Arts&Life
the oscars
44 | FEBRUARY 6 • 2020
father is Jewish; his mother, Protestant.
Baumbach is secular but identifies as
Jewish culturally). A series of mostly
well-received movies followed Squid,
but in some sense, all the pieces came
together in Marriage Story, an acute
look at a failing marriage without a
false note. Baumbach says details are
based on truth but the larger story
is not autobiographical . His current
partner is Greta Gerwig, a best adapted
screenplay nominee (Little Women).
MUSIC and
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Randy
Newman, 76, is nominated for best
score (Marriage Story) and best song
(“I Can’
t Let You Throw Yourself
Away” from Toy Story 4). He has won
two Oscars for his songs and has been
nominated 20 times for a song or score.
Three of Newman’
s uncles were success-
ful Hollywood composers (Emil, Lionel
and Alfred Newman). Randy’
s father
was a doctor and the only Newman
brother to marry a Jewish woman. He
competes for best score with his first
cousin Thomas Newman, who is nomi-
nated for 1917.
Randy Newman competes with
Diane Warren, 63, for best song. She
wrote “I’
m Standing with You” from
Breakthrough. She has won a slew of
Grammys and has written many pop
hits, but she can’
t seem to win an Oscar.
She’
s been Oscar-nominated 11 times
since 1988 and hasn’
t won yet.
Lawrence Sher, 49, is nominated for
best cinematography for Joker. There’
s
no doubt that his work was critical to
the way the film artfully conveyed the
mental anguish of the title character.
Sher has long worked with Phillips, and
he shot the Hangover movies. In 2017,
he directed his first feature, Father
Figures.
BEST PICTURE: The Best Picture
Oscar goes to the film’
s principal pro-
ducers. Oscar rules limit the number
of nominees to three. All the nomi-
nated films have a Jewish producer:
1917, Sam Mendes; Ford v. Ferrari,
James Mangold, 56; The Irishman,
Jane Rosenthal, 63; Jojo Rabbit, Taika
Waititi; Joker, Todd Phillips; Little
Women, Amy Pascal, 61; Marriage
Story, Noah Baumbach and David
Heyman, 58; Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood, David Heyman.
RANDY THOMAS continued from page 40
to Alison Steele (“The Nightbird”) on
the radio and was inspired to try being
a DJ. She went back to Michigan and
attended Oakland Community College,
which led to local work before moving
on to various stations in New York,
Florida and Los Angeles.
While Thomas was DJing a Los
Angeles morning show in 1993, she was
offered an audition for the Academy
Awards job, a role she said “changed my
life.” She quickly moved from radio into
TV, supplementing awards shows with
promotion assignments.
“Live award shows are fantastic, but
they only happen X amount of times
a year,” she said. “I have to work every
week, and I have radio and TV stations
that I’
m now the voice of.”
The most dramatic Oscar moment
that Thomas recalls happened in 2017,
when La La Land was called as Best
Picture instead of the real winner,
Moonlight. A third accountant was later
added along with security procedures to
prevent any similar mistake.
Coincidentally, La La Land producer
Gary Gilbert also grew up in Michigan,
where he worked for his brother, busi-
nessman and developer Dan Gilbert.
BUILDING HER CAREER
Thomas credits many things with helping
her rise to the top of her field.
“I think vocal tone tends to determine
the kind of work I do,” Thomas said.
“Because my voice is big, I can project
with control so my voice doesn’
t waver. I
can put gravitas into a read as well as a big,
warm smile.”
Diet and exercise keep Thomas’
voice
healthy and strong. Eighty-five percent of
her diet is plant-based, and 30 days before
a major show, she avoids sugar, dairy and
orange juice.
Thomas, whose stepfather (Max
Thomas) owned the Michigan Glove
Company in Oak Park, has been mar-
ried for 35 years to Arnie Wohl, a former
record promoter who is exploring busi-
ness opportunities with CBD oil. Their
daughter, Rachel, a voiceover artist since
childhood, recently graduated from the
University of Southern California and does
technical consulting.
“I wasn’
t raised with a Jewish back-
ground; I was just raised by Jews and
became the most observant of my family,”
Thomas said, adding that her daughter
became a bat mitzvah with Chabad.
Thomas appreciates producers like
Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner, of
the Tony and Emmy Awards, who have
employed her over many years.
“
A lot of times, producers are incredibly
loyal to a production team,” she said. “If
you do your best job and help them have
a great show, they will bring you back, and
that has been a huge blessing in my life.”
Thomas recently shared her story first-
hand in a TED Talk, “Voice Lessons: How
I Talked My Way to the Top,” available
on YouTube. She hopes her experiences
inspire young women to break other gen-
der career barriers, and she repeats her
grandmother’
s encouragement to show
chutzpah.
“If you would have told me that I would
be the first woman to announce a global
live television broadcast, I would have
been shocked,” she said. “I think the
opportunities that came my way happened
because I was ready, and it also had to do
with reading Malcolm Gladwell’
s Outliers,
which discusses success. I wasn’
t the first
woman on the air in Detroit, but I was one
of the first.”
And she’
s not done with aspirations.
“I feel I want to be a branding voice for
an entire network,” she said. “That would
be amazing.”
OSCAR GUIDE continued from page 43