February 27, 2007
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- Rocky Marciano
The Last Round
In 1969, Murry Woroner, a Miami promoter, approached Rocky and Muhammad Ali with a proposition. He wanted to film a fight between them, using a computer to decide the final outcome.
Ali had been stripped of his title and banned from boxing when he refused to be drafted into the army in 1967. Marciano was 46 years old and sixty pounds over his fighting weight. Each man had his motivations for agreeing to the deal. Ali needed the money. Rocky had money, but he deeply missed his glory days in the ring.
Before he could climb into a ring again, even for a simulated fight, Rocky had to get into some semblance of what he had been. He began running again, working out in the gym, eating right; in truth, he trained as hard or harder than any fighter preparing for a real fight. The result was a loss of almost fifty pounds. To cover his balding head, he was fitted with a wig.
In “Marciano, Biography of a First Son”, Everett Skehan said, “When Rocky went to the dingy gym on the North Side of Miami Beach he was thinking tough, expecting things to go smoothly but prepared for anything. He had been briefed, knew that the punches were to be pulled, and that it would not be a real fight. But Rocky wouldn’t go into the ring that way. Even at forty-six, he had to feel that if something went wrong, if suddenly the punches became real, he would be ready to win.”
Ali didn’t train seriously for the filming, and actually looked less in shape than the much older Marciano.
The filming took place in a small gym on the North Side of Miami Beach. Only about 20 people were allowed inside the gym during the filming, which was kept as secret as possible. Behind the fighters was a black backdrop and no crowd of cheering spectators.
Though punches to the head were to be pulled, both men agreed body shots were not a problem. They filmed one minute rounds. Angelo Dundee was on hand as Ali’s trainer, but Rocky had to use Mel Ziegler to play the role of Charlie Goldman, his real trainer. Charlie had passed away the year before. Ferdie Pacheco was the ring doctor.
Seventy one-minute segments were filmed, then spliced into three minute rounds, including seven possible endings. All the information about the two men, their fights and results, was fed into the computer. Supposedly, the computer would decide the winner completely on the basis of the data concerning the two men and their boxing careers. Ali would tell different versions of how the outcome was decided; he would say he choose the ending, he would say it was a biased decision made by a computer in Mississippi, etc.
During the filming, Rocky and Ali became friends, spending hours in conversation. Ali would later write that he became closer to Rocky than any other white fighter he ever knew.
Said Dundee of the affair: “Muhammad acquired a lot of respect for Rocky. He said Rocky was a lot harder to hit with a jab than he looked.”
Stories came out of the sessions. Several claimed Rocky really hurt Ali with body shots, so that Muhammad climbed out of the ring and demanded extra money to continue. He was payed additional money. (Woroner himself said Ali took such a battering that he refused to continue until he was guaranteed an additional two thousand dollars.) I’ve talked to the son of one observer who says Rocky doubled Ali up with a body shot after Ali kept jabbing the wig off Rocky’s head. Dundee admitted to the wig episode, but never told of the hard body shot that it led to. Ferdie Pacheco, however, the ring doctor in the film, claims Ali was dropped by a real body shot. The undeniable fact is, Rocky entered the ring ready to make a real fight of it if need be. Even Dundee said he had to be calmed down after the wig incident.
Here’s the wig story as I’ve heard it from two sources:
Ali was dancing around jabbing and threw a high jab which just clipped Rocky’s wig and knocked it off his head. The filming was stopped while the wig was refitted, amid bemused smiles from several of the observers. Marciano was embarrassed and angry.
He said, “He did that on purpose to make me look stupid. He doesn’t have any respect for me at all.”
Rocky was assured it was an accident and the filming resumed. However, Ali again jabbed high and sent the wig flying. Rocky was really mad this time, and snarled, “You better not do that again!”
