Time & Perspective Quote by William Peter Blatty

Blatty turns Oscar season into a punchline about how culture actually gets consumed: not in temples of art, but in a pile of “For Your Consideration” cassettes shoved into your mailbox. The line lands because it’s both confession and indictment. He’s admitting a mildly embarrassing truth for a writer of stature: his movie-watching habits are dictated less by curiosity than by the industry’s awards calendar. At the same time, he’s skewering the machinery that decides what’s worth seeing. If “every movie that’s made” suddenly appears when it “thinks it has some kind of chance,” then prestige isn’t discovered; it’s campaigned into existence.

The cassette detail dates the remark to a specific era of Hollywood lobbying, when screeners were literal objects and access was controlled by guilds, studios, and the mail. That physicality matters: the industry’s self-regard arrives as shrink-wrapped homework. Blatty’s dry timing - “that’s when I watch my movies” - suggests a man who knows the system is absurd yet still operates inside it, because everyone does. His subtext is less “I’m lazy” than “the conversation is pre-curated.” Oscar season doesn’t just reward films; it funnels attention, compresses choice, and tells even an established writer what’s “important” this year.

Coming from the author of The Exorcist, a figure who watched genre work fight for legitimacy, the barb has an extra edge: the gatekeepers aren’t neutral judges. They’re marketers in robes, and the nomination race is the sermon.