Customer Reviews

The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards

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Steve Pond's "The Big Show" belongs on the bookshelf of everyone with any interest in the Academy Awards.
I've read pretty much all the books on the Oscars, and this is one that really doesn't compare to any other. Most of what I was reading here I was hearing for the first time. This books complements every other account of the show, because this is the first book to actually tell the story about the show itself, not the movies or stars.

Trust me when I say you have no idea how incredibly difficult it is to put this television show together. Unless, of course, you've been there.

It's surprisingly well written; it's a easy fast read.

It's gossipy, but pleasantly so, and often funnier than all get out.

My favorite Oscar book is still "Inside Oscar" (the first one...as the second is a bit more vitriolic and less, oh, affectionate...) but THAT book and THIS book are the only ones I will read more than once. "Inside Oscar" gives us an account of the year in film, and then goes through the telecast, followed by events that happened in the weeks to months after the show. Here, you get that crucial few days right before the show, and then all the fascinating details surrounding what you actually saw on TV. They're a perfect fit.

Each chapter is a year, covering the process of putting on the Oscar telecast: how are the seat-fillers handled; who makes those decisions for those horrible dance pieces; how much thought is put into set design (a lot, but not all the time...)...the stories behind the rehearsals I found to be the most interesting of all.

This period covers the switch from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion shows/Shrine shows to the Kodak Theater. Having a permanent "home" now seems like such an obvious idea, but it clearly wasn't.

I discovered things about certain stars that surprised me. I will leave you to discover them, but suffice to say, there's a story involving Celine Dion which made me respect her in ways I would have never imagined (although her music still makes me itch).

I loved the insight into each host...so many things are known about them, yet this book assumes that. It assumes that the reader already has a healthy knowledge about Hollywood and film, and gives you the stuff you probably don't know.

THAT'S why I love this book!

Show biz buffs will enjoy the tidbits and quotes here from Oscar show vets like Marc Shaiman, who provided musical accompaniment for Billy Crystal's medleys before becoming a nominee himself.

But this book is probably best enjoyed as a companion to the two Inside Oscar books (consulted, we learn here, by at least one Academy Awards producer in the last decade). Niether makes the others obsolete, but you get something from each that you don't get from the other.

The experience of reading the Inside Oscar books is like getting good dish from one or two well-informed but bitchy friends as you sit and watch the televised Oscar ceremonies together. Something of an outsiders view, in other words, however compelling (and broader in scope). Because Steve Pond was granted "behind the curtain" access, The Big Show is more like a report from a relative insider, with a notebook open wide and ears open wider.

Being relative, that insider's perspective only goes as far as it goes, however, and one suspects Pond was kept away from, or perhaps sworn to secrecy about, anything really juicy. But there's enough here for Academy Awards viewers to chew on during that boring musical number or endless commercial break.

Okay, are you interested at all in the Academy Awards? If you are, even a glimmer of interest, then this is absolutely the book for you. Steve Pond has a true gift; the ability to witness the inner workings of a fabulous show, and the ability to write about it in an entertaining, fast-paced way.

Steve Pond was granted unprecedented access to the most recent Oscar shows, and reports many findings in The Big Show. He doesn't shy away from sharing his opinions about certain celebrities, and will name names when warranted. Nothing in his book is outright slanderous, most of it is fair reporting of the things that he observed. One thing that surprised me were the amount of Hollywood stars that were smokers.

Pond also painstakingly reports about all of the behind the scene work that goes into the sometimes four-plus hour long production. From the producers endless job of overseeing the masses of people and masses of egos, to the director, who somehow needs to make this marathon visually entertaining, the people behind the scenes get their deserved credit. I shall never watch this show without a now deeper understanding of all of the hours, days, weeks, and months of work it takes to put those hours on my television screen.

I highly recommend this book as an engaging, entertaining read. Here's hoping that Steve Pond finds himself at this year's Oscars, and we get another behind the scenes look at this amazing process.

I would've enjoyed this book more if it had been fact checked a little more diligently. It claims 'Billy Elliot' was nominated for a single award, when it actually received three nominations, and says the last time a sweep occured before 'LOTR: Return of the King' was 'Gigi' in 1958, when in fact it was 1987's 'The Last Emperor'.

If it can get details like this wrong, it's easy to believe that other, less checkable, stories might be false as well.

Not sure about the "Dirty Dealings"...but this is a great behind-the-scenes look at the annual event. Interesting bits of trivia and rules of the seat-fillers. A fun read....

I think I breezed through this book faster and with more joy than any book I've read in the past 5 years. Pond gives us a detailed view of the inner workings of the chaotic and stressful act of producing a decade's worth of Oscars telecasts. It's funny, a bit juicy at times, and thoroughly enjoyable.