They began once more and immediatly Ali flicked the wig off Rocky’s head. Without hesitation, Marciano dug a vicious body shot into Ali’s mid-section, doubling him over. Pacheco said Muhammad actually dropped to the floor and was completely helpless. Quickly Rocky was seperated from Ali and Dundee related how they had to take a break until Rocky’s temper cooled off. Marciano offered to turn it into a real fight then and there if Ali was game. Only when Ali appologized did the Rock get over his anger. Observers at the filming have said Ali’s attitude was different from that point on, as it was obvious Marciano had come to fight if need be rather than be disrespected.
The result was kept secret from everyone, even Ali and Rocky. The promoter had to keep it secret to make his money when it would be shown in theatres. Five weeks after the filming, Rocky would die in the plane crash, but the result was not unlike what he would have expected. Dundee said he thought the result was the accurate result as chosen by the computer, “It was done strictly by the computer. Nobody set the thing up.”
On January 20th, 1970, the fight for the “All-time Heavyweight Championship” played in over six hundred locations around the country.
So how did it end?
In the 13th round, Rocky catches up with Ali and knocks him out, just as he had Walcott all those years before.
Much of the information about the computer fight I took from the excellent book, “Rocky Marciano..Biography of a First Son” by Everett M. Skehan, published in 1977.Back to Main Page
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Get your own Free Home Page- Rocky Marciano
On Sept. 23, 1952, Marciano climbed into the ring to challenge the heavyweight champion, Jersey Joe Walcott. What followed was what many have called the greatest heavyweight championship fight of all time. In the first round, Walcott caught Marciano with a perfect left hook that dropped him for the first time in 43 fights! But The Rock was up at the count of 3,despite his corner yelling for him to take the 8 count. From then on it was a brutal fight, with Walcott using all his ring skills, hitting Marciano with shot after shot that would have knocked out most other fighters. But Rocky was relentless, taking tremendous punishment as he bulled his way into close range to land his own hard blows. By the 12th round, Walcott was ahead on all scorecards, and Rocky’s corner told him he needed a knockout to win. In the fateful 13th round, Jersey Joe stepped back from Marciano, his back to the ropes, and Rocky delivered a right hand punch that would probably have felled any fighter who ever lived. Walcott slumped to the floor, one arm hanging on the lower rope, and was counted out. It took several minutes to revive him. Rocky Marciano was the new Heavyweight Champion of the World!
Rocky Marciano
The Brockton Blockbuster, Rocky Marciano. Born Sept. 1, 1923 to Mr. and Mrs. Pierino Marchegiano of Brockton, MA., he was named Rocco Marchegiano, but in time he would become famous as Rocky Marciano, undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.
Heavyweight Champion 1952-1956 Rocky Marciano is the ONLY undefeated champion in ANY weight class in the history of gloved boxing. Considering how many champions there have been, somewhat over 300, that is quite a feat in itself.
But he also brought to boxing the kind of dignity and courage that makes us admire the truly great athletes.
“What would be better than walking down any street in any city and knowing you’re a champion?” he once asked.
“Rocky Marciano stood out like a rose in a garbage dump. “Jimmy Cannon said of The Rock’s character in a sport that all too often is tainted by corruption and greed.
Jersey Joe Walcott, who lost his title to Marciano, said “He was a man of courage inside the ring. Outside, he was kind and gentle.”Rocky Marciano was the Heavyweight Champion from 1952 until his retirement in 1956. He is the only champion at any weight class with a perfect record of all wins, no losses and no draws. http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/1047 - ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ … and Closet
Linda Spillers for The New York TimesDRESS LIKE A STAR Sarah Grace McCandless wears jeans and a top like some seen on “Grey’s Anatomy,” with a clutch from “Desperate Housewives.”
Liz O. Baylen for The New York TimesIDOL WORSHIP Lauren Honig bought a Botkier bag, left, and tank top she saw on “Brothers & Sisters
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ … and Closet
AFTER watching an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Sarah Grace McCandless, 32, a novelist from Washington, went shopping. The $160 Citizens for Humanity jeans that she bought online had a special appeal that wasn’t about the label.
“I bought jeans that Meredith was wearing,” said Ms. McCandless, a self-described pop culture addict, referring to the character Meredith Grey. “I don’t have Meredith’s body, but you can order them in different sizes.”
