Jacqueline Stewart 0:00

In 1992, at the 64th Academy Awards, the Disney film Beauty and the Beast made history when it was the first animated feature ever to be nominated for Best Picture.

Don Hahn 0:11

Animation wasn't part of the Oscars; they did not have their own category at that time. The Academy was not founded by animators. To be honored in a, in a time when there was only five best picture nominations and have Beauty and the Beast be one of those nominations was incredible.

Jacqueline Stewart 0:27

This is Beauty and the Beast producer Don Hahn.

Jacqueline Stewart 0:30

Do you remember where you were when you found out about the Academy Award nominations for Beauty and the Beast?

Don Hahn 0:36

Yeah, I do. I was living up in Santa Clarita. They were announced really early in the morning as they always are, so that the East Coast gets the announcement. So I, I set my alarm and I went downstairs. We had a newborn baby, and so I didn't want to wake our little girl up, and I turned the TV on really softly and waited through the announcements. And then finally, they announced Best Picture and did it alphabetically and when Beauty and the Beast came up first, there was a scream from the audience [laughs] at the Academy announcement, and there was a scream in the Hahn house. I was just like I I probably lost it, I think would be the word for it. So the whole family woke up. And then the cool thing is the phone started to ring. And it was Roy Disney calling, saying I can't believe this. This is great. This never happened to Walt Disney.

Elizabeth Taylor 1:26

[Academy Awards sound bite] The five films nominated this year are so varied in their subject matter, dealing as they do with opposites attracting, criminals interacting, history in question, cannibal indigestion, [audience laughs] and last but not least, a beauty and a beast. [applause]

Jacqueline Stewart 1:57

[theme music] Welcome to the Academy Museum Podcast. I'm Jacqueline Stewart. In this episode, 1992: Tale as Old as Time, we'll be talking with Jenny He, one of our curators at the Academy Museum, and producer Don Hahn, about what Beauty and the Beast's historic nomination meant for animated films. And later we'll hear from the award-winning filmmaking duo, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, of Spider-Verse fame, about Beauty and the Beast's impact and honoring animated films today. [music out]

Jacqueline Stewart 2:29

[music in] Animation goes back to the very beginning of cinema history. What is often considered the first fully animated film, Fantasmagorie, was released in 1908. The film is only about two minutes long and follows a stick figure as he encounters surreal figures, like a vase that turns into an elephant, and sometimes the animator's own hand. Animation has continued to be a major component of filmmaking over the last century.

Jenny He 2:57

I wanted to underscore how expansive the animation format was. We look at over 100 years of animated stories of a completely wide range from 1914 to today, told through the lens of diverse animation artists.

Jacqueline Stewart 3:31

This is Jenny He, Exhibitions Curator at the Academy Museum. She curated Inventing Worlds and Characters Animation, which walks visitors through the rich history of animated film. And it's impossible to talk about animation history without mentioning one of the biggest names in entertainment. [music fades out]

Jenny He 3:50

The Disney Studio was founded in 1923 by Walt and Roy Disney. So we're all familiar with their first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from 1937.

Jacqueline Stewart 4:03

After years of making shorts and developing hand drawn animation techniques- you remember a black and white Mickey Mouse whistling in Steamboat Willie- Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Snow White was the first hand drawn, colored and sound synchronized animated feature. It was an endeavor that seemed impossible at the time but laid the groundwork for an animation empire.

Jenny He 4:26

Now for the next 30 years, Disney animation was quite successful. Pinocchio, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty.

Disney Animation Clips 4:32

[clip from Snow White: We've met before. We, we have? Well of course. You said so yourself. Once upon a dream.] [clip from Bambi: Hi, Bambi! Watch what I can do!] [clip from Pinocchio: You see, Pinocchio, a lie keeps growing and growing until it's as plain as the nose on your face.] [clip from Sleeping Beauty: And from this slumber you shall wake, when true loves kiss, the spell shall break.]

Jenny He 4:59

So in 1966, Walt Disney passed away and Roy Disney his brother passed away um, in '71. And during this period of time, the Disney Studio had a bit of leadership turmoil and uncertainty.

Jacqueline Stewart 5:14

This period became known as Disney's Dark Ages. In 1977, Disney released The Rescuers, an action-adventure film about two mice trying to rescue an orphan. The Rescuers performed well at the box office, and reviews were generally positive, but critics felt that it played it safe creatively compared to earlier classics like Pinocchio and Snow White.

