Chicago loses Oscar business

Sun-Times file photo

     I'm not sure how much civic pride Chicago residents ever actually took in the Oscar statuettes being produced locally, but that fact sure was embraced by the media.  Here was a bona fide local angle to one of the biggest stories of the year, the Academy Awards. We might not produce many of the actors and actresses joyfully leaping onto the stage to get their moment in the spotlight, but we sure as hell could make the hunk of metal they were handed when they did win. 

    That changed, the Sun-Times reported Wednesday, because the Academy wants them made of bronze, which our R.S. Owens doesn't do. So now New York media will be traipsing to a factory there, the way I did years ago when I drew Oscar duty, and filed this report:

     Wrap your hands around the most famous product that Chicago's R.S. Owens & Co. manufactures and odds are that, after you register its heft and weight for a moment, you will gaze out at an imaginary audience and begin a speech.
     "They thank their mothers, they thank the academy," said Scott Siegel, president of the company that makes the Oscar statuettes to be given out, amid maximum pageantry, tonight in Los Angeles.
     While the Owens company typically gets a burst of publicity at Academy Award time, the Oscars are only a tiny part of their business.
     As expensive as the 50 24-karat gold over silver over nickel over copper trophies might be (the company doesn't reveal what they cost, or how much precious metal is in them) it wouldn't be enough to keep the 60-year-old manufacturer's 180 employees busy all year in Owens' 82,000-square-foot plant at 5535 N. Lynch.
     That is done by all the other prestigious awards that Owens makes -- the Clios, the Emmys, the MTV Video Music Awards and hundreds of other cast-metal trophies.
     Each trophy has its own particular challenges. The Oscars are multiple-plated, requiring dips in baths of chemicals and washes in sulfuric acid. The Emmys are even more complex, with a sphere of copper rings that must be individually cut and welded together. The MTV Video Music Award -- a lunar astronaut saluting an American flag — has to be cast in four pieces and assembled.
     Owens makes two types of trophies. The first, such as the Oscars or Emmys, are licensed — what the company calls "captive molds." That means Owens can only make as many as the licensing group desires, and no more. It can't start selling Oscars on the side, though there is one in the company showroom, along with a bronze hot dog in a tux and crown, a metal Super Mario and several hundred other statuettes, orbs, pyramids, animals and figurines, some of them famous -- the copies of the Super Bowl Trophy given to team players, for instance -- most of them obscure.
     The rest of the trophies are "stock" — two-handled loving cups and stars of excellence and such. Anyone can call up and order one or 100 or 1,000.
     "Thirty years ago, our business was 95 percent stock, and five percent licensed," Siegel said. "Now it's the other way around. Most stock trophies are plastic and very low end."
     Owens & Company doesn't make the plastic kind. Siegel explained that while business people know the value of receiving a quality trophy, the bulk of stock awards -- school awards, Little League trophies -- are given to kids, by adults who tend to want to cheap out on the prizes.
     "Corporate people still want quality," he said. "Kids want quality, too, but the adults are in charge of expenditure."
     Making a metal trophy from scratch is a lengthy, expensive process. Say a widget company wants to give its salesman of the year a bronze widget on a wooden pedestal. Owens will hand the prototype widget to its master craftsman, Manny Steffan, who will look over the widget and see how difficult it will be to cast in metal.
     "Certain jobs cannot be done," he said. "Sometimes you have to simplify." He might suggest that a stylized widget be used, to cut down on production costs.
     While a simple piece — say a globe — can be cast in a two-piece mold, complex figures need multiple-piece molds that fit together like a puzzle. Steffan once did a bronze ice castle whose mold came apart in 34 sections. (The 13-inch-high, 8-pound Oscar is made from a single mold).
     The company is careful about its estimates, because if it underestimates the amount of work needed, it will lose money on the job. Siegel points to a lovely turn-of-the-century trophy topped by an ear of corn, given by a cereal company to its most productive farmer. The company brought it to Owens to be reproduced, and it didn't realize just how tough the job would be."It took us a year and a half," Siegel said. "We lost our shirts on it."
     Once a price is set, Steffan goes to work. It can take two to four weeks to sculpt a model, and up to three months before the molds are done and the first trophy is made. Molds must fit together with small tolerance for error to keep down the amount of flashing -- spilled metal around the seams that must be laboriously ground off and polished. The Owens plant is filled with workers at grinding wheels or wielding hand files, doing away with flashing.
     Siegel's grandfather was in the pigeon supply business, selling food and accessories to people who kept pigeons as pets. His father worked for him as a teenager.
     "In 1938, my father went downtown to get two trophies for a customer's store," Siegel said. "The trophy company thought he was a dealer, and gave it to him wholesale. He made $ 8 on the transaction, as much as he made in two weeks. So he decided to go into the trophy business."
     Like many children of successful businessmen, Siegel resisted following his father's footsteps. He taught high school for seven years.
     "I didn't want to have the rest of my life scripted for me," Siegel said. But the lure of business proved too great, and upon getting his master's degree at Northwestern he joined Owens.
     Few companies can point to a product that will be as happily received and carefully cherished as a trophy. Siegel walks by rack after rack of John Phillip Sousa medallions -- to be given to high school band members -- Boy Scout emblems and spiked globes to be given out by a cable TV network in India. But Siegel said he doesn't really think about his products being dispersed worldwide.
     "To tell you the truth, I think more about how to produce a good product and how to be efficient," he said.

