A young Rex Reed gives his tips for 1969’s Academy Awards on The Dick Cavett Show.

This is classic Rex Reed and encapsulates what is good, bad and brilliant about the eminent film critic and writer.

I like Mr Reed, and admire the quality of some of his journalism, particularly his lively celebrity profiles which kicked-off in the sixties and the seventies that influenced oh so many magazine writers thereafter. I also think Rex has been a large and unacknowledged influence on bloggers, as his film reviews epitomize the essence of what makes for a good blog—sharp, witty, harsh, informative, insightful, and very personal, where material is reviewed through the prism of the writer.

Here Reed begins with some information about the Oscar itself.

“Did you know that an Academy Award only costs $60?

“The actors used to hock them all the time, because as soon as they would win, they’d run out of bread or something and they’d hock the Academy Award.

“But now they’ve made that illegal.

“You can’t hock your Oscar anymore; the Academy will buy it back for $10.”

As for his hot picks, well, Mr. Reed thought Anne of a Thousand Days would win the Oscar for Best Film—though it was his preferred choice Midnight Cowboy that won it, becoming the first “X” rated movie to win an Academy Award.

He also felt Maggie Smith deserved to win Best Actress (she did) though he thought it would be split between Jane Fonda and Liza Minelli.

But it’s the Oscar for Best Actor that disturbed dear Mr. Reed.

“I really have the terrible, lurking, poisonous suspicion that John Wayne will win the Academy Award.”

A nicely piquant hors d’oeuvre to start the evening for tonight’s Academy Awards.
 

 
H/T The Observer