Predictions, Large And Small, For The Academy’s Kramer Regime
deadline.comWow. Bill Kramer’s lightning strikes at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—into the chief’s job 17 days early, Chief Operating Officer Christine Simmons out by mid-morning, Jacqueline Stewart in place to take his old Academy Museum post less than a week later—are impressive.
Even the Academy’s often spotty Website was updated in real time: The revised executive line-up posted as the coup got underway.Really, Kramer moved in like Grant took Richmond.
Slowly at first (a lot of lobbying preceded his appointment to replace predecessor Dawn Hudson), and then all of a sudden. Boom!So now what?In the first week of a new fiscal year, less than a month until the election of a new Academy board president, with 248 days to maneuver before the next Oscar show (but who’s counting?), Kramer holds in his hands the rare opportunity to salvage and perhaps reshape an American institution.The last few years haven’t been good to the Academy, nor to the film industry it serves.
Revenue is down. Tensions are high. The awards business is shaky—inevitably caught up in the culture wars, and in an across-the-board decline (as reported this week by the Gallup poll) in regard for business, government, social structures and media.Why shouldn’t Will Smith take a whack at Chris Rock?
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