And the Oscar for "Most Boring Ceremony Ever" Goes to... 2012!

            In the post-Oscaryptic 2012, our own WordMaster has boldly volunteered to sift through the rubble and pick at the meaningful bits. 

             I am writing about the Oscars two weeks after they happened. That’s how little I care. 

            The 84^th annual Academy Awards were an opulent affair, complete with glamorous movie stars, elaborate dresses, dignified speeches, false modesty and strained smiles – basically, what we’ve come to expect from awards shows. And sure, there a couple mildly amusing quips (like… well, I get back to you on that) and some nice speeches (who knew the wittiest, most eloquent one would come from the oldest actor ever to win an Oscar?), but by the morning after, I barely remembered that the damn thing even happened. And let’s be honest, when the buzziest moment of the ceremony is Angelina Jolie’s leg, you know it was a boring fucking ceremony. The only thing that made me even the least bit excited was when Natalie Portman announced that Jean Dujardin won Best Lead; as much as I love George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Dujardin’s endless charm and exuberance felt like a breath of fresh air this awards season, when most of the nominees seemed about as thrilled as the cast of the 8^th season of The Office.

            At this point, most of you are probably saying, so what? Haven’t we all accepted the fact that the Oscars are nothing more than a laborious, ludicrously expensive excuse for self-congratulatory celebrities to pat each other on the back? Aren’t award shows kind of stupid anyway? Well, yes. But the thing is, I’ve been watching the Oscars ever since I can remember, and I usually look forward to them the way that most people look forward to the Super Bowl or Christmas. The Oscars are supposed to be a night of revelry, of exhilaration, joy, suspense, hysteria, triumph and merciless judgment – the ultimate guilty pleasure. This year, though, they felt more like a chore than a celebration. For all their complaints about the dwindling viewership and their supposed desire to revive the glory days of the Titanic era, the Oscar producers and host Billy Crystal didn’t seem particularly interested in putting on a good show. It was more than a little pathetic watching them scramble for ways to make the Oscars relevant again and speculating about why last year’s ceremony, emceed by the ill-matched duo of Anne Hathaway and James Franco, crashed and burned so spectacularly. Their judgment was as accurate as that of a drunk driver. The entire thing, from the inexplicable Cirque du Solei performance to the hollow montages about how much films mean to people who make films for a living (yeah, we get it, seeing movies is like dreaming in the middle of the day; we already watched Hugo) and their refusal to acknowledge that Harry Potter – a franchise that defined the childhood of a generation – even existed, only proved how woefully out-of-touch the show-runners were.

           So rather than watch Hollywood bigwigs embarrass themselves further by trying and failing to figure out how to do their job, I decided to do the work for them.  Without further ado, here are a few suggestions for how to make us give a shit about the Oscars again:

1. Get rid of the precursors. Even before it got nominated, everyone knew that The Artist had won Best Picture. After the National Board of Review, Golden Globes, SAGs, PGAs, DGAs, BAFTAs and a fuck-zillion critics’ awards (for God’s sake, even Phoenix – yes, that Phoenix – has its own awards) trudge by, serving no ostensible purpose other than to drain every last ounce of excitement from the Oscar race, it’s hard to care what the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences has to say.  9.9999 times out of ten, their list looks more or less indistinguishable from everyone else’s anyway. Sure, until the last minute, Best Actress seemed like a toss-up between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis, and it was perfectly conceivable that Clooney could beat Dujardin for Best Actor, but what’s the point of having five nominees (or ten, in the case of Best Picture) if only two of them are legitimate contenders? This year would have been infinitely more exciting if we had the illusion that Drive or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Harry Potter and the Etcetera had a shot at Best Picture nominations and Hugo was still a genuine threat to win it all by the time the ceremony rolled by. Also, if I hear one more person complain that The Artist didn’t deserve to win Best Picture for no reason other than because we all knew it would happen, I swear I will sock them. It was a good movie, goddamn it, and if it wasn’t for the precursors, it would have been an underdog.

2. Ban Oscar campaigning. By now, it’s an accepted fact in the movie industry that Oscar nominees are chosen less because of their actual quality than because of luck, timing, media attention and studio politics. Given that most Academy members don’t have time to watch all the contenders, it’s inevitable that external factors would play a role in their voting decisions, and I have nothing against studios trying to get attention for their contenders using For Your Consideration ads and marketing campaigns, but when producers are hosting parties or handing out gifts (read: bribes) to buy votes, it’s downright despicable. If it wasn’t for campaigning, I can pretty much guarantee that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Hollow wouldn’t be an Oscar nominee, and Saving Private Ryan would have clobbered Shakespeare in Love back in 1999. The Oscars should be about awarding the best movies of the year, not about which studio is willing to spend the most money for the privilege of being able to slap the words “Oscar nominee” or “Oscar winner” on the DVD. It’s about time we remembered that.

