In resigning from the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Bill Mechanic, the former Fox studio chief, has penned a long list of serious problems that he charges the organization has failed to address. "We have failed," he wrote in an April 12 letter to Academy president John Bailey in which he formally resigned. 

Mechanic, who had been one of three representatives of the Academy's executives branch on the 54-person board, emphasized, "I feel I have failed the organization. I feel we have failed the organization." He went on to share his view that the Academy has not addressed a range of issues — from inclusion ("this is the Industry's problem far, far more than it is the Academy's") to the Oscars telecast ("a long and boring show"). He also charges that the still-under-construction Academy Museum is "ridiculously over its initial budget and way past its original opening date," and — in a thinly veiled barb directed at the administration of Academy CEO Dawn Hudson — he argues that the departure "over the past seven years" of a significant number of full-time Academy employees "seems more like a 'purge' to stifle debate."