Ms. McCandless also has a pair of the True Religion jeans that Izzie wore, along with brown boots like the pair from Frye worn by Cristina, also characters on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Ms. Candless shops on SeenON.com (also known as SeenON!), one of a cluster of TV- and movie-themed Web sites offering breathless behind-the-scenes chatter, as well as instant gratification for those with a taste for celebrity style. Fans are now just clicks away from owning not only the clothes and accessories worn by characters on more than 100 television shows and movies, but also the sofas they sit on and the martini glasses they drink from.
Screens big and small are already full of recognizable brands like Coke and Cheerios placed in strategic view, a practice known as explicit product placement. But, until recently, viewers had to work at identifying the shoes or earrings characters wore.
Because of the Internet, the selling of more than 20,000 products that are not easily recognizable or never identified in a script, called shopping-enabled entertainment, is taking off, driven by consumerism and celebrity worship.
“There are thousands and thousands of products that are naturally embedded in these shows,” said Ashley Heather, a new-media entrepreneur and chief executive of Entertainment Media Works, which last March started an entertainment shopping site, StarStyle.com.
StarStyle lets fans buy a soup-tureen set from Nora Walker’s pantry on the ABC series “Brothers & Sisters,” the polka-dot halter dress like the one that Diane Keaton’s Daphne character wears in the film “Because I Said So” or a velvet blazer like the one Taylor Hicks wore on “American Idol.” (Many products are the same as what the stars wore, but sometimes a similar, less expensive version is offered, and identified as such.)
Viewers can shop by show, character, product or brand. Starting Tuesday, SeenON! will feature a “Look for Less” Oscar tie-in, selling versions of the dresses, shoes and earrings worn on the red carpet.
As more consumers use digital video recorders and watch fewer commercials, “brands are looking at ways to connect with viewers,” said Travis Schneider, the founder of StarBrand Media, which started StarBrand.tv in 2004. “It’s a marriage of consumers’ fascination with celebrity culture and new technologies that is allowing this to happen,” Mr. Schneider said.
Taken to the extreme, the idea of selling clothes right from the backs of drama queens offers the possibility of endless moneymaking, involving online sites, traditional retailers, manufacturers, production companies and networks in an incestuous web of marketing and sales. It may not be too far-fetched to imagine a day when “Desperate Housewives” spins off Desperate Housewares, a line of products made for the show, written into the show and then sold off through a Web site.
Explicit product placement generates $4 billion, Web site executives said, and some have estimated that extending this model to things like clothing that is incorporated into a set but never identified creates a market potentially worth $100 billion.
Which explains why retailers, brands and networks are scrambling to sign on. StarStyle has deals with about 25 networks, shows and studios, including FremantleMedia, the producer of “American Idol”; MTV’s “Real World: Key West”; and daytime soap operas like “The Young and the Restless.” The site also markets apparel and accessories from music videos.
Shoppers can click on an item on the site, which links them to retailer sites like Nordstrom, Macy’s and the Gap to make the purchase.
At SeenON!, some of the most-viewed items are the Gucci 85th anniversary bag from “Ugly Betty,” Meredith Grey’s JBrand jeans and Gabrielle’s Aldo purse from “Desperate Housewives.” At StarBrand.tv, the top sellers include the Adriano Goldschmied jeans that Rory wears this season on “Gilmore Girls” and the Lucky Brand belts worn by Veronica on “Veronica Mars.” Not surprisingly, most shoppers on these sites are women ages 18 to 34.
Fans have long been doing for themselves what the new Web sites have made effortless. When Carrie Bradshaw wore stilettos on “Sex and the City,” viewers hungrily eyed her Manolo Blahniks and made the brand a household name.
The new Web sites are not just for fashionistas, though. In recent months, Ms. McCandless purchased the dishwashing gloves and Tupperware set used by Bree on “Desperate Housewives” as a shower gift, and is hankering for Bree’s Bosch washing machine and dryer — all of which can be ordered, along with the Benjamin Moore paint on Bree’s walls — through an online tour of the “Housewives” homes on SeenON.com.