3. At least pretend you care more about the actual awards than TV ratings. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, producer Brian Grazer revealed his “ambitious” goal for this year’s show: “Hey, a two-hour show has never happened before. That's going to be our objective!” He was exaggerating of course (the likelihood of the Oscars lasting less than three hours is less than that of the A’s winning the 2012 World Series), but this mentality is precisely what is wrong with the Oscars nowadays. Here’s a novel idea: instead of obsessing over the almost inevitable possibility that the telecast will run overtime, why not focus on actually making it entertaining? If the show was fun to watch, no one would give a damn if it was four hours long. Recently, the Oscars seem less like a prestigious award ceremony than a sloppy variety show. Instead of wondering how to best honor the year’s movies, the show-runners perpetually fret over how to raise the TV ratings a smidgen of a percentage point higher than last year and how to pander to young people in the most condescending and ignorant way possible. For their information, Anne Hathaway and James Franco didn’t fail because they’re young; they failed because they were unprepared, there was literally no reason why they should be paired together, and their script sounded like it was written by a 70 year old impersonating his idea of a 13 year old. Teenagers aren’t aliens. We can appreciate wit, class and intelligent humor just like everyone else. So here’s my advice if you want to attract younger viewers: ditch the texting jokes because those stopped being funny before texting even became a thing, and don’t act like anyone over the age of twelve gives a shit about Justin Bieber.

4. Be creative. AVClub’s Tasha Robinson hit the nail on the head when she astutely observed that “The 2012 Oscars struck me as one of the most standard examples of the ceremony I’ve seen in many years, almost like it was struck from a template—it felt to me a bit like a parody of itself.” As far as I remember, the Oscars didn’t include anything that we haven’t seen before: there was the host-reenacting-the-nominees skit, the opening musical number, the monologue, the needless montages, the passing-of-the-torch from last year’s acting winners to this year’s (to be fair, though, Natalie Portman and Colin Firth pulled it off with aplomb) and so on. The producers have millions of dollars, over three hours of screen time and dozens of creative minds at their disposal, so why do they insist on doing the same things every year? Instead of throwing together twenty minutes of montages paying tribute to scenes in which people wear glasses and wake up, why not use that time to let the Best Original Song and Score nominees perform or show clips from the nominated shorts? Or have musical guests like the Grammys do? I know the Oscars are about movies, but I, for one, would much rather see Adele sing than watch a painfully unfunny clip about the hilarity of focus groups from the 1930s. Also, would it kill someone to let the nominees themselves participate? The show is supposedly about them, yet they barely seem to exist for most of it. Let the nominees have fun – and besides, what’s the point of having two of the biggest movie stars in the world at your ceremony if we never actually see them?

Or you could just let the Muppets fucking present.

5. Organize presenters in pairs that actually make sense. I still cringe when I remember Cameron Diaz and Mark Wahlberg presenting together at the Golden Globes. Awkward, unfunny and just plain grating, their shared speech remains the worst I’ve ever seen at any awards ceremony (I’m sure there are others, but my subconscious has probably suppressed them to prevent excessive trauma). The thing is, they could have been halfway decent if 1) they had a semi-workable script to read from and 2) they had a hint of discernible chemistry with each other. How hard can it be for award show producers to arrange the presenters in ways that make sense instead of flinging together two random strangers with no connection to each other whatsoever? What would I have given to see Wahlberg and, say, Christian Bale present an award together? More like, what wouldn’t I have given? Another thing: let the presenters either write their own material or just all-out improvise. There is little more excruciating than watching a professional actor, whose job it is to memorize lines, struggle to read a teleprompter properly. What’s more, the majority of the presenters at this year’s awards put as much emotion into their speeches as zombies. You’re at the goddamn Oscars; why do you sound like a high school student reciting Shakespeare? Let the actors do what they do best – act. And for what it’s worth, as shown by The King’s Speech scribe David Seidler’s sharp, endearing acceptance speech last year (not to mention anything Aaron Sorkin has ever said), writers can be some of the wittiest and most captivating people out there. Just saying…

6. Get rid of long, rambling thank-you speeches. Memo to Oscar winners: no one cares who your agent or publicist is. And is it really that inconvenient to just thank them in person? Without the ability to spend five minutes expressing their gratitude to everyone and their college roommate, Oscar winners would actually have to (gasp) give interesting speeches. Be daring, be innovative, be different, and above all, don’t be afraid to show some actual glee. This is your moment in the sun; who cares if you step onto the podium and declare yourself the king of the world?

7. Don’t televise sound mixing and sound editing. I appreciate that sound mixers and sound editors work as hard as anybody and that their job is important, but to be honest, most normal people can’t even distinguish between the two. If the producers really wanted to cut down on the running time, it would probably be best if they moved Sound Editing/Mixing to the non-televised Scientific and Technical Awards. Besides, the producers evidently had no problem with cutting out the Governor’s Awards.

Because apparently, we would rather see this than honor Hollywood greats.

8. Eliminate all the superfluous rules in the music categories. There is a reason