Waxword

Sharon Waxman

Sharon Waxman On the Business of Entertainment

The founder and editor of TheWrap’s take on life on the left coast, high culture, low culture and the business of entertainment and media. Waxman writes frequently on the inside doings of Hollywood, and is is also the author of two books, Rebels on the Back Lot and Loot

  • The Night Before Oscar

    On the night before Oscar, Giorgio Armani must be adored. This is the only conclusion I can draw from the stunning assemblage of celebrity plumage that appeared at the home of local billionaire Ron Burkle for a cocktail party and fashion show on Saturday night. This is the first time I can recall seeing Armani […]

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  • The Day Before Oscar

    On the day before Oscar, there’s lots to do. We dress up, go to the beach and eat very small amounts of food at the Independent Spirit Awards, the ceremony designed to celebrate the scrappy, independent films that are likely to be overlooked by the big, brassy Oscars. Except that now, "independent" films — which […]

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  • Waiting for Oscar

    Oscar weekend is upon us, and your intrepid reporter is sharpening her stilettos and dusting off the same white Ralph Lauren pantsuit that takes her through the gauntlet of cocktail parties, shindigs, ceremonies and champagne receptions every darn year, all in the service of you, faithful reader.  I have this to say about ye olde […]

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  • Don’t Cough in Hollywood

    I interviewed Bob Shaye, the co-chairman of New Line, at length last week for a story in today’s Business Day section of the Times. In the piece, Shaye addressed numerous rumors swirling around Hollywood about his studio, and revealed a fairly big piece of news: that he was in a coma for six weeks in […]

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  • The Death Star

    I went to lunch with a source in Century City this week, which incidentally now has a horrifying new area code of its own, 424. The building I went to visit is now being called “The Death Star,” but it’s actually the gleaming new home of CAA, the all-powerful talent agency that seems to gobble […]

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  • The Mystery of the Missing Moviemakers

    FOR fans of Kimberly Peirce 2007 may be a banner year.  More than seven years have passed since this 39-year-old writer-director gave the world a movie. Her first effort in 1999, ''Boys Don't Cry,'' was indelible. It won a best-actress Oscar for the unknown Hilary Swank and catapulted Ms. Peirce to a spot among the […]

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  • Salon.com – The revolution that failed

    Quentin Tarantino and the indie rebels who followed him changed Hollywood in the '90s — but in the end, Hollywood also changed them. BY ANDREW O'HEHIR | Talent isn't democratic and doesn't play fair. That's one of the things we already know about human existence — after all, van Gogh was an insufferable pill and […]

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  • Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System

    Reviews | Buy the Book | Autographed Copies INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING GOES HOLLYWOOD Autographed copies – You can buy a signed copy of the hardback book, which is no longer available in stores, from the author directly for $20.00 plus shipping and handling. Send requests to sharon.waxman@gmail.com for details. New York Times correspondent Sharon Waxman reveals […]

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    Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System

  • Washington Post: Reeling them in

    BY ROBERT SKLAR | For a few golden years, a generation ago, Hollywood film directors preened as artists (also known as auteurs, the French word for authors). Then the movie moguls figured out how to make big bucks producing and marketing comic-book blockbusters, and the pretense was over. Most studio directors became faceless functionaries who […]

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  • Miami Herald: It’s a wrap

    SIX MAVERICK DIRECTORS DEFY HOLLYWOOD CONVENTION TO DO THINGS THEIR OWN WAY BY RENE RODRIGUEZ | Most any film buff will concur that the 1970s marked the last great era of American movies, thanks to the sheer number of talented filmmakers — Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, William Friedkin and Brian […]

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  • Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Author documents revolutionary filmmakers

    BY MICHAEL MACHOSKY | There's an infamous scene in "Pulp Fiction" where an adrenaline-filled needle is plunged through Uma Thurman's heart, to resuscitate her from a drug-induced coma. For many moviegoers, "Pulp Fiction" itself was that literal shot of adrenaline, jammed into the heart of a complacent, artistically comatose industry. It forced Hollywood to sit […]

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  • Variety

    BY WENDY SMITH | Want to know which hot young director prefers which recreational drug? Which one bathes and changes his clothes so infrequently that he smells bad? Which one hates his mother? New York Times Hollywood correspondent Sharon Waxman zestfully provides the answers in her enjoyably dishy book, obviously modeled on Peter Biskind's bestselling […]

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  • New York Observer: Miramax’s Big Morning; Waxman’s War Zone

    BY JAKE BROOKS | “I like being in war zones. And Hollywood is a kind of war zone,” joked Sharon Waxman, the boisterous reporter covering the film beat for The New York Times. A former Middle East correspondent, Ms. Waxman has some basis for comparison. “They’re both very challenging, but Hollywood is much more treacherous […]

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