While none of the Web sites would disclose revenues, they said they made money through commissions on sales and profit-sharing with their network partners. SeenON! sometimes acts as a direct retailer, buying products wholesale from manufacturers, then selling them at retail and sharing the profit with the show or network. (SeenON! also runs about 40 stores for Web sites including for ABC, NBC and ET Online; it started its own site in December.)
Bruce Gersh, senior vice president for business development for ABC Entertainment, said that for a few years, the network has been heading in this direction, placing, say, jewelry on characters in daytime dramas, then encouraging viewers to visit abc.com to buy copies.
More recently, prime-time goodies, like Betty’s paisley pajama pants from “Ugly Betty” and Lynette’s J. Crew cashmere hoodie from “Desperate Housewives,” were on abc.com and SeenON!, and Mr. Gersh said sales from this type of commerce have been “growing steadily.”
WEB site executives said products are not intentionally placed on shows, but that doesn’t mean nobody is trying. Some sites are pushing for cross-pollination — offering producers and stylists a look-book of brands where they can order products for shows for free. And those who dress the sets and the stars say they are suddenly being bombarded by brands that want exposure.
Dina Cerchione, the wardrobe designer for NBC’s “Deal or No Deal,” which has a partnership with SeenON.com, said she is too focused on creating a look for the show to even think about what may appeal to fan shoppers, though she does get “hounded” by companies that want their fashions chosen.
Nonetheless, she said, she is aware that how she dresses Howie Mandel and the show’s models influences people when they shop. Seeing it on a recognized figure, she said, “takes the guesswork out of, ‘Is this O.K.?’ “
Mike Fitzsimmons, the founder of Delivery Agent, which runs SeenON!, said his company doesn’t try to do the job of the professionals. “The costume designers and the stylists behind the scenes, they truly are the trend drivers in our pop culture environment,” he said.
William B. Helmreich, a professor of the sociology of consumer behavior at the City University of New York‘s Graduate Center, said that shopping-enabled entertainment is par for the course in a celebrity-obsessed culture. “It is called the game of realizing your fantasies to a minimum extent,” Dr. Helmreich said. “They are not only getting satisfaction from wearing the item, they are also sending a message to other people about who they are, that they are like a star.”
Indeed, Kathryn Hnatio, 29, an account manager in Manhattan, was smitten by a “flirty but fun” dress worn by Katharine McPhee on “American Idol.” When she wore a similar, less-expensive version she bought on StarStyle.com, friends complimented her and, she said, “Everyone recognized it because they were watching the show, too.”
But if everyone recognizes it and can buy it just as easily, is it still special? “You have the potential of killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” Dr. Helmreich said. “Cachet has to do with availability.”
The risk is that people will eventually focus more on the stuff than the story. Lauren Honig, 23, an executive assistant in Manhattan, bought a $595 Botkier bag through StarStyle.com after noticing Holly Harper carrying it on “Brothers & Sisters.”
The ability to shop from television shows “definitely opens new doors,” Ms. Honig said. “I am paying more attention to what they are wearing in the shows rather than the plot.”
- Academy Awards
Monica Almeida/The New York TimesMartin Scorsese won Oscars for best director and best picture for “The Departed.”
‘The Departed’ Wins Best Picture, Scorsese Best Director
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 25 —Twenty-six years and seven snubs after his first Oscar nomination, for “Raging Bull,” Martin Scorsese finally felt the warm embrace of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Sunday as he was named best director and his murderous mob thriller “The Departed” was named the best picture of 2006.
“Could you double-check the envelope?” Mr. Scorsese quipped after silencing a raucous standing ovation of whistling, whooping academy members.
“I’m so moved,” he said, accepting the directing prize. “So many people over the years have been wishing this for me. Strangers — I go into doctors’ offices, elevators, I go for an X-ray — they say, ‘You should win one.’ “
Forest Whitaker won best actor for his performance as the cunning, seductive and savage Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.”