Jenny He 5:37

One of my exhibitions before I joined the Academy Museum was on filmmaker, Tim Burton. And Tim had studied at Cal Arts, which was founded in part by Walt and Roy Disney to train animators for their studio. And Tim got a coveted animator job in 1979. He was plucked from Cal Arts, and I've heard from Tim himself and other animators about this period of time, the quote unquote, Dark Ages, where movies like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron- they really didn't take advantage of the wealth of talent working at Disney at the time.

Jacqueline Stewart 6:15

The Fox and the Hound had a troubled production. Longtime Disney animator Don Bluth, clashed with production over artistic freedom, and left Disney to start his own animation studio, taking 11 Disney animators with him. The Fox and the Hound was delayed by six months and released in 1981 to reviews saying it, quote, broke no new ground. The Black Cauldron, released in 1985, was a box office failure. And then in 1986, both Don Bluth and Disney released animated musicals starring- mice- clearly a popular choice. Disney's The Great Mouse Detective was outperformed at the box office by Don Bluth and Steven Spielberg's An American Tale. Disney started to turn it around with the 1988 summer smash hit that blended live action with animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It dominated the box office and was honored at the Academy Awards for editing and visual effects. And in 1989, Disney films began to sing. [music in] The Little Mermaid kicked off what has come to be known as the Disney Renaissance. In some ways, this was a return to form- fairy tales and songs. But Disney also brought in something new, a Broadway powerhouse writing team.

Jenny He 7:40

Composer, Alan Menken, and songwriter, Howard Ashman, who first worked on The Little Mermaid- they were instrumental in the Disney Renaissance. Their next film Beauty and the Beast was not only nominated for Best Score, but three of the film's songs were nominated for Best Song. Animation and musicals have been conjoined for a lot of cinema history. Animation has given rise to some of cinema's most memorable original songs.

Jacqueline Stewart 8:11

That run of Academy Award nominations and wins for Best Song and Best Score laid the groundwork for what was to come.

Jenny He 8:19

The Disney Renaissance just simply reinvigorated a public interest in animation that had been cemented long ago.

Don Hahn 8:27

The thing that started to separate Disney animation from everybody else was personality animation. It was turning pencil drawings into characters that were living and breathing. [music out]

Jacqueline Stewart 8:36

This is Beauty and the Beast producer Don Hahn again.

Don Hahn 8:39

When I got to Disney, which was kind of a chance, summer job kind of thing, I found a place that could challenge everything I had and more, in terms of music and art.

Jacqueline Stewart 8:50

Don wasn't involved in animation at first. He was a percussionist and a painter in college.

Don Hahn 8:55

You know, these are all the odd cast-offs of high school, who weren't necessarily [laughs] into sports or other things, especially in animation. You know, we tend to be a group of introverts, who really enjoys hours at a drawing board.

Jacqueline Stewart 9:08

He arrived at Disney in the late 1970s. Remember how huge Who Framed Roger Rabbit was for Disney? Don was an associate producer on that film.

Don Hahn 9:18

I moved to London for a couple years and and produced the animation on that. And so when I came back to Los Angeles, literally at the end of Roger Rabbit, I got a phone call from I think Jeffrey Katzenberg, probably at the time, who said, Hey, you want to take a crack at Beauty and the Beast?

Jacqueline Stewart 9:31

He became a producer for the film. Early on, Disney ran into some problems with the concepts for Beauty and the Beast.

Don Hahn 9:38

It's always been a story that's been problematic because it's it's about a a young girl whose father picks a rose in a garden and the Beast says, bring me back your most valuable possession. And so uh, the father goes home and says, you know, darling, I love you but I'm gonna take you back to this beast house. So it becomes a kind of hostage [laughs] situation. And as with many fairy tales, it's uh, inappropriate for modern audiences, I guess we can say. So I think the first task was to really examine that and say, How can we make this a story that we would want our children to see or want anybody to see?

Jacqueline Stewart 10:12

So, like the tagline on the theatrical poster read, Beauty and the Beast became, quote, the most beautiful love story ever told. A tale as old as time, about love overcoming all obstacles.

Don Hahn 10:26

They're stories about what it is to be human, what it is to fall in love, what it is to grow up, what it is to be heartbroken, and we can't get enough of that when we go to the movies.

