Tom Stempel is a film historian who has written for Offscreen before.  His day job is writing the “Understanding Screenwriting” column at Scriptmag.com. In the column he mostly reviews movies and television from the perspective of screenwriting.  He also includes in the column what he calls “sundries”: items related in some way to screenwriting. 

Since 2021 he has followed the opening of the Motion Picture Academy’s Museum in Beverly Hills.  Here are three column items about the Museum which demonstrate his changing attitude toward the Museum.

Not Yet.

December 14, 2021

You may have heard that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences opened its museum of film in September.  There was an enormous amount of hype about it (a special section of the Los Angeles Times, a TV special on ABC, etc.)

No, I have not gone yet.  A former student of mine, Henry Stanny, who produces wonderful concerts of film music, went shortly after the opening, and he assures me there are actually a few things about screenwriters. I am sure I will go eventually.

The hype for the opening turned me off, as excess hype tends to. Part of what bothered me is the emphasis on diversity. That may seem odd to you since you may know that I taught at Los Angeles City College for forty years; LACC has the most diversified student body you can imagine: students from every continent except Antarctica; students ages from 14 to their seventies [and maybe in their eighties]; representatives of all five major sexual orientations and several of the minor ones.  I love diversity, but I would have thought they might have included a white guy or two.  The first big exhibit is devoted to the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. The first screen series is the films of Haile Germia, an Ethiopian filmmaker who works independently in the United States.  Another big exhibition is devoted to Spike Lee. 

Two points.  One is that there were a LOT of white guys who made major contributions to the history of American, especially Hollywood, films.

Two, if the Academy expects this to be a big American tourist attraction, will American tourists be excited by Miyazaki and Germia, or will they will they be asking where the big stars are? Or the big directors?  Or, dare I say it, the big screenwriters?

Here are two suggestions that can keep the theme of diversity.  One: an exhibition on women screenwriters.  Two: a film series called “Indians and Cowboys,” showing how American Indians have been shown in both good and bad ways.  You’re welcome.

Yet…

February 6, 2023

You may remember my December 14, 2021 column (above), had a short item titled “Not Yet” about the new Motion Picture Academy Museum.  I had not yet been, but I assumed I would get around to it. I finally did, this past December.  It was even more disappointing than I thought it was going to be.

One of the problems I had from what I had heard about it when it opened was its emphasis on diversity, as you can see from above

That is still a problem.  The biggest current exhibition is called “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.”  It is about Black filmmakers in that period.  It is a  terrific exhibition.  It was scheduled to run from August 21st of last year to April 9th.  It has now been extended through June.  It has been heavily promoted on the internet and elsewhere.  Good for it.  There was not a particularly large crowd for in on the Wednesday afternoon I saw it, but that may because the rooms it is in were so large.

Meanwhile, down a dark hallway, there is an exhibition on The Godfather (1972) in two smaller rooms.  They have a camera that was used in the making of the film, set pieces and costumes.  And for those interested in screenwriting there is Coppola’s copy of the novel with his handwritten notes on it, outlines of some sections of the script and drafts of the script.  Unlike “Regeneration” it has not been heavily promoted, and mention of it is difficult to find on the museum website.  I did notice in January that they have a few posters up on lamp posts in some parts of Hollywood. 

The small rooms the exhibition is in were packed with people.  They may have been the same number of people that were in the rooms for “Regeneration,” but it seemed like there were more. I would have thought that an exhibition on such a classic film would have been in a bigger room and with more promotion.

In an email to members of the museum it was announced that the total number of visitors in the first year was 700,000.  I do not recall any number was given for how many visitors they hoped to have the first year, but I would guess they might have thought one million. 

I think one reason they did not get more visitors is that the people running the museum seem to be mostly academics who are used to being able to force students in their required courses to watch what the academics want them to watch. (Hey gang, we’ve all done it.)  The museum is more like a branch of show business: you gotta figure out how to get the rubes into the tent.