“Receiving this honor tells me that it’s possible,” Mr. Whitaker said. “It is possible, for a kid from East Texas, raised in South Central L.A., and Carson, who believes in dreams, who believes them in his heart, to touch them and have them happen.”
Helen Mirren took best actress for her performance as a traditional monarch in a modern world in “The Queen.”
“For 50 years or more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle,” Ms. Mirren said. “I salute her courage and her consistency, and I thank her, for if it wasn’t for her, I most certainly would not be here.”
Graham King, the only of three credited producers permitted to accept the best-picture award for “The Departed,” said, “To be standing here where Martin Scorsese won his Oscar is such a joy.” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Guillermo Del Toro‘s magical-realist fantasy set in 1944 Fascist Spain, received Oscars for cinematography, art direction and makeup at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony, but fell short of its ultimate prize, best foreign-language film, which went to “The Lives of Others,” from Germany.
Jennifer Hudson, the “American Idol” reject-turned-star of “Dreamgirls,” was named best supporting actress, giving two of the four acting awards to African-Americans. And Alan Arkin, the cranky, heroin-snorting grandfather in the bittersweet family comedy “Little Miss Sunshine,” won best supporting actor.
“Little Miss Sunshine” also won for its original screenplay by Michael Arndt, a former assistant to Matthew Broderick who had to wait seven years for his script to be produced. “When I was a kid my family drove 500 miles in a van with a broken clutch,” he said, explaining the source of his inspiration. “It ended up being one of the funnest things we did together.”
On a night in which several top awards came as no surprise, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary featuring Al Gore on global warming, won best documentary feature.
“I made this movie for my children,” said the director, Davis Guggenheim, his arm on Mr. Gore’s shoulder. “We were moved to act by this man.”
Mr. Gore took his moment in the worldwide spotlight to underline the film’s message. “My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis,” he said, adding that the “will to act” was a renewable resource. “Let’s renew it,” he said.
That film also won best original song, for “I Need to Wake Up,” by Melissa Etheridge, upsetting “Dreamgirls,” which had three songs in contention. Holding her Oscar aloft backstage, Ms. Etheridge quipped that it would be “the only naked man who will ever be in my bedroom.”
In a twist, “The Lives of Others,” which examined the Orwellian police state that was East Germany, won in something of an upset. The German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, thanked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California “for teaching me that the words ‘I can’t’ should be stricken from my vocabulary.”
The awards for Mr. Del Toro’s movie came on a night in which his and two other films by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 honors. One of them, “Babel,” won for its original score by Gustavo Santaolalla, who also won last year for “Brokeback Mountain.”
“Happy Feet” was named the year’s best animated feature.
Accepting for best supporting actor, Mr. Arkin said that “Little Miss Sunshine” was about “innocence, growth and connection.” His voice cracking, he praised his fellow actors, saying that acting was a “team sport.” He added, “I can’t work at all unless I feel the spirit of unity around me.”
William Monahan won best adapted screenplay for “The Departed,” his transplantation of the movie “Infernal Affairs” from Hong Kong to South Boston.
An Oscar also went to Thelma Schoonmaker, the longtime editor to Mr. Scorsese. She saluted Mr. Scorsese for being “tumultuous, passionate, funny” as a collaborator. “It’s like being in the best film school in the world,” she said.
“Dreamgirls,” nominated for eight awards, the most of any film, also won for sound mixing. But Mel Gibson‘s “Apocalypto,” whose three nominations were caught up in the tempest caused by the director’s drunken, anti-Semitic rant last summer, was shut out.
Ellen DeGeneres made her first appearance as the host of the movie industry’s annual celebration of itself, on a night expected to have its share of pregnant moments. Three filmmaking titans — Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola — presentedthe award for best director.
Ms. DeGeneres said it had been a lifelong dream of hers to be host for the Oscars, rather than to win one. “Let that be a lesson to you kids out there: Aim lower,” she said, sounding a theme for the evening’s opening, which was designed to honor the many nominees, 177 in all, rather than focusing on the winners.
Ms. DeGeneres repeatedly ventured into the audience, at one point getting Mr. Spielberg to take a picture of her with Clint Eastwood, “for MySpace.”
