing to do with campaigning, believe it or not.
7. You’re programming a mini film festival of three films that best capture the history of the Oscars. What would they be?
I would say It Happened One Night, Midnight Cowboy, and Moonlight.
It Happened One Night was the first movie out of only three movies ever to win all five top prizes, the Big Five. It was this sort of apotheosis of Frank Capra’s career in the ‘30s when he was a major figure in the Academy and he became the Academy president. It kind of encapsulates everything that was good about the Golden Age studio system, producing this witty, delightful movie.
Midnight Cowboy was the movie that finally won for the counterculture as the old Hollywood turned into the new Hollywood. I have a whole chapter on that year leading up to that win. The year before, Oliver! had won Best Picture, the only G-rated movie to win Best Picture. And a year later, Midnight Cowboy became the only X-rated movie to win Best Picture.
And then Moonlight was another kind of change movie. The fact that it won signaled this new era and culture. It won over La la Land in the most insane way, first of all, but it came on the heels of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. And I think we’re sort of living in the world that Oscars created, where there is so much attention paid to representation and inclusion.
8. What’s one change you’d make to the Academy or the Oscars ceremony?
I think they should put back the lifetime achievement awards on the telecast. Those are when some great person, some living legend, comes out and gives a speech that was always an emotional centerpiece of the show. You see that on the Golden Globes—how are the Golden Globes getting that right and the Oscars not doing it? These are not, you know, people who are obscure. Last year was Samuel L. Jackson. Who doesn’t want to see Samuel L. Jackson come out and give a lifetime achievement speech? Come on!
9. What’s a multiple Oscar-winning movie that doesn’t get talked about enough?
I don’t think it’s gone from the culture, but Kramer vs. Kramer, which I wrote a lot about in my first book, Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep. It was not only the Best Picture winner of 1980 but the highest-grossing movie in the U.S. at the time. Which is kind of mind-boggling because that doesn’t happen anymore, that those two things are the same movie. It was such a lightning rod for the gender politics of that moment and how people felt about feminism and divorce and men and women. It has such an incredible breakout performance from Meryl Streep, and it doesn’t feel like something that people reference as much given that it was such a huge deal.
“Who doesn’t want to see Samuel L. Jackson come out and give a lifetime achievement speech? Come on!”
10. Speaking of your book on Meryl Streep, what’s one interesting or surprising thing people might not know about her?
She was a high-school cheerleader. She also dated the guy who played Fredo in The Godfather, John Cazale. He was like the love of her life in the ‘70s, and he died very young. She was at his bedside caring for him. My first book really revolves around this tragic love story that she had when she was very young, with this incredible actor who is not remembered enough.
11. What’s a piece of hard-won advice you’d give to aspiring writers?
If you’re a culture writer, you have to familiarize yourself with culture that precedes your time. Not to be an old fogy, but I feel like a lot of young people now really just care about things that happened in their lifetimes and they don’t explore the past. Like even the ‘90s are ancient. It will make you a better writer and better thinker and better culture vulture if you immerse yourself in the culture of preceding generations, whether it’s old movies or music or even just cultural eras.
12. What movie do you return to when life gets you down?
Death Becomes Her. It’s this crazy movie from 1992 about these women in Hollywood who drink a magical potion to keep them young, and then they die and become the living dead. It’s a very catty, campy, fun movie.
+1. What’s your question for us?
What was your favorite movie from the past year that wasn’t nominated for an Oscar?
[Chad:] One that I’m not sure many people saw is called Emergency. It’s on Amazon Prime. It’s a debut feature from Carey Williams about three college roommates—two of them are Black and one Latino—getting ready to go out for a night of partying when they discover this young white girl passed out drunk on their floor. Basically the movie is about how they deal with that given the racial dynamics and the position they’ve been put in. I just found it really fascinating, funny, kind of tragic. Just a really great dramedy that is also a great portrait of male friendship.