I'm not the kind to kiss and tell, but I've been seen with Oscar

If the hardest thing you ever do is watch your leadin' lady kiss some other guy while you're bandagin' your knee, there's new hope for you. Hollywood's unknown stuntmen are closing in on getting their own Academy Awards category. According to The New York Times (reg. req.), it's been a bone-cracking, death-defying leap to recognition:

[The] road to the Oscars is long and arduous. Stuntmen, led by the industry veteran Jack Gill, have been lobbying the motion picture academy for a category since 1990. They have been backed by luminaries (and academy members) like the directors Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and the actors Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, who in the early 9o's all signed a petition in favor of the move.

But even with such support, "it takes a long time," said John Pavlik, a spokesman for the academy. He added: "Stunt groups have asked for categories in the past. The board of governors has looked at it in the past, and is reluctant to add categories."

Mr. Pavlik said the board would look at the request again, though not until after this year's Oscar ceremony on Feb. 27.

The most recent new Oscar category is best animated feature, added in 2002.

This should be a no-brainer, and while the move (which might help the Oscars butch up a little bit) is long overdue, it also falls into the now-more-than-ever category. A couple years ago I did an article about stuntmen, and while I forget the figures, the upshot was that in this age of CG and and digital everything, there are actually more people doing more stunts in more spectacular ways than ever before—all rendered even more stupendaculariffic by the flexibility digital movie technology allows. Also, stunts are among the more diverse employers in movies, offering opportunities for women, minorities, the handicapped, even the vertically challenged. (My favorite part of the Jaws featurette was finding out that Richard Dreyfuss' shark-cage scene was done with an average-sized shark and a little person in the cage.)

The problem is that, as with so much in the age of plenitude, we've been spoiled by the rapid progress. If, say, The Italian Job remake had come out in 1983 instead of 2003, people would have been screaming that it had the greatest car chase in the history of the universe. As it happened I don't even remember anybody mentioning that the movie had a car chase at all. Every year the spectaculars are twice as eye-popping as the year before. Which is all the more reason the lonely stuntfolks deserve to know that we like them, we really like them!