And in a choice full of irony for industry insiders, Tom Cruise, who was thrown off the Paramount lot last summer by Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, gave the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Sherry Lansing, the former Paramount chairwoman who retired during a shake-up by Mr. Redstone two years earlier.
Backstage, Ms. Lansing said she had not known that Mr. Cruise was going to give her the award. “I saw him at an Oscar party a few days before, and he was sort of cold to me,” she said. Onstage, she said, he had whispered in her ear: “This is an honor. I really wanted to do this, you know how much I love you.” Ms. Lansing said she believed Mr. Cruise, who had a rough year before taking over management of United Artists, would be back to pick up an Oscar for directing or producing within five years.
Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer, received an honorary Oscar from Mr. Eastwood, who starred in the spaghetti westerns for which Mr. Morricone provided the unmistakable music.
The program began with a bouncy montage, directed by Errol Morris, of interview snippets with nominees reciting, among other things, the number of times they had come close to winning an Oscar. “Zilch,” said Peter O’Toole, of the number of times he had won.
Will Ferrell and Jack Black, leading members of Hollywood’s comedy rat pack, did a song-and-dance number bemoaning the paucity of comedic talent among the Oscar nominees. “I guess you don’t like laughter,” Mr. Ferrell sang. “A comedian at the Oscars is the saddest, bitterest, alcoholic clown.”
John C. Reilly, a past Oscar nominee, then stood up in the audience to remind them — in song — that he had been in both “Boogie and Talladega Nights.” All three then crooned that they hoped to go home with Helen Mirren, a best-actress nominee, who is in her 60s.
Breaking with tradition, the show’s producer, Laura Ziskin, best known for the “Spider-Man” franchise, rejiggered the lineup of awards to leave the marquee categories — best actor, actress, director and picture — for the end of the night. The first half of the show was front-loaded with technical and craft categories: art direction, makeup, sound editing and mixing, costume design and visual effects.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” won for visual effects; “Letters From Iwo Jima” took sound editing; “Marie Antoinette” picked up costume design.
The director Ari Sandel won best live-action short film for “West Bank Story,” a spoof on “West Side Story” with feuding Palestinian and Israeli falafel stands. “This is a movie about peace and about hope,” Mr. Sandel said. “To get this award shows that there are so many out there who also support that notion.”
The award for animated short went to “The Danish Poet,” written and directed by Torill Kove.
Mr. Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, a nominee for best actor (“Blood Diamond”), announced in the middle of the telecast that the program had offset its carbon emissions by buying energy credits. “This show has officially gone green,” Mr. DiCaprio said.
The Oscars adopted other conservation measures this year, such as using recycled paper for the Oscar ballots. “We have a long way to go, but all of us, in our lives, can do something to make a difference,” Mr. Gore said.
But Mr. Gore did not throw his hat in the ring, as the producers of his film, among others in Hollywood, had hoped he might. Asked if he had a major announcement to make, Mr. Gore said: “With a billion people watching, it’s as good a time as any. So my fellow Americans, I’m going to take this opportunity, here and now, to formally announce” — and the Oscars orchestra, right on cue, drowned him out as if he had droned on a second too long.
The Academy Awards capped a season in which the conventional wisdom has often been wrong, and actual wisdom has been in short supply. The big question before the nominations was how many Oscars “Dreamgirls” might win, and what film could compete with it for best picture. The only question after the nominations was, What happened to “Dreamgirls”?
Many theories were advanced, including misguided marketing and an abundance of hype, but the film’s director, Bill Condon, cut to the chase: “Maybe the Academy saw five films they liked better.” Whatever the reason, the film’s elimination left the race wide open to an array of films that took very different routes to the nomination.
“The Departed” rode a wave of box-office success and a plan to keep Oscar hype on the down-low, partly because many in the industry felt it was time to recognize the director Martin Scorsese’s lifetime of excellence. “Little Miss Sunshine,” a new take on the family road-trip movie, which won four Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, was a film that no one in Hollywood seemed to want to make, but it connected with audiences to the tune of more than $94 million in worldwide box-office receipts. “Babel,” by contrast, left United States audiences cold while doing good business abroad, but connected with critics and was rewarded for a global, ambitious story by winning best dramatic feature at the Golden Globes.