For example, to celebrate the first year of the Museum, they had a special screening.  Now what would you pick for a film to celebrate the first year of the Academy Museum?  The obvious choice would be a film that won a Best Picture Oscar.   Instead they picked The Wiz, the 1978 musical with an all-Black cast.  It was nominated for four Oscars, but won none of them.

My choice would have been Lawrence of Arabia, the best picture winner for 1962 [they have since run Lawrence].  Every time I have seen it in a theatre in the last few decades, there has always been a full house. It would have been a perfect film to show off their big new theatre.  Then each year they could have another best picture winner, although I would avoid The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which I have never been able to get through without pushing the fast forward button. A lot.

Meanwhile, back at the “Regeneration” exhibition, there is a wall with headshots of famous Black performers.  Unless I missed it, the wall does not include Ethel Waters, who starred in Cabin in the Sky (1943), Pinky (1949, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award), and Member of the Wedding (1952).  Needless to say, there is a photo of Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Academy Award.

There is in another room a collection of clips of acceptance speeches at the Oscars, including Hattie McDaniel’s.  Then there is yet another picture of McDaniel on a wall outside the galleries, along with other women of color.  So that is three pictures of McDaniel.

As far as I can tell, there are no photos of John Ford, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Henry King or many other white male filmmakers.  Nor are there any photos of the studio heads like Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, or Darryl F. Zanuck. In fairness, I should mention the museum is planning an exhibition of Jews in Hollywood, which lets out Zanuck, who was not Jewish.  Giving that current description of the museum in the Jewish community is “the museum without the Jews,” the exhibition is probably a good idea.  Meanwhile, you can make up your own list of white actresses who are not represented.

There are two photos of screenwriters, sort of.  You remember that dark hallway I mentioned?  That is the area on screenwriting, although for some reason the area is entitled “Story.”  Does nobody connected with the museum know the difference between “story” and “script”? I am beginning to feel that my hard work of promoting screenwriting and screenwriters for the last fifty years may be more in vain than I thought. I am assuming the hall is so dark to prevent light from fading the ink on the pages of scripts on display.  Fine, but it makes the scripts almost impossible to read.  I hope they can work that out.

In addition to the typewriter that Joseph Stefano wrote Psycho (1960) on, there is a photo of one screenwriter in this area.  The focus of the image is on the writer’s director, Charles Bennett’s Fat Little English Friend (as Hitchcock is known in these parts).  We only see the back of Joan Harrison’s head.  If you have not yet read the good biography of Harrison, you can read my review of it here.

In another area there is a photograph of the founders of the Academy.  The one you may recognize is Douglas Fairbanks Sr.  Sitting next to him is Frank Woods, Griffith’s co-writer on The Birth of a Nation (1915).  You have to already know them to recognize them, because there is no caption identifying any of them. 

Now this raises some interesting questions.  Why did they not have a caption?  O.K., the people organizing the museum may not have recognized them.  But why did they then not go over the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and ask the librarians to identify them?  I have been using the Herrick Library for over fifty years and the librarians there can find anything for you.  Is it possible that the people running the museum do not know about the library, or are they so cocky they don’t think they need it?  Or, if they don’t want to deal with the library, they could call up Marc Wanamaker or Anthony Slide, two experts on silent film, either one of whom could probably identify the people in the picture without breaking a sweat.  And Wanamaker can probably tell you who took the photo.

I have seen this happen before: film experts from out of town come in and do not take advantage of the facilities and people who are here.  I am hoping the people running the museum do not continue to fall into that trap. I would like to believe there is hope for them…yet.

There is Hope at Last.

July 2, 2024

As you saw from my first items on the Academy Museum, I was disappointed with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum.

I trust you will be as glad as I am to know that things are looking up at Wilshire and Fairfax.

