2008 Woodie Awards
2008 Robert Osborne Classic Film Festival
Film host admits a love for Lucy, Indy, and Clooney
MANDY RODGERS
Issue date: 4/10/08 Section: Out & About
Ball counseled Osborne on his career choice. She didn't think acting was for him but thought he should use his writing skills to work in the industry, suggesting he pen a book about movies.
"This is kind of how street smart she was. She said, 'If you're going up for a job, as a writer and you've written a book and someone else hasn't, you'll get the job because they'll be impressed,'" he said.
In Osborne's film studies, he noticed there were books about Academy Award winners but not the nominees, so he did some research and wrote "Academy Awards Illustrated," a book including information about the coveted Oscar.
"I kind of miss [research] in this age of the Internet," Osborne said. "I kind of liked when it was harder to find, when you really had to go dig through books."
After the work was published, Osborne became the go-to ente-rtainment reporter: appearing on talk shows, becoming a regular on local television stations and getting a job at The Holly-wood Reporter he still has today.
"It's kind of interesting because I worked for so long at trying to get some place, a foothold somewhere, and nothing ever seemed to happen," he said. "Then I wrote the book, and it was kind of like a domino effect, everything happened."
The Turner Classic Movies gig came at a dinner party where he was discussing film with other movie enthusiasts, one of which happened to be someone putting the concept together. He asked him to host the film series with no audition.
"If I had auditioned for it, I might not have gotten it, because when you audition for something, it makes you self-conscious," he explained. "Everybody was just having a good time. It just worked out. It was really amazing."
"Like 'The Philadelphia Story' with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, you could talk about Hepburn, Stewart, Grant or great Broadway plays turned into movies, screwball comedy, films of George Cukor - there are many directions you could go," he said.
"This is kind of how street smart she was. She said, 'If you're going up for a job, as a writer and you've written a book and someone else hasn't, you'll get the job because they'll be impressed,'" he said.
In Osborne's film studies, he noticed there were books about Academy Award winners but not the nominees, so he did some research and wrote "Academy Awards Illustrated," a book including information about the coveted Oscar.
"I kind of miss [research] in this age of the Internet," Osborne said. "I kind of liked when it was harder to find, when you really had to go dig through books."
After the work was published, Osborne became the go-to ente-rtainment reporter: appearing on talk shows, becoming a regular on local television stations and getting a job at The Holly-wood Reporter he still has today.
"It's kind of interesting because I worked for so long at trying to get some place, a foothold somewhere, and nothing ever seemed to happen," he said. "Then I wrote the book, and it was kind of like a domino effect, everything happened."
The Turner Classic Movies gig came at a dinner party where he was discussing film with other movie enthusiasts, one of which happened to be someone putting the concept together. He asked him to host the film series with no audition.
"If I had auditioned for it, I might not have gotten it, because when you audition for something, it makes you self-conscious," he explained. "Everybody was just having a good time. It just worked out. It was really amazing."
"Like 'The Philadelphia Story' with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, you could talk about Hepburn, Stewart, Grant or great Broadway plays turned into movies, screwball comedy, films of George Cukor - there are many directions you could go," he said.
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