Jacqueline Stewart 10:36

After some trouble locking down a director and settling on a direction for the film, a key piece finally clicked into place. Broadway superstar songwriters, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken became available to write the music.

Don Hahn 10:50

Ashman and Menken are one of the linchpins of that movie coming together.

Jacqueline Stewart 10:55

Remember, Ashman and Menken had won an Oscar for The Little Mermaid hit ìUnder the Sea.î They were the award-winning Disney aces on a team of fresh faces.

Don Hahn 11:04

The new directors, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale had never directed a film before. They were in their 20s, but they were funny, and they were story people. So we were with this fairly young and experienced group of people who were in love with the story and the possibility of turning this into a film. And then you started receiving songs from Howard and Alan and as a filmmaker, it's inspiring, it's life changing, it- because in a musical, the key plot points have to be in the song so you really rely on your songwriters to give you the the peak emotional moments when a character can't do anything but break into song.

Jacqueline Stewart 11:38

[music in] By September of 1991, the film was almost finished, and it was working. The songs were soaring, the side characters were funny, and the love story at the film's core was moving. And since the Academy Awards had already honored Disney films for technical achievement and music, it didn't seem that out of the question to the team, to campaign Beauty and the Beast for Best Picture. A publicist at Disney had an idea that sounded impossible.

Don Hahn 12:09

We're at this cusp of having animation be known again as an art form. Let's play Beauty and the Beast at the New York Film Festival. Well, that was insane. Like the New York Film Festival ever play an animated film much less Beauty and the Beast. And we showed it unfinished.

Jacqueline Stewart 12:24

A bold move. So that fall, the film was screened as a work in progress. Fully animated scenes were interspersed with storyboards, and black and white pencil sequences.

Don Hahn 12:36

So we were covered in flop sweat, went to the theater [laughs] and showed at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in front of an audience of New York critics and celebrities. And they loved it. It was like they, it's like they were going to a Broadway show. They applauded after every number and it was, it was unbelievable.

Jacqueline Stewart 12:56

There was a five-minute-long standing ovation when the screening ended. And when Beauty and the Beast was released theatrically in November 1991, it became the first animated film to reach the 100-million-dollar mark at the box office in the US and Canada. Critical response was overwhelmingly positive. Big names like Siskel and Ebert, were pinning the film as a real contender for Best Picture. [music out]

Jacqueline Stewart 13:22

So I want to take you back to that Oscar's night. This was not Don's first Oscar night. He had attended in 1988 for his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was honored with Oscars for Film Editing, Sound Effects Editing, Visual Effects, and a Special Achievement Award for animation direction. That first time, Don sat in the back row. But in 1992, he was just a handful of seats away from the host. And walking into the Oscars for Best Picture nomination was a very different feeling.

Don Hahn 13:55

This was at the Music Center at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. People were getting out of their cars on the street, and so you were hopping out of your car next to uh, you know, celebrities and people in the industry. So it was a tremendous excitement. And so to go sit down in my seats that year were in the maybe eighth or ninth row. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was very much a part of that success wanted to be there too.

Jacqueline Stewart 14:19

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner were the two executives brought into Disney at the beginning of the Renaissance.

Don Hahn 14:26

So we're sitting there. I'm sitting next to uh, Jeffrey. I'm sitting behind Sylvester Stallone. And, and I'm saying how did I get here? You know, Hi, I'm a cartoonist, I'm a musician, and nobody would expect to be in those shoes. And [laughs] then finally, you get to the point where Paul Newman, you know, gets up to read the best picture category with I think, Elizabeth Taylor. And they say your name. I mean, seriously, does that happen? No. So they say, you know, Beauty and the Beast uh, Best Picture, and and then you wait.

Elizabeth Taylor 15:03

[Academy Awards sound bite] And the Oscar goes to... The Silence of the Lambs. [applause and music]

Jacqueline Stewart 15:15

That year, Don wasn't holding the Oscar for Best Picture, but the night was hardly a bust. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman took home another Oscar for the film's titular song.

Shirley MacLaine 15:26

[Academy Awards sound bite] The Oscar goes to Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for Beauty and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. [music and applause]

Jacqueline Stewart 15:35

Howard Ashman had recently died of complications related to AIDS, and his partner gave a speech on his behalf.