“The Queen,” a small movie that managed to do everything right, managed to ride one of the year’s more remarkable performances — Ms. Mirren as a traditional monarch in a very modern world — to broad critical recognition. And after “Flags of Our Fathers,” another would-be Oscar hopeful, met with indifference, Mr. Eastwood and his studio, Warner Brothers, decided to release the film’s twin, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” before year’s end — and were rewarded with a best-picture nomination.
This appeared to be the most ethnically and linguistically diverse batch of film nominees yet, appropriate enough given that Hollywood’s foreign revenues now eclipse the domestic take by a significant margin. The Oscar slate included several films shot largely in languages other than English, most notably Mr. Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima,” in Japanese, and Mr. Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” in Maya dialects.
“Babel,” from the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, spanned three continents and five languages — Japanese, Berber, Spanish, English and sign — and two of its actresses, Rinko Kikuchi of Japan and Adriana Barraza of Mexico, received nominations. (Three films by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 honors.)
David Carr contributed reporting.
- Why the online encyclopedia won’t let just anyone in.
Evicted From Wikipedia
Why the online encyclopedia won’t let just anyone in.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007, at 7:02 A.M E.T.Pass me that whiskey bottle. My Wikipedia bio is about to disappear because I fail to satisfy the “notability guideline.”
Wikipedia, as you probably know, is an online, multilingual encyclopedia whose entries are written and edited by readers around the world. What you may not know is that this ongoing experiment in Web-based collaboration maintains volunteer gatekeepers, and one of them has whisked me (or, rather, the entry describing me) under the insulting rubric, “Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance.” I share this digital limbo with Anthony Stevens (“internationally respected Jungian analyst, psychiatrist, and author”), Final Approach (“romantic comedy anime series”), Secproof (“well known security consulting company in Finland”), and about 400 other topics tagged during the past calendar month. There we languish, awaiting “deletion review,” which I will surely flunk.
Wikipedia’s notability policy resembles U.S. immigration policy before 9/11: stringent rules, spotty enforcement. To be notable, a Wikipedia topic must be “the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other.” Although I have written or been quoted in such works, I can’t say I’ve ever been the subject of any. And wouldn’t you know, some notability cop cruised past my bio and pulled me over. Unless I get notable in a hurry—win the Nobel Peace Prize? Prove I sired Anna Nicole Smith’s baby daughter?—a “sysop” (volunteer techie) will wipe my Wikipedia page clean. It’s straight out of Philip K. Dick.
My career as an encyclopedia entry began on Sept. 6, 2005, when (according to Wikipedia’s “history” tab) an anonymous user posted a three-sentence bio noting that I wrote the Chatterbox column in Slate; that previously I’d been a Washington-based reporter for the Wall Street Journal; and that my wife, “fellow journalist Marjorie Williams,” had died the previous January. I’ve since discovered through some Web sleuthing that my Boswell was a student at Reed College named Ethan Epstein. Subsequent reader edits added to Epstein’s original a few more professional and personal items from my résumé that, like the earlier details, were readily available online.
I can’t say that I’d ever harbored an ambition to be listed in Wikipedia, but when I tripped over my bio three months after it appeared, I felt mildly flattered. Exercising my Wiki rights, I corrected my city of residence, which was off by a few blocks, and added that I’d published a posthumous anthology of Marjorie’s writing under the title The Woman at the Washington Zoo. Various items got added to and subtracted from my bio over the next year and a half, and every now and then I myself would check for errors (there were surprisingly few). It was on one such foray that I discovered I’d been designated for Wiki oblivion, like a dead tree marked with orange spray paint for the city arborist to uproot.
