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When I reached journalist Matt Bellany last week, it was in the final 24 hours of an intensely fought campaign season.
Different factions, led by specialized campaign strategists, had just spent the better part of eight months pushing their candidates through a grueling gauntlet of stump speeches, fancy galas, boater outreach events, many of which Matt had himself attended.
Do you ever think of yourself as a kind of campaign reporter?
Oh, all the time.
I am a campaign reporter for the entertainment industry.
Matt used to be the editor of the Hollywood Reporter.
These days he hosts a podcast called the Town.
And yes, the campaigns that we're talking about today.
These are the glitzy, glossy campaigns put on by Hollywood movie studios every year in hopes of winning big at the Academy Awards.
And these campaigns come to a head in the weeks leading up to the ceremony.
That's where you start to see people doing desperate things like taking off all their clothes and floating in a freezing river, like Bradley Cooper did for the New York Times magazine.
Or you see Ryan Gosling climbing the Warner Brothers water tower to take a photo for a trade magazine.
Or you see the border collie from the movie Anatomy of a fall get treated like a celebrity and carted around town and brought to charm voters.
That is a campaign strategy.
Matt says that this time of year, the signs of this massive campaign machinery are all around us.
Like maybe you saw best actress nominee Emma Stone hosting SNL.
Ladies and gentlemen, Emma Stone.