Over the past week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences terminated — briefly and, the organization insists, inadvertently — a longstanding courtesy that it had afforded to widows and widowers of people who had been members of the organization, sparking considerable backlash.
Since the 1990s, the Academy has allowed widows and widowers to continue to attend official member screenings in Los Angeles and New York, as they had been able to do with their spouse. But Irene Ramp, the widow of The Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry, says that she arrived at a screening last Saturday only to be told, “We don’t do that anymore.”
Ramp and some 300 others in her situation received written notice from the Academy this week that to “ensure priority access for our Academy members, a population that has grown to 11,000 and will continue to grow, our membership screenings must now be limited to Academy members and their non-press guests.”
In an email to the Academy on which she cc’d other widows and widowers, Ramp vented, “What a hurtful, small-minded, petty decision,” adding, “The insult part of this injury is the fact that, having attended many screenings in the last couple of months, the [Academy’s 1,000-seat Samuel Goldwyn Theater in LA] has been half-full at best and usually many fewer.”
Among those who seconded Ramp’s complaint in replies were entertainment lawyer Christine Cuddy, widow of Harry Gittes, who produced films with Jack Nicholson, and Laurie Rissien, widow of Edward Rissien, who produced films with Harry Belafonte.
Claude Rush, widow of The Stunt Man director Richard Rush, wrote directly to Academy CEO Bill Kramer to vent her frustrations. Kramer replied, in part, “We have started receiving word from members that they cannot get into the more heavily attended screenings. As the point of the screenings is for our Academy members to watch first-run films on the big screen and to (sometimes) hear from the cast and crew, we realized that we needed to prioritize our members at this time.”
Kramer did, however, vow to “keep an eye on this as we continue to assess the situation.” And sure enough, on Thursday, the widows and widowers received the following email from him:
Dear Friends of the Academy,
We want to thank you for your patience while we assessed the topic of additional attendees at our Academy member screenings and our desire to ensure that Academy members can attend.
We believe we have found a solution for this issue, and we are delighted to once again welcome you as our guest at upcoming screenings.
Thank you so much for your patience as we worked this through during the beginning of our awards season — we are so sorry for any concern this may have caused. Your support means a great deal to us, and we look forward to seeing you in our theaters!
Bill
Sources close to the Academy say that what happened was the organization recently was shocked to discover that a total of 1,500 non-members were on the approved list for access to member screenings, having been added in years past when such matters were treated more loosely by the organization. Given the rapid expansion of the membership over the past decade, though, there has been increasing concern that members might not be able to access member screenings, prompting the decision to close screenings to non-members. Only after that decision was shared was it realized that widows and widowers were among those impacted, prompting the reversal.
Regardless of the back-and-forth, the widows and widowers are said to be very pleased with the way the situation has been resolved.
