This Sunday marks yet another Academy Awards night in Hollywood.
Rather than post here all my fancy predictions about who will win and so on, I thought I would give my own impressions about the awards show and what I usually think of Oscar night.
To be perfectly honest with you, I have mixed feelings about the Oscar show. Yes, I like movies, and normally I prefer watching the Oscars to watching any other award show on TV, but something about the Oscar show always manages to leave me cold.
On the one hand, there's always just too much glitz and glamour about the thing - I'm just not into the latest fashions or any of that, so the whole pre-show is usually a washout for me. As well, it seems the producers insist on putting in some cringe-inducing musical number into the show, which always leads to a mad rush to change the television channel in my household.
Or maybe the problem is the legendarily uptight audiences in the hall. They turn what ought to be a fun and exciting evening into a tightrope act for the comedians who normally host the show. David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock - you name it, they've all experienced it at some point. What would happen is they would go out on the Academy Awards stage to tell the same kind of funny jokes that normally get big laughs before studio audiences on late night TV. But on the Oscar stage before a large audience of uptight movie folk, the same jokes would fall flat. Imagine the sounds of crickets and chirping birds coming from the audience instead of laughs. You get the idea.
Just recently at the Golden Globes, emcee Ricky Gervais got into a heap of trouble in Hollywood for his hosting efforts, which included telling politically incorrect, in-your-face jokes about just about all the big celebrities in Hollywood. Plenty of higher-up people in Hollywood were utterly offended and thought Gervais should never host an award show ever again! But many viewers at home loved seeing Gervais cut the celebrities down a notch. It was a lot of fun, and that's what a good awards show is supposed to be. Too bad movie industry folks are never in a fun mood on awards night.
No doubt about it, hosting any awards show connected to the motion picture industry is the toughest assignment in comedy. Heck, it's easier for a stand-up comedian to emcee a Presidential state dinner. At least political people have a sense of humor.
I actually thought the comedians who had hosted the Oscar show in the past weren't all that bad, but obviously mine is a total minority opinion on the subject because the Academy has since bent to all the pressure and gotten rid of the funny hosts. Instead of a comedian, this year we will enjoy the hosting efforts of James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Based on those choices, I fully expect a larger-than-usual number of musical acts in this year's show.
From what we hear, they picked these hosts because they are young, and they want to get a younger audience tuning in. I understand they have revamped the show and got rid of a bunch of boring segments that had dragged down previous years' shows. I sure hope that's the case.
As you can tell, my enthusiasm for the Oscars show itself is muted, even though I watch it every year. But at least I still watch the show. Many guys don't even bother, which is odd because lots of guys are big movie nuts. You'd think an award show like the Oscars could be more appealing to male movie fans.
Unfortunately, the kind of movies guys like -- spy movies, science fiction, action movies with plenty of explosions and car chases and the like -- don't usually cut it at the Academy Awards. (Perfect example: Christopher Nolan is snubbed for Best Director for Inception.) Also, good luck seeing slasher horror movies get a mention on Oscar night (although they usually don't deserve nominations anyway). Instead, Oscar voters prefer more sober flicks focusing on English royalty, Internet geeks and the like.
I think I share the opinion of most guys that the animation categories and the technical awards are the ones that we most care about. Those awards aren't about glitz or glamour or high fashion - they instead focus on the real nuts-and-bolts grunt work by the rank-and-file of the movie industry to create great visuals on-screen.
These workers are the real unsung heroes of the movie industry. A lot of skill and know-how is involved with these technical categories, and generally the flicks that are nominated in these categories are our kind of movies. Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The Dark Knight. Avatar.
Unfortunately, once the animation and the "Arnold Schwarzenegger" categories are over and done with (ie. Best Visual Effects, etc.), that's about it for guys' interest in the show, as it moves on to the other duller awards (documentary, foreign-language film, best song, zzzzz).
Let's face it, guys would rather watch NASCAR than this. At least NASCAR has car wrecks. In fact, in recent years NASCAR ran a Sprint Cup race at the nearby California Speedway in direct competition with the Oscar show. That was good for me because it allowed me to switch the channel to auto racing during the duller portions of the awards telecast.
It is a night like Oscar night when you truly find out who the "Red State" and the "Blue State" people really are. The "Blue State" people will be excited about whether The King's Speech or The Social Network will win. But "Red State" people will be more excited about the fortunes of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart or Dale Earnhardt, Jr.!
This year the Academy Awards will not be directly up against NASCAR, as their race will be in Phoenix earlier in the afternoon. That'll allow the race fans to tune in to the Oscars and see if anyone says something political on the show. Usually that's good for raising a few eyebrows.
Now, a word about one particular segment of the Academy Awards telecast that always raises eyebrows and ends up offending people. I am talking, of course, about what I call the "Usual List of Dead People."
That's where they run a reel featuring clips of all these big-time Hollywood actors, directors, executives and other folks who have passed away in the previous year. They show all their names on the screen, and while the reel plays there is melancholy music sung live by some name artist in the background. That's all well and good, but there's a problem.
It seems like every single year the Academy messes this list up! They always omit somebody important. There was the one year when they forgot to mention Farrah Fawcett. I guess the Academy figured she mainly did TV work and that the Academy was about movies, not TV. But Farrah was in a lot of theatrical movies, too! Sunburn, Saturn 3, The Cannonball Run -- admittedly a lot of junk, but still, they were movies.
There are also years when they mix people up and put up a wrong picture of one of the people who died. It never fails. The Academy always messes this segment up, and yet they can't get rid of it! If they get rid of it, they'll be seen as being disrespectful of everyone who passed away. So each year they are stuck doing this memorial segment, and every year someone important gets forgotten, and every year people get mad over it. I notice Nikki Finke over at Deadline Hollywood always does a running count of the deceased people who got snubbed by the Academy during the "In Memoriam" reel, and she always raises heck about it.
The worst part is that the Academy is snubbing people who DIED. Isn't this awful? It's bad enough to get snubbed by the Academy during Oscar nominations, but it just doesn't get much worse than getting snubbed by the "In Memoriam" segment of the Oscar show. At least the people who are snubbed aren't around to experience this final humiliation from the Academy. Unfortunately, their grieving relatives are, which makes it even worse. This is a no-win situation for the awards show producers, to say the least.
They are bound to get in trouble again because, ahem, a whole lot of important people in Hollywood died last year. All I have to say is that if they run the "memorial" reel this year and they forget to mention Tony Curtis, Blake Edwards or Leslie Nielsen, not to mention Jill Clayburgh, the Academy won't look very smart at all. Oh, and don't forget Gary Coleman.
That's my comments on the Oscars. I plan to sit there on Sunday night with my popcorn in front of the tube and watch the whole over-long show, as I usually do.