                                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 23, 1998

Taste test

     Harry Caray stopped drinking in July 1994 after a fall in Miami landed him in the hospital.
     "Hey doc, when can I have another drink?" his widow, Dutchie Caray, remembers him asking. The doctor replied: "When the Cubs win the World Series."
     So from then on, until his death in February 1998, the great Cubs broadcaster had a bottle of Budweiser placed in front of him but would really be sipping Anheuser-Busch's nonalcoholic beer, O'Doul's.
     Harry didn't have a lot of choice. Many bars don't stock NA beer at all, and those that do tend to have a choice of one, so people who drink nonalcoholic beer, for whatever reason, are left hanging.
   
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Double America

Glenn Ligon, "Double America" 2012

     The hostess at Eureka Burger in Claremont, California told us it would be a 90 minute wait, so we trooped back to Ross' dorm, a few blocks away, to watch the Republican presidential debate.
     "Do you think there are people who watch this for the discussion of issues?" said Ross. "As opposed to watching it for entertainment, like we do?"
     I don't know if "entertainment" is the word I'd use. One of these men could be president, and the choices to from bad (Jeb Bush) to worse (Donald Trump) to please-God-kill-us-now-and-spare-us-the-torture (Ted Cruz).
    I suppose seeing them scratch at each other could be entertaining in the sense that horror movies are entertaining. 
     But those aren't real. And this is real. Or realish, anyway. The only comfort I take is that the world these people are describing bears so little resemblance to the world as it actually is. It's as if there are two Americas, and the Republicans see the one that is all dark disaster — "Crippled America," to use the title of Donald Trump's latest book. 
     And another America where, over the past seven years, the economy was guided back from ruin, millions of uninsured people have gotten access to health care, terrorists have been largely kept at bay. That's the America I see, one whose greatest peril are those who would save it by ramping up its greatest embarrassments, torture and religious fundamentalism, intolerance and fear. A topsy-turvy world where Guantanamo Bay represents America at her greatest.
     Speaking of fear. Saturday afternoon, news of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reverberated across the world. Just as terror attacks undermined Ben Carson's campaign, reminding voters that we live in a dangerous world, and sleepwalking neurosurgeons murmuring inanities just won't cut it, so the vacancy in the Supreme Court could mobilize Democratic voters swooning over the let's-change-the-world impossibilities of Bernie Sanders to remember that we dwell in the real world where elections have consequences. 
    Or maybe that's a partisan notion now. Republicans seem eager to negate the idea that elections matter, at least elections where Democrats win. Naif that I am, I actually expected a few days, a few hours, of head-bowed false piety toward the fallen Scalia before the political cat fight began.
    A few minutes was more the case. The corpse was barely cold—it took an hour after the news was confirmed— when Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement:

