Damien Bona 1955-2012

[MovieFan]

Im really saddened by this, Damien was one of those users who's posts I loved reading and looked forward to reading because of his tremendous taste in movies. RIP Damien, you will be missed

[Big Magilla]

1953-1955. Even the HFPA doesn't have this information.

[OscarGuy]

Which ones? I have a lot of globe data...but not all of it, I don't think...but perhaps this should all go to a different thread

[Big Magilla]

What I want to know is did he or anyone for that matter ever find the missing Golden Globe nominations from the early 1950s?

[OscarGuy]

I have the data (not his data specifically), but it takes a long time to parse and edit and prepare...I got all the guilds up.

Nice to see you again, Chryst. I didn't realize you were Booster Gold, but we learn something new...

I used to have your e-mail, I thought, but probably not anymore. Too bad you haven't been around. I know it's frustrating dealing with the outright homophobia of BBM losing to Crash.

But I was thinking just last night: what would have happened had their been 10 nominations? Assuming they just needed a few voters to rally behind one film to overtake Brokeback, could they have been so effective with more base votes siphoned to other films? Would BBM's passionate supporters have been able to persevere over a broader race?

[Big Magilla]

So, Chryst, now that you've had six years to get over the shock of Brokeback Mountain losing, is there any chance of resurrecting the Fennec Awards Database or something approximating it? Inquiring minds want to know.

[mlrg]

Great text Booster!

I used to check the FENNEC site many times in the past!

Great to meet you

[Booster Gold]

Let me just start this with a sad "wow."

I had been heavily invested with the Oscars and the surrounding hoopla during the '80s and '90s, and made it halfway through the 'aughts before I became terribly disenfranchised with it all. From 2006 on, I made (more and more in-)frequent trips to these boards to catch up without getting too caught up. Life has a way of shifting around on you, and this Oscar Sunday, I realized I hadn't been here since 2009. So I decided to stop on by and see what you all thought of this year's winners. It was absolutely terrible to find the header "The Damien Bona Memorial Oscar History Thread." What had happened? I quickly did the research (and just a month ago!) and absorbed the sad facts. I am sorry if this is lengthy and late, but I had to write this out, not just for his memory, but for myself.

I owe a lot to Damien. It was his, and Mason Wiley's, early work that added fire to my love for the whole Hollywood charade. I remember buying the hardcover edition of "Inside Oscar" in what must've been '86 or '87. I had been watching the Oscar telecasts and seeing the nominated movies since the start of the decade, but this fabulous book took me even farther into the past. I poured over it until the pages began to fall out. Luckily, the next edition soon became available and the cycle started anew.

In 1991 I joined the exciting world of the internet, participating in the movie-chatrooms of CompuServe and Prodigy. A few of us were always ready to answer any Oscar trivia armed with "Inside Oscar," but as more and more people joined in the conversation, the questions became more far-reaching. I was impelled to find out more. I contacted the various Hollywood guilds, pulled some strings with connections I already had and even visited the AMPAS Library just as Misters Bona and Wiley had done. Soon, I basically had the history of the Hollywood awards in my hands.

And, as I am sure Damien and Mason knew, its so much more fun if everyone has this information so you can discuss and argue to your hearts content. I started compiling the information into a "textsite" that I could share with others in the chatrooms. It took me awhile to get everything ready, then tragedy struck - the internet added pictures! More years went by, but finally the site was ready for the 1995 Oscars.

The ten years I spent running The Fennec Awards Database, and later theGoldenGlobes, were the most exciting, wonderful, fulfilling, challenging and manic years of my life. Seeing over 300 movies each year in multiple formats. The special screenings, the luncheons, the meet-and-greets, etc. Attending the actual ceremonies! A living dream. It is all much more simple now, and I like it like this, but I would not have traded those times for anything. I owe a great deal of that to Damien. I thanked him for this once, but words will never be enough to convey my gratitude.

I believe that there is no afterlife, that this is it, the big show, your one chance. I believe that the point is to make it the best possible life for yourself and maybe enrich the lives of those you come into contact with while you are here. Damien did that. Generous, funny, witty, charming and extremely intelligent (though I will go to my grave thinking he was insane for dismissing animated films out of hand). And what he left behind is immeasurable, as he and Mason inspired others, like myself, and we all created this massive "thing" that we now call The Awards Season. I hope he realized and felt proud of that.

You will be greatly missed, and your life's work cherished. Thank you again, one last time.
Chryst

[mayukh]

Wonderful – NYT just published an article about Damien yesterday.

http://nyti.ms/y5Cy7z

Damien Bona Dies at 56; Creator of Guide for Oscar Buffs
By DENNIS HEVESI
Flip to just about any page in “Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards” and something fascinating is bound to pop up.

In 1997, when “Breathing Lessons,” about a man who spent most of his life in an iron lung, won the award for best short documentary, the director, Jessica Yu, stepped to the mike and said, “You know you’ve entered new territory when you realize your outfit cost more than your film.”

“This quote,” the 2002 edition of “Inside Oscar” declared, “immediately went into the annals as one of the all-time great Oscar speeches.”

Not quite like the one in 1931 made by Charles P. Curtis, the vice president of the United States, who was greeted with groans when the audience spotted the thick stack of papers in his hand, which included an extended defense of President Herbert Hoover. No one, according to the book, bothered to tell him that “he had dropped a number of pages on his way to the podium.”

