Oscars: Clippings files


The whole 'Herrick team clip for these files. Tree-made magazines come in and the staff divvy up the titles and diligently pluck alluvial nuggets of industry gold from their pages.
Linda gets first dibs- and clips Vogue and Vanity fair.
Everyone is assigned their publications, from Variety to the NY times. There are about a dozen staff clipping these titles.
A lack of proper indexing on many of these publications make the Herrick clipping files uniquely valuable.
They probably have a file on any film you could imagine, boasting 300-plus 5-drawer cabinets.
These cabinets no longer contain the bulky photos and pressbooks that were once included.
I love how these files instilled the sense that the Margaret Herrick team are/have forever been diligently trawling the ocean of film news, gossip, and pre electronic non-indexed twitter. Scouring the pre-Twitter twitter to ensure their files were complete.
Snipped into folders are the birth pangs and growing pains of projects of commerce and passion.
What a fantastic, institutionalised legitimisation of gossip! Truth or un-, if it was reported, it belongs in these encyclopaedic files.