   “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

     This is in perfect harmony with the GOP view of Obama all along. He is not a person, not an American, not a Christian, but some species of impostor, a fraud steeped in illegitimacy, who should have never been allowed to run, never mind win, whose every act as president is treachery and treason and folly.  Obamacare is a failure, not because millions of Americans now found themselves insured. It's a failure because Obama did it, and it must go. Everything he championed is wrong.
      The GOP position is not as alarming to me as it might be for those of us grounded in the world of fact. Climate change is real whether Republicans recognize it or not. Eleven million undocumented immigrants are here whether the GOP views them as persons or not. Gays don't make worse spouses or parents than anybody else whether Republicans accept it or not.
     And Antonin Scalia died, and must be replaced. Whether Mitch McConnell likes it or not.
     These facts will all manifest themselves with or without Republican permission. The extreme weather we've been seeing will worsen, the coasts will erode. The children of those 11 million are citizens, and they will increasingly resent how their parents have been treated, and flex their political muscles. The genie of accepting gay marriage will never go back in the bottle. And Scalia will be replaced.
    Maybe not by Obama. The Republicans control Congress, and they can stall and thwart the nomination process, no matter how qualified, preferring a deadlocked Supreme Court to one with another Obama nominee. That would be nothing new. They have shown a taste for paralyzing government when they don't get their way, like petulant children knocking all the snacks to the floor when they are refused another.
    But the American people get to watch them in operation. And the American people are not stupid -- well, some of them are not stupid. Somebody elected Ted Cruz to the senate from Texas. Somebody turns out to Donald Trump rallies. But 51 percent of the American people are not stupid.
     Such is my fondest hope, anyway. That is not a fact, but a hunch, a prediction. We will find out whether it is a fact or not come Nov. 8.

Heading home

     Travel is a bit like dying, or rehearsal for it anyway. You bid farewell to life as you know it, your comfortable routines and familiar places, and find yourself conveyed to a world where you do not exist, or didn't up to now, a city of strangers, going about their business blithely ignorant of your existence. 
     Though unlike death, you get to come back, to return to your world, waiting for you. Which is the flip side of travel. Yes, you find new places—Edie and I enjoyed exploring Joshua Tree, investigating Los Angeles, dropping in on our son at Pomona College. But then you get your old life back, buffed to a shine by absence, the old routines given a bit more pizzazz, because you've had a little absence, and the heart has indeed grown fonder. That's also part of travel, a benefit that isn't as romantic or exciting as new discovery, but just as important. Maybe even more important. Because while discovering new places is valuable, re-discovering your real place in the world is vital. Because one day you'll leave and never return, and someone else will take your place. But not yet, and it's a blessing to be reminded of just how good it is to be home.  

California Week #6: Warning! Life carries risks!

     The notion that people in California are crazy, or at least crazier than the rest of the nation, is probably outdated, similar to considering New York dangerous, when Chicago has triple the Big Apple's homicide rate. 
     But old notions linger. I was excited, driving out to Joshua Tree National Park, to pass Mount Shasta, the focus of Chicago's I AM Temple (what, you've never seen the UFO cult's building downtown? 176 West Washington Street; pop on by) which, not to impoverish their beliefs by summary, are convinced there is some kind of secret alien base located within. 
      And you can't go to a place of public accommodation without being hectored by California's safety nazis, in the forms of signs desperately trying to wave you off whatever activity you might be so reckless to consider, whether it is the consumption of seafood in a restaurant, or of alcoholic beverages in the bar, or sit in an area where people might light up a cigarette. 
     Those, I'm used to. But the sign above, at the Azure Hotel in Ontario, California, seemed a new twist.
    Without dwelling on its content, the sign illustrates the innumeracy of warning. Could a person with "active diarrhea" perhaps be prevented from leaping into the pool, to the misfortune of whoever cleans it? Sure, it's possible. Would, for every one of those persons, there be a thousand other healthy individuals who would have their pool-visiting experience diminished, if not ruined entirely? Bet on it.

      Not to mention the diminishment of the entire idea of warnings. A warning should by definition be something rare, pointing out a real, immediate danger — steep cliffs, electrified rails — not conjure up notional harm, such as bursts of incontinence afflicting swimmers mid-pool.
     I believe government has a role in addressing the woes of society; that said, it is not responsible for eliminating them all, and shouldn't try. A warning on a cigarette pack is a good thing, to remind die-hard addicts of the price they may pay. And the First Lady trying to encourage kids to get moving and be less fat was a worthwhile use of her time. But we don't want a government compelling the posting of nauseating placards to warn off those with the runs. It opens the door for all sorts of esoteric concerns, "Leprous children should not enter the ball pit." Life is full of risks, and living will kill us all, someday, every one of us. Is it asking too much that we are allowed to enjoy ourselves, a little, before that sad day arrives?