If you are like me and have been a bit miffed with the membership of the Motion Picture Academy lately for its "artistic compromises" when it comes to the films and actors who get nominated sometimes, at least the AMPAS president goes on record here as saying that the PRIMARY goal is to achieve the highest TV ratings possible for each year's show. The revenue from that show generates pretty much 90% of the Academy's funds for the entire year. He is very unapologetic about it. At least he was being honest and forthright about it. I can appreciate that. And this revelation was published years before the Academy started (in 2010) to make room for a total of ten nominees for Best Picture instead of the standard five. Why? In a nutshell, ratings. The Academy's stance is "Art be damned -- we'll allow as many nominations for Best Picture as it takes to get you to watch the telecast. Please watch the telecast!"

Been dying to know why films that were critical darlings got passed over for nominations, the most egregious example being the documentary "Hoop Dreams"? Pond explains in this book how and why the voting process doomed that film and what steps were taken to correct it. Pond also explains why some members believe that the voting system is flawed in other ways too, for how else can one explain a single film sweeping every category: "Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King" won something like 80 Oscars in one year. Do you REALLY believe that a single cinematic production could have, objectively speaking, the year's best film, make-up design, costumes, score, editing, effects, sound, etc etc etc etc, all at the same time??? It's unreasonable to think so. It would be the strangest of coincidences, and yet it has happened several times. The insiders in Pond's book detail the reasons why that happens and why they aren't particularly happy about it or feel it is a fair and accurate way of rewarding effort.

You will probably achieve two things after reading "The Big Show": a respect for the tireless amount of effort, stress, and butt-kissing the show's producers must endure year after year to stage this little dog and pony show, and the realization that politics and a flawed voting system have taken a HELL of a bite out of the integrity of the award itself. Does the award always go to the most deserving? Not by a longshot.

But the topic makes for fascinating reading. Well done, Mr. Pond.

Few TV programs have been more praised and more ridiculed than the Oscars. In recent years the perennial Academy Awards show has been re-thought, re-invented and re-conceptualized countless times in the eternal quest for better ratings. Entertainment writer Steve Pond furnishes a fascinating, inside view of recent Oscar developments in this 2005 Faber & Faber book.

As borne out in Pond's book, Oscar's TV history can be divided into pre-Allan Carr and post-Allan Carr. After the jaw-dropping debacle Carr presented to American audiences in 1989, a succession of producers have toiled at making the show fun, lively and quick (i.e. under four hours). Starting with the 66th Academy Awards show (1994) and ending with version 76 (2004), Pond takes the reader behind-the-scenes to see how the show is created and periodically re-invented along with the goofs, gaffes and ego trips that are part-and-parcel of the show.

It's been years since I forced myself to watch that lumbering spectacle so Pond's book was a positive revelation. The material on the mechanics of the show was absolutely fascinating as was all the politics. Plus I now know a lot more of the winners!

If you love movies and/or television, you'll love THE BIG SHOW. It's entertaining, insightful and a great read. Highly recommended.

The concept of this book is great--allowing one reporter to have unlimited access backstage at the Academy Awards. The resulting book is too long and repetitive to be as interesting as it should have been. At 400 pages, it feels padded and needs some good editing.

The author chooses to go year-by-year through the recent Oscar ceremonies, and that results in the same dull stories being told over and over about music rehearsals, Billy Crystal rehearsals, celebrity rehearsals...namely, the book is mostly about the couple of days before the ceremony each year when everyone is rehearsing. That doesn't make for the most exciting read. It may have been better to write it with chapter themes. So one chapter could highlight the musical artists over the years, another chapter covering the hosts.

Some of the author's comments are biased and don't reflect the mood when the ceremony was held, instead reflecting on the ceremony only in retrospect. There are a few juicy tidbits but the author also includes admittedly off-the-record comments, which raises questions about his journalistic credibility. The book is also very limited as to reporting only what the author witnessed, which means not everything is covered.

So the end result is a mediocre up-and-down experience that after a few repetitive chapters no longer is that interesting. For hard-nosed Oscar fans only.

"The Big Show" is a great read for movie (I am) and/or Academy Award (I am not) buffs. Pond provides a detailed backstage look at the "modern Oscars" over one decade, an era that began with the 66th Academy Awards in 1994.

Pond spares no punches as he reports on the show's complexity, the tension between the broadcast network and the Academy, the Academy and the show's producer, the show's producer and the show's public host, and the various talent guilds.

Stories of the people, not only behind the scenes, but also those with public faces (producers, directors, and stars), make the best reading. Readers will be treated to snippets that will certainly reshape their opinion of celebrity and Hollywood.

This most certainly was a "must read" in the movie industry after its publication.

I got what I expected, inside stories about the 90s Oscar shows (a period I was REALLY into movies). Also the inside hall & party workings, pretty good stuff.