Conan O'Brien hosts the 98th annual Academy Awards. (Photo by Rich Polk/Penske Media via Getty Images)
On Sunday evening, as Hollywood gathered at the Dolby Theatre for its most star-studded night of the year, the Academy Awards showrunners were backstage holding their breath. As it turned out, they had little reason to worry.
The Oscars ceremony delivered a heartfelt tribute to Rob Reiner, with Billy Crystal honoring the man and his movies, including “The Princess Bride” and “A Few Good Men.” Yet it conspicuously avoided the director’s other defining trait—his progressive politics and activism—with no one overtly saying the name “Trump” on the stage during the three and a half-hour telecast.
Much is made of “liberal Hollywood,” long a culture-war bogeyman for the right, so much so that even fleeting political references at the Academy Awards trigger howls of indignation. But during another war in the Middle East, there was nothing remotely resembling Michael Moore’s shouts of “shame on you” to George W. Bush in 2003, with this year’s documentary winner, David Borenstein, coming closest by issuing a thinly veiled warning about the threat of authoritarianism.
According to industry veterans who spoke to Status, that’s not an accident. From the perspective of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the awards…
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Putting The Post on NOTUS
NOTUS headquarters in Rosslyn, Virginia. (Photo via Tracey Salazar/NOTUS)
Robert Allbritton is officially going big with NOTUS, detailing “ambitious plans for the future” in a memo to staff on Monday obtained by Status. In the wake of The Washington Post’s excruciating layoffs that slashed more than one-third of staff, the upstart is eager to capitalize on the coverage vacuum and talent pool left by the Jeff Bezos-owned paper. While the D.C.-focused publication is “not trying to replicate what The Washington Post was or is today,” according to the memo from NOTUS’ leaders, that certainly didn’t stop the outlet from picking off over half a dozen of its staffers. Among the hires announced Monday, nearly all were poached from The Post, including…
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