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This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. With the Oscars coming up next month

we're going to hear stories about earlier behind the scenes battles

we don't see on the night Hollywood celebrates itself.

In my guest Michael Schulman's book, Oscar Wars, A History of Hollywood in Gold Sweat and Tears.

He says, quote, the Oscars have become a conflict zone for issues of race, gender, and representation.

High profile signifiers of whose stories get told and whose

don't.

In previous decades, Oscar Wars were waged over different issues, but they were no less fraught."

The very existence of the Oscars and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which

administers them, were created in an attempt to resolve a conflict in young Hollywood back in the late 1920s.

The conflict Schulman writes about involved labor battles, World War II, anti-communist hysteria and blacklists, old Hollywood versus new

Hollywood, the Me Too Movement, Oscars so white, the zillions of dollars spent on campaigning

for Oscars, and of course greed and ego.

Schulman has written for the New Yorker since 2006.

Among the people he's written about are Pedro Elmedovar, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Moss, Adam Driver, and Jeremy Strong.

He's also the author of a book about Merrill Streep.

His book Oscar Wars comes out in paperback this week. We recorded our interview shortly before last

year's Oscars when the book was first published. Michael Schulman, welcome to

Fresh Air. Thanks for having me. Yes, I learned a lot of interesting stuff from your book.

So there's different chapters of history that I want to cover with you, but let's start with the

...