Bill Lauch 15:41

[Academy Awards sound bite] There's an inscription at Howard's grave in Baltimore. It reads, Oh, that he had one more song to sing. We'll never hear that song. But I'm deeply grateful for this tribute you've given to what he left behind. For Howard, I thank you. [applause and music]

Don Hahn 16:00

And we, we had rented out a place for all the animators in the old Hollywood Palace down in downtown Hollywood. It was packed with animators wearing their Converse high tops. And we went in holding Oscars in hand, not only uh, you know, for Alan Menken and for Howard Ashman, and and just to say, look what you did, you know, look, everybody, you made a movie that, hopefully will stand the test of time, and hopefully will show people that animation is a great, great medium.

Jacqueline Stewart 16:28

I wanted to ask you, if you were expecting any backlash, when the awards campaign first began. Clearly, there were so many people who loved the film, but were, did you ever hear any questions or, or criticisms that an animated film should not be nominated for Best Picture?

Don Hahn 16:45

I, I think yes. Always. I mean, this was pre-internet and pre uh, pre crazy world we live in. Yes, I suppose there there were elements. You know, I don't need to mention any names or anything, but elements that felt like, well, animation is really nice. It's a kid's medium, and um, and that's where it belongs, and it doesn't belong anywhere near the Oscars.

Jacqueline Stewart 17:08

But after the nomination for Best Picture for Beauty and the Beast, Don saw that attitude change.

Don Hahn 17:14

I think studios started to open their animation departments, departments that they never had, or were never, you know, suddenly, they're saying, we're in the animation business too. And that's a good thing, you know, that competition actually became very good. And as an audience, you start to see great movies from a lot of different people. And you know, whether it be from Don Bluth, or from Dreamworks, or Miyazaki, or whatever, you're starting to see a explosion of interest in animation. [music in] That's been 30 years ago, and now you- virtually every movie's animated and not in the traditional sense, but even the Marvel movies or whatever, are full of animation. I don't think, I don't think any of us could have seen that coming. But the tools of an animator have migrated into every filmmaker's toolbox. And that's exciting to see that.

Jacqueline Stewart 18:05

And 10 years after Beauty and the Beast's nomination for Best Picture, the Academy added a new category to the Oscars: Best Animated Feature.

Various Academy Awards Announcers 18:14

[Academy Awards sound bites] And the Oscar goes to Shrek... And the Oscar goes to Spirited Away... And the Oscar goes to viva Latin America! Coco... And the Oscar goes to Toy Story 3... And the Oscar goes to Encanto! [applause and music]

Jacqueline Stewart 18:38

After the break, we talk with filmmaking team Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Academy Award winners for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, about animation's place at the Oscars today.

Chris Miller 18:50

These films are big important films for everyone and shouldn't be treated as sort of babysitter fodder. [music out] [break]

Jacqueline Stewart 19:03

Since 2002, animated features have had their own category at the Oscars. Two filmmakers who took home that award are Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The pair are writers, directors and producers. Their first animated feature, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, made a splash when it was released in 2009.

Phil Lord 19:23

Cloudy is our, um, the first feature we ever made. And it started out sort of like an animated version of Airplane, which is to say a parody of disaster movies. If you watched any five minutes of it, it was really funny and engaging. And if you watched any 20 minutes of it, you would fall asleep [laughter] because there wasn't a very strong relationship story in the early iterations of the movie.

Jacqueline Stewart 19:54

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is about Flint Lockwood, an aspiring young scientist.

Movie Trailer Announcer 20:01

[Cloudy movie trailer] Since he was a little boy, Flint Lockwood dreamed of being a famous inventor. Remote controlled television! The trouble was his inventions tended to be a little unusual. But a guy like Flint never, ever gives up. [fade out]

Jacqueline Stewart 20:25

And while the film was a goofy comedy about giant sentient food, Phil and Chris realized the film only worked if the core of the story was actually about a son's relationship with his widowed father.

Phil Lord 20:37

The story needed a lot more warmth, and a lot more of the- well, at the time we thought of as like, old fart stuff. [laughs] And it was all really about how to get his dad to say that he loved him.

Chris Miller 20:51

We realized that that was the real key to making movies that stood the test of time, is that it has to be new and innovative and and do something that hasn't been done before, either tonally, or visually, or both. But behind all of that has to be some basic relationship story that that an audience can engage with and find truth in.

Jacqueline Stewart 21:17

Their reputation in animation was cemented by the success of their next animated feature, The Lego Movie.

