The Oscar coverage game has obviously blown up in the eight years that I’ve been doing it. What started out as old media writing annual, singular columns dedicated to the race at hand (and generally right just before the show or nominations announcement) eventually gave way to niche-oriented sites headed up by passionate individuals who just wanted to write about movies and the Super Bowl of film.
The early names were obviously Tom O’Neil, Pete Hammond (via Tom’s site), Sasha Stone and Nathaniel Rogers. I jumped on board in 2000-2001 and soon, already established writers like David Poland and Jeffrey Wells began to offer up Oscar coverage (seeing the remunerative prospects, no doubt). Today, any and everyone covers the Oscars, from the amateur fan-site trenches to major media outlets looking to capitalize on advertising potential.
But there was one guy doing all of this nonsense long, long ago who made a splash then suddenly disappeared. He ranked the major categories in ever-changing lists of 30 and had studio publicists at their wits end trying to locate and, obviously, influence him. His name, as we knew him, was Zeusefer, and veteran publicist Reid Rosefelt has written something of a letter to his shenanigans.