Damien Bona

Damien Conrad Bona (March 18, 1955 – January 29, 2012) was an American film historian, writer, film critic and journalist. Bona co-authored the 1986 reference book, "Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards," a definitive history of the Academy Awards with Mason Wiley, a former classmate at Columbia University.^[1][2] In 1982, Bona quit his job as a Manhattan lawyer and moved to Los Angeles, where he and Wiley embarked on extensive research to write a reference guide to Oscar history from the first ceremony in 1929.^[1] Much of the research was conducted at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Beverly Hills, California.^[1] The two missed their original publication deadline of November 1982.^[1] They submitted the final copy two years later with updates on the 1985 Academy Awards.^[1] Co-author Wiley died of Aids in 1994.^[1] Bona was the sole author of the book's sequel, "Inside Oscar 2," which was released in 2002 and covered the Academy Awards from 1995 through 2000.^[1]

Bona was born March 18, 1955 during a heavy snow storm in Sharon, Connecticut, and raised in New Milford.^[2] He graduated from the Portsmouth Abbey School in 1973. He earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1977 from Columbia University,^[3] where he worked as a film critic for the university newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator.^[1][2] He earned a law degree from the New York University School of Law in 1980.^[1] He worked as a lawyer in Manhattan for two years before resigning and temporarily moving to Los Angeles where he and Mason Wiley began researching their book on the Academy Awards.^[1] After their research in Los Angeles, both Bona and Wiley moved back to New York City.

Bona is the author of two other books, "Opening Shots: The Unusual, Unexpected, Potentially Career Threatening First Roles That Launched the Careers of 70 Hollywood Stars" (1994) and "Starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn: Hollywood's All-Time Worst Casting Blunders" (1996).^[1]

After suffering sudden cardiac arrest on January 14, 2012, Bona died from its complications in Manhattan on January 29, 2012, at the age of 56.^[2]