Movie Trailer Announcer 21:23

[Lego Movie Trailer] We have learned that Lord Business plans to end the world as we know it. [gasps] There is yet one hope. The special has arisen. I think I got it. But just in case, tell me the whole thing again, I wasn't listening. [boos]

Jacqueline Stewart 21:38

They have been nominated for Best Animated Feature twice and won in 2019.

Pharrell Williams and Michelle Yeoh 21:46

[Academy Awards sound bite] And the Oscar goes to- Mimi, you were right - [laughter][Pharrell and Michelle together] Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse! [applause and cheers] There's a lot of us. Oh, wow. Hey, um. Thank you, Academy... [fade out]

Jacqueline Stewart 22:01

What was your reaction when you heard your names called? How did you feel when you won that award?

Phil Lord 22:06

I sort of blacked out. [laughs] How do you describe that moment, Chris?

Chris Miller 22:12

Phil and I were sitting next to each other, and we were like, squeezing each other's hands as though it was some uh, I don't know. It was very- [Phil: like we were- Yeah, we were like Miss America contestants.] Exactly. [laughter]

Jacqueline Stewart 22:26

[music in] I wanted to talk to Phil and Chris for this episode, because despite their success, they feel that the film industry still doesn't take animated film seriously.

Jacqueline Stewart 22:41

I want to talk about the Variety column. After this year's Oscar ceremony, you wrote a guest column titled, ìHollywood Should Elevate Not Diminish Animation.î Could you talk about what prompted you to write that piece?

Chris Miller 22:56

You know, we have noticed a trend at the ceremony itself of always describing the animation category as something for kids and, and making you feel like oh, cartoons, these are just kid things. This is our funny little side thing that we're doing for the kiddos. And then we'll get back to the adult films.

Academy Award Announcer 23:20

[sound bite] Once upon a time parents took their children to see animated features. Today's animation has reached such a level of sophistication that the children take their parents...

Academy Award Announcer 23:30

[sound bite] So many kids watch these movies over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

Academy Award Announcer 23:37

[sound bite] I see some parents out there know exactly what we're talking about. Here are the nominees for Best Animated Feature Film...

Phil Lord 23:44

It's important to us that, that the world film audience, look at these pictures as some of the best pictures that are made every year, because they are. It's also important to us, as you know, stewards of an art form, to promote sophisticated filmmaking. And it's not that we don't want families to be able to access a lot of these movies. It's just that we want people to understand these films as works of art.

Jacqueline Stewart 24:15

It's that perspective that guided them in making Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. [music out] Amy Pascal, the head of Sony at the time, had worked with Phil and Chris on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. She approached them about doing an animated Spider-Man feature. And Phil and Chris knew that the only way another Spider-Man movie would work is if it felt innovative and new.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Trailer 24:38

Okay, let's do this one last time. Yeah? For real this time. This is. My name is Miles Morales. I was bitten by a radioactive spider. And for like two days, I've been the one and only Spider-Man.

Jacqueline Stewart 24:50

The first major choice, they decided their Spider-Man would be young, Afro-Latino Miles Morales, not Peter Parker. The second- groundbreaking visuals that would transport audiences inside a comic book.

Chris Miller 25:04

Let's make some images that feel like three-dimensional comic book images that feel painted and handmade. We had long felt like, you know, you see these ìart ofî books, and it's amazing, stylish paintings uh, and drawings that people do of, of visual development for the look of a movie, and then you see the movie. And it's cool, and it looks great, but why can't it look like the actual painting that it was inspired by? And the answer was- because it's really hard.

Jacqueline Stewart 25:39

So how did you do it? I mean, what were the tools that you used, like, because you had to invent new strategies in order to achieve this goal.

Phil Lord 25:47

In order to make something that looks completely different, you basically have to challenge the entire system.

Jacqueline Stewart 25:54

Phil and Chris turned to CG animation, normally used for special effects in live action films. These tools usually create environments and effects that look as realistic as possible. But Phil and Chris wanted to create a vibrant, stylized, animated world that blended the look of 2D and 3D.

Chris Miller 26:13

The tools can be used to do anything.

Phil Lord 26:17

Every single shot is a bespoke shot, using a set, a palette of tools, that regenerated but there's a lighting artist behind every single shot, and they're making intuitive human choices using the power of a machine. But ultimately, it's a human hand that's creating that shot.

Jacqueline Stewart 26:39

And this huge undertaking and focus on artistry paid off for them when they won the Oscar.

Phil Lord 26:44

It's not individual accomplishment, right?

