And the Emmy-winning film is … ours!

Miracle on 42nd Street, the feature documentary I wrote with Steve Ryfle (Bringing Godzilla Down to Size: The Art of Japanese Special Effects), was named Best Documentary at the 2020 New York Emmy Awards.

Owing to the pandemic, there was no gala ceremony. But it was a thrill for real to see the film nominated, and, indeed, it was an even bigger thrill to hear it named winner via livestream.

The Miracle team includes Oscar-nominated director Alice Elliott (The Collector of Bedford Street) and executive producer Ken Aguado (An Interview with God), and it was the biggest thrill of all to be part of that group.

Miracle on 42nd Street, which premiered on the New York PBS station, WNET, and screened at the United Nations earlier this year, is about Manhattan Plaza, the New York City affordable-housing community for artists that rose from the bleak Hell’s Kitchen of the 1970s. Its story about economic hard times seems especially timely. Hopefully, some of its proposed solutions will seem of the moment, too.

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My (Very) Small Role in Oscar History

So, I had the TCM-produced doc And the Oscar Goes to… on Netflix today when I was surprised to hear…me!

My cameo comes during a clip of George Clooney‘s Oscar-night press conference for his Best Supporting Actor win for Syriana. You hear an unseen reporter address a question to “Mr. Clooney.” And, yes, ladies and gentlemen, that unseen reporter is…me!

I was covering the press room that night for E!, and I called Clooney “Mr. Clooney” because even if I’d been watching him since The Facts of Life it didn’t feel like we were on a George-name basis.

Clooney was bemused by “Mr. Clooney,” made a crack about how an Academy Award confers insta-respect—and a (very) small bit of Oscar history was made.

If you catch me on Netflix, the Clooney clip is at about the 1:30-minute mark. In the above clip, it’s at about the 3-minute mark.