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who works for the Academy, but not for the Museum.  The conversation at one point turned to the Museum.  I expressed my disappointment with the Museum.  They said it was undergoing “growing pains.”  I mentioned they still had not delivered the exhibition on Jews in Hollywood they had been promising since before the Museum opened.  They told me it was due open this summer.

Lo and Behold, a week or so after our conversation, I was invited to a reception for the opening of the exhibition.  (Please do not get the idea that I am a Hollywood big shot. I am just a Patron, which means I donate a small [in Hollywood terms] donation every year.)  I took my son-in-law Daniel along as my plus-one.  He is Jewish and he is involved in GIS (Geographical Information Systems---computer mapping to us civilians).  We got into the exhibition, which is called Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capitol before the doors were officially open.

Daniel the map guy went straight to the most spectacular element and was transfixed by it, as I was and you will be too.   It is a LARGE three-dimensional tabletop map of Los Angeles County, but with assorted lights and images projected on it.  On the wall is a film timeline of the events of early Hollywood from 1902 to 1930.  Every time a new year comes up, there are images on the time line, and synchronized with that are the lights and other stuff on the map.  I do not know who came up with the idea for this, but the curator of the exhibit, which is the first permanent exhibit in the Museum, is Dara Jaffe and she deserves all the credit she will get.

There is also a 30 minute video about how the Jewish people in the business had to deal with the anti-Semitism in American life at the time.  I only got to see the last half of it, but it uses the techniques of film and video to enrich our understanding beyond what the wall exhibits can do.

However, there are a large number of Jews in the industry who are appalled by the exhibit. An article in the June 13th Los Angeles Times describes an open letter to the Academy from a group called United Jewish Writers, signed (at the time the article was printed) by 350 people.  The letter complains that the exhibition is too critical of the Jewish founding fathers and the video seems to promote anti-Semitic attitudes.  I had the opposite reaction to the video (although granted I have not yet seen all of it), and as an historian I think mentioning the bad as well as the good side of the founders is more accurate.  A museum should show not only the good but the bad.  The academy announced that there will be changes made in some parts of the exhibition.

Daniel and I could not stay longer because the reception was starting, but I did tell one of the guides that I was a film historian and did not find any errors in the exhibit. She was impressed.

Needless to say, I am going back to see the exhibit, as is Daniel, who was impressed by the whole exhibit.

The exhibit is not the only good thing at the Museum.  They ran a smallish film series celebrating the 100th birthday of Marlon Brando.  Instead of showing the obvious Streetcar (1951), Waterfront (1954), and Godfather, they picked lesser known films. One they showed was The Fugitive Kind (1959), an adaptation of an obscure Tennessee Williams play, which co-starred Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward.  Have you ever seen it?  Or even heard of it?  That’s what museums are for.

Another film series was Funny Girls: Fanny Brice and Her Legacy, about Jewish women in front of and behind the camera.  The first film they ran was a recent favorite of mine, the low-budget Shiva Baby (2020). You can read my review here.

These changes come with an announcement of change at the top.  Jacqueline Stewart, who has led the Museum since its opening in 2021, is leaving to return to her academic post at the University of Chicago.  I do not know if she jumped or was pushed. For all my quibbles about the Museum in her reign, she got the damned thing up and running. That is no small accomplishment, for which she deserves thanks from all of us.

Her replacement is Amy Homma.  Homma’s past work has been at different museums and her job at the Academy Museum was the Academy Museums Chief Audience Officer.  To me that is a very good sign.  One of my complaints of the first years of the Museum is that they were running academically laudable programs that would necessarily get the rubes into the tent.  She ought to know how to do it. I of course am rooting for her and the Museum to succeed.

And I still think they ought to do a big exhibit on women screenwriters.

In the BIG rooms, of course.

In 2023 Tom Stempel was awarded the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award for his Services to Screenwriting Research, given by the international organization The Screenwriting Research Network.

Volume 28, Issue 7 / July 2024 Festival Reports   Film Reviews