Chris Miller 26:46

It is really the most collaborative art form there is in existence, is making a film. You know there are 500 people that worked on that film, and so much creativity and brilliance and innovation, and thoughtfulness from all of them. And there's something really beautiful about that.

Jacqueline Stewart 27:07

[music in] And Phil and Chris recognize that same artistry in a film they grew up with- Beauty and the Beast.

Jacqueline Stewart 27:18

Since this episode, we're focusing on Beauty and the Beast and its 1992 Best Picture nomination. And I'm wondering how that relates to what you're describing? What do you think is the legacy of that nomination?

Phil Lord 27:32

I remember when that film was unfinished. And I think they screened a half-completed, half-pencil-test version of the movie. And I was in high school and dying to see it because I wanted to see the process behind everything. It was positioned from the jump as a Best Picture contender. And so you really got the sense of like, the campaign for this film is you're going to the theater to be dazzled and elevated and called to your best human qualities. [laughs]

Chris Miller 28:10

The ballroom sequence was famous for being a mix of a computer-generated background, and a three dimensional camera move with these two dimensional characters dancing in the middle of it as though it were, you know, a dolly move on a crane but that had never been seen before in a 2D animated film.

Phil Lord 28:34

What I appreciate about that film is its ambition. You know, it's going for it on every level, it's not afraid to be a little scary. The beast is an unbelievably [laughs] complicated, [JS laughs] animated character, like nothing about that movie is really playing it safe. And that's what I really love about it is it's trying to be the best picture of the year. [laughs] It's trying to be the best movie that Disney's ever made. And if you're not always trying for that, like what are you doing? You know, you want your crew to think like, we're doing something special. And if you fall short of the mark, fine. [laughs] But I'm, we're always just trying to like, you know, give the audience something they haven't had before. And that movie is aiming for excellence on every, in every category.

Jacqueline Stewart 29:23

Absolutely, yeah. Does that make you wonder, now that there's a Best Animated Feature category, what would happen to a film like Beauty and the Beast now [laughs] in terms of where it could be placed for recognition?

Phil Lord 29:35

Sure, you know, and you wonder like to me when, when I'm filling out my ballot- Chris and I are proud Academy members- we, you know, I always look at like well, which is the, what was the best documentary, what was the best foreign language film to me? What was the best animated film and don't they belong in this Best Picture category?

Jacqueline Stewart 29:57

Beauty and the Beast wasn't the last animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. The Pixar films, Up and Toy Story 3 were nominated in 2010 and 2011. But neither won. So far no animated film has ever taken home the Oscar for Best Picture.

Phil Lord 30:14

It's a little surprising that those, those films don't wind up in the big category. It stands to reason that they should. [music out]

Jacqueline Stewart 30:21

[theme music] On this first season of the Academy Museum Podcast, we've taken deep dives into stories from our Academy Awards history gallery, looking at historic moments across decades of Oscars history, from Halle Berry to Sacheen Littlefeather, from The Brave One to Beauty and the Beast. We've talked about what those moments on stage and behind the scenes have meant for the winners and nominees, for the Academy, for the film industry, and for the culture. We hope you enjoyed this season. And we'll be back soon with more, including some bonus episodes featuring great interviews that we're excited to share with you in full. The Academy Museum Podcast is written and hosted by me, Jacqueline Stewart. This episode was produced by Victoria Alejandro and edited by Sophia Paliza-Carre. The Academy Museum Podcast team includes Antonia Cereijido, Victoria Alejandro, Kimberly Stevens and Monica Bushman. The show was a production of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in collaboration with LAist Studios. Mixing by E. Scott Kelly with engineering help from Donald Paz. Our theme music was composed by Nicolas Britell. Antonia Cereijido and Leo G are the executive producers for LAist Studios. Our podcast website laist.com/podcasts is designed by Andy Cheatwood and the digital and marketing teams at LAist Studios. The Academy Museum marketing team created our branding. Thanks to the team at the Academy Museum, including Shawn Anderson, Peter Castro, Stephanie Sykes and Matt Youngner, and to our Academy colleagues, Randy Haberkamp and Claire Lockhart. Thanks also to the team at LAist Studios, including Taylor Coffman, Sabir Brara, Kristen Hayford, Kristen Muller, Andy Orozco, Michael Consentino, and Leo G. Academy Museum digital engagement platforms, including this podcast are sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]