This image was lost some time after publication.

Not everyone in Hollywood was pleased with the changes to this year's Oscar telecast, in which producer Gil Gates forced the recipients of some of the ceremony's technical (read: less sexy) awards to receive their statues in the audience—or by herding all nominees onto the stage, where the losers' spontaneous expressions of agony could more easily be captured in a single camera shot. The professional organizations of movie editors and visual effects artists penned letters to Cates expressing their displeasure with the new format:

VES executive director Eric Roth wrote on behalf of his membership: "The decision to delineate between certain groups and branches by presenting awards either on stage or in the audience ended up demeaning certain crafts categories and sending the not-so-subtle message that some areas of filmmaking are more important than others. Anyone who works in our industry knows that this is absolutely untrue." He further went on to write: "We encourage you (Cates) and the Academy to reconsider this procedure for next year's telecast and create a system of presenting the awards that treats all artists fairly."

An Academy spokesperson said they "welcomed the feedback" and stressed that they didn't intend to "diminish the importance of certain categories." Shortly after the editors received their official response, Cates personally responded by faxing them a grainy image of his outstreched middle finger, followed by one marked "PS," and featuring a crude line-drawing of Cates teabagging a man sitting in an editing bay.