Raymond Chandler on the Oscars

Image by marctonysmith via Flickr

As blunt and eloquent as ever, Raymond Chandler, who was a harsh and outspoken critic of Hollywood, weighed in on the Academy Awards after attending the awards ceremony for the first and last time in 1941:

If you can get past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of human intelligence, and if you can go out into the night and see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats, but not from the awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do these things and still feel the next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong because this sort of vulgarity, the very vulgarity from which the Oscars are made, is the inevitable price that Hollywood exacts from each of its serfs.

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