California Week #5: Even noble Homer dozed.

     Family Weekend at Pomona College. Loooong day. A very interesting hour conversation—I was in the audience, not conversing—with Michael J. Fox, whose daughter Skyler goes to school here. He was honest, funny, and had a positive message about coping with difficulties. The audience stood and applauded at the end.
     But I'm too beat to relay it any better than that. Or to do a post at all, really. 
     Except for this, of course, which I suppose counts as a post, of sorts, albeit not a very long or a very good one.  
    In my defense, as Horace writes, in his Ars Poetica: "Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus"— "Every once in a while even the good Homer nods off."  A line often used to forgive scribblers their lapses, though it has a wonderful anachronism built in. Back then, poets were singers, literally, sitting with a lyre in the corner of some banquet room, waiting for the nod to begin their tales of brave Ulysses and beautiful Helen. As the evening wore on and the wine flowed, even the best of them, Homer, might be caught snoring against a pillar (especially Homer. There's a quote from antiquity, along the lines of, "You can tell, from the Iliad, what a lover of wine Homer was," though I can't recall its author).

    Twill do for today. If you ever get to Santa Barbara, and can manage it, I'd recommend the Santa Barbara Biltmore, pictured above.  It's nice.

California Week #4: Blundering into The Broad

Balloon Dog (Blue)  by Jeff Koons

                                      Los Angeles Public Library

Untitled, by Jasper Johns

     There was no hope. The No. 1 sight on our Los Angeles to-do list, The Broad, the hot contemporary art museum that opened last September to raves, is much too hot for the likes of Midwestern mice like us. My wife tried to get tickets a month in advance: all sold out. My son advised us to do what his college pals do: get in line when it opened—maybe we'd only wait for an hour or two. Which we might have done, but by the time we got to LA it was mid-afternoon.
     Instead we wandered downtown, visited the Deco lobby of the Fine Arts Building and the sphinxes at the Los Angeles Public Library, another 1920s spectacle. There's a cool museum of express delivery and banking in the Wells Fargo Building, and we looked at that.
     "In Chicago, all they have is a stage coach in the lobby," I said. The most interesting tidbit I learned is that the famous Pony Express, racing mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to California, debuted in 1860 and was made obsolete by the intercontinental telegraph by 1861. A reminder that technology hurtling past our business models is nothing new.
     Fun. As for The Broad, well, we'd have to save that for another time, when the popularity cooled enough so that the uncool people could stamp our cowflop-covered boots at the door, shake the hay from our hair, and squeeze inside for a gander.
     Around 5 p.m. we found ourselves down the street from The Broad, an astounding concrete honeycomb designed by architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfrowhich. Out front was an ad hoc network of rails and time placards, like some kind of line control system from Disney World.
     Ever the optimists, we figured,, heck, couldn't hurt to ask. So we get chuckled at by some hip security guard? The place was open until 8 p.m., and yes, we could go in, right now. Here's a ticket. Have fun. They were niceness itself.
     "I didn't expect it to be that easy," I murmured to the guard, who smiled.
     It's free to get in
     Oh. My. God. Ed Ruscha. Jeff Koons. Jasper Johns. Robert Rauschenberg. Cy Twonbly. A jaw-dropping collection of names and images. My brother-in-law regaled us with the story about how this couple, Eli and Edythe Broad, teased the various museums around LA with their fabulous art collection—some 2,000 works and growing by an artwork a week—then told them all to go fuck themselves and opened their own museum, right next door to Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.
     I'm not an enormous fan of modern art—I'm happier in the French Impressionist wing of the Art Institute. But The Broad's collection is really first rate, including the best of Jeff Koons' whimsical stainless steel sculptures, such as the enormous Balloon Dog (Blue). It certainly puts Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art to shame. And having given up hope and decided we wouldn't even bother trying to get in, it was a wonder to find ourselves somehow miraculously inside. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.