Time & Perspective Quote by Mercedes McCambridge

Mercedes McCambridge’s line lands like a punchline with a bruise underneath: the joke about “everybody but the janitor” doesn’t just mock Hollywood excess, it exposes a blind spot in how prestige gets assigned. The humor is classic insider gallows wit, but the sting comes from the last sentence, where she drops the mask and tells you exactly who got erased.

The context matters. McCambridge wasn’t just an actress on The Exorcist; she engineered one of its most indelible elements: the demon voice. That work sat in an uncanny valley between acting, sound design, and special effects, a hybrid labor the Oscars historically struggle to name, much less honor. Her gripe isn’t petty; it’s structural. Awards culture likes clean categories because they create clean stories, and clean stories create marketable myths. A performance you can’t easily show at a luncheon clip reel becomes harder to credit, easier to fold into the film’s “overall achievement,” easier to let the brand swallow the craftsperson.

The subtext is also gendered and generational. McCambridge was a tough, old-school pro whose skill lived in technique, not celebrity. She’s pointing out how the industry celebrates faces, speeches, and campaign-friendly authorship while sidelining the invisible work that actually haunts audiences. The line is funny because it’s true; it’s sharp because it’s personal; it’s memorable because it indicts a system without sounding like a manifesto.