Damien Bona, who with his college friend Mason Wiley wrote that encyclopedic, usually affectionate but sometimes acerbic work — now a handy guide for film buffs — died at 56 in Manhattan on Jan. 29 The cause was cardiac arrest, his brother-in-law, Neil Cohen, said.

“A giddy social history of our place and time, full of statistics and the kind of utterly trivial details that, taken together, somehow assume significance, like centuries-old graffiti scratched onto the base of the Sphinx,” Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times when the first edition was published in 1986.

It was his mastery of detail that prompted the screenwriter and director Bill Condon (who won and Oscar for “Gods and Monsters” in 1999) to consult with Mr. Bona when he produced the 2009 awards ceremony. “Damien was the first person I called,” Mr. Condon said on Tuesday. “He was the perfect sounding board. I don’t think anyone has quite captured how both silly and meaningful the Academy Awards are.”

Research like theirs has since “exploded online,” Mr. Condon said, contending that Mr. Bona and Mr. Wiley deserve some of the credit: “Damien and Mason created a culture of Oscar experts and bloggers who now take an obsessive interest in the Academy Awards.”

After Mr. Wiley died in 1994, Mr. Bona updated “Inside Oscar” several times. In all, it has sold about 90,000 copies, according to his agent, Lynn Seligman. On his own, Mr. Bona also wrote “Opening Shots” (1994), a look at unlikely film debuts, and “Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan: Hollywood’s All-Time Worst Casting Blunders” (1996).

Damien Conrad Bona was born on March 18, 1955, in Sharon, Conn., and grew up in New Milford, where his father, Arthur, ran a bookstore and his mother, Alma, taught school. Besides his mother, he is survived by his longtime companion, the writer and theater director Ralph Peña, and his sister, Amy Bona.

Mr. Bona and Mr. Wiley met at Columbia, where they both worked on the school newspaper, The Spectator — Mr. Bona as film critic. After graduating in 1977, he earned a law degree at New York University, then practiced law in the city for a time. But a shared fascination with film led the friends to do several years of research, much of it at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Los Angeles. After their book was published, Mr. Bona never again practiced law.

Reporters often sought his historical perspective on the Oscars. In 2003, he was interviewed on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” about the 75th anniversary of the awards. The first ceremony, the program noted, had been nothing more than a dinner party — no production numbers, no suspense and with the winners’ names printed on the backs of the menus.

“All you’d need to know,” Mr. Bona said, “is that the first awards were given out in five minutes.”

[ksrymy]

In memory of the man so loved here whom I sadly never got to speak with, I purchased both of his books and plan on reading them to fill the void of what I never got to experience.

Do you mean both Inside Oscars? He also has two other books (John Wayne as Genghis Khan [later Demi Moore as Hester Prynne] and Opening Shots) that aren't as great, but still fun reads!

Both Inside Oscars but I'll have to check the other two out as well.

[FilmFan720]

In memory of the man so loved here whom I sadly never got to speak with, I purchased both of his books and plan on reading them to fill the void of what I never got to experience.

Do you mean both Inside Oscars? He also has two other books (John Wayne as Genghis Khan [later Demi Moore as Hester Prynne] and Opening Shots) that aren't as great, but still fun reads!

[ksrymy]

In memory of the man so loved here whom I sadly never got to speak with, I purchased both of his books and plan on reading them to fill the void of what I never got to experience.

[Sonic Youth]

As Damien would've said, "Death can kiss my fat ass."

I went AWOL for a bit because my life is extremely busy (good-busy fortunately, but still very busy) and I felt it was best to return in a few days when I would be less tense. I heard about Damien's passing second-hand, through a post on Awards Daily, and I couldn't bring my cowardly self to return. I lost a friend of mine on Christmas Eve, also of a heart attack. She was twelve years older than Damien but still too young. And even though neither were members of my family, and even though I only met one in person, it feels like a double blow. There have been a lot of posts I've not read yet, but this is the only one that matters right now.

I never know what to say when someone dies. It's something I'm plain bad at. Damien and I only exchanged very trivial emails. I've never reached out to him, but I rarely reach out to anyone outside of the parameters of this board. But I can see he was open-hearted enough to do so and I see all the lives he's touched. He touched my life, too. One of the more heartening developments of this board are all the new members joining and contributing for the past year or two. All the same, as wonderful as that is, Damien's absence has created a hole that ten members, new or old, cannot begin to fill.

It seems unjust that an Oscar historian had to depart this mortal coil in the midst of Oscar season, the time of year Damien lived for. And it's doubly cruel that a New York Giants fan won't be able to see his favorite team in this year's Superbowl. I'll be watching the game and the Oscar telecast with Damien in the back of my mind this year.

I wish all the best to Damien's friends and family. My condolences.

[Big Magilla]

Good point, Irvin, but it isn't my quote. His family submitted it, I merely copied it.

[anonymous1980]

He is survived by his long-time partner, the writer and theater director Ralph Peña; his mother, Alma Bona, of New Milford; his sister, Amy Bona, of Brooklyn; three nieces, and a legion of friends in New York and Hollywood.

If you count the message board, around the world as well.