Talk about humiliating! Wikipedia does not, it assures readers, measure notability “by Wikipedia editors’ own subjective judgments.” In other words, it was nothing personal. But to be told one has been found objectively unworthy hardly softens the blow. “Think of all your friends and colleagues who’ve never been listed,” a pal consoled. Cold comfort. If you’ve never been listed in Wikipedia, you can always argue that your omission is an oversight. Not me. I’ve been placed under a microscope and, on the basis of careful and dispassionate analysis, excluded from the most comprehensive encyclopedia ever devised. Ouch!
But the terms of eviction from Wikipedia raise a larger issue than the bruised ego of one scribbler (or Jungian analyst or anime artist or Finnish security consultant). Why does Wikipedia have a “notability” standard at all?
We know why other encyclopedias need to limit the topics they cover. If they’re on paper, they’re confined by space. If they’re on the Web, they’re confined by staff size. But Wikipedia commands what is, for all practical purposes, infinite space and infinite manpower. The drawback to Wikipedia’s ongoing collaboration with readers is that entries are vulnerable to error, clumsy writing, and sabotage. The advantage is that Wikipedia can draw on the collective interests and knowledge of its hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to cover, well, anything. To limit that scope based on notions of importance and notability seems self-defeating. If Wikipedia publishes a bio of my cleaning lady, that won’t make it any harder to field experts to write and edit Wikipedia’s bio of Albert Einstein. So, why not let her in?
Granted, there are a few practical limits to covering any and all topics, “important” or not. One is privacy. Assuming that my cleaning lady were neither a public figure nor part of any larger story, it would be difficult to justify posting her bio against her will. Another limit is accuracy. The bio’s assertions about my cleaning lady would have to be independently verifiable from trustworthy sources made available to readers. Otherwise, Wikipedia’s vast army of volunteer fact-checkers would be unable to find out whether the bio was truthful.
But Wikipedia already maintains rules concerning verifiability and privacy. Why does it need separate rules governing “notability”? Wikipedia’s attempt to define who or what is notable is so rococo that it even has elaborate notability criteria for porn stars. (A former Playboy Playmate of the Month is notable; a hot girlfriend to a famous rock star is not.) Inside the permanent town meeting that is Wikipedia’s governing structure—a New Yorker article about Wikipedia last year reported that fully 25 percent of Wikipedia is now devoted to governance of the site itself—the notability standard is a topic of constant dispute.
When people go to this much trouble to maintain a distinction rendered irrelevant by technological change, the search for an explanation usually leads to Thorstein Veblen’s 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. (Click here to read it.) This extended sociological essay argues that the pursuit of status based on outmoded social codes takes precedence over, and frequently undermines, the rational pursuit of wealth and, more broadly, common sense. Hierarchical distinctions among people and things remain in force not because they retain practical value, but because they have become pleasurable in themselves. Wikipedia’s stubborn enforcement of its notability standard suggests Veblen was right. We limit entry to the club not because we need to, but because we want to.
[Update, Feb. 24, 2007, 11:40 a.m.: I didn't bargain on Wikipedia being such a highly sensitive instrument. Immediately after this article was posted (and therefore well before most people had a chance to read it), a Wikipedia sysop granted my entry a stay of execution with respect to "notability." Delighted as I am to be elevated once again to the company of Nicolaus Copernicus, Igor Stravinsky, and Melvin "Slappy" White, can the dividing line between eminence and obscurity really be the authorship of a single magazine article about Wikipedia? I note with interest that Stacy Schiff, author of the excellent New Yorker article cited above, failed to impress Wikipedia's arbiters of notability by winning the Pulitzer Prize in biography, writing several other well-regarded books, and receiving fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It wasn't until she wrote her Wikipedia piece that she became sufficiently notable to be written up in Wikipedia.
I presume the Wikipedia sysops will debate this point and others with respect to my entry, and that I can expect to be re-tagged for removal and un-tagged ad infinitum over the coming days as they hash it out. I'll follow future developments (click here to keep track of them) with interest. In the meantime, I hope it isn't lost on readers that my aim was not to reinstate myself but rather to argue against Wikipedia's "notability" standard itself and to use it as a newfangled illustration of our society's love affair with invidious distinction.]
A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.
Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
