Damien Bona
Damien Bona, co-author of ‘Inside Oscar’ reference book on the Academy Awards, dies at 56
By Helen Kennedy
Damien Bona, who authored several books about Hollywood and was a leading expert on the Academy Awards, died Sunday after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 56.
Bona, who lived in Hell’s Kitchen, was best known as the co-author of “Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards,” considered the definitive standard reference about the Oscars.
When the book first appeared in 1986, critic Vincent Canby called it “a giddy social history of our place and time, full of statistics and the kind of utterly trivial details that, taken together, somehow assume significance, like centuries-old graffiti scratched onto the base of the Sphinx.”
After the 1994 death of his co-author, Mason Wiley, Bona continued to update “Inside Oscar” and published a follow-up volume, “Inside Oscar 2.”
Witty and acerbic, he was the media’s go-to expert on the Academy Awards and their significance, especially during the annual run-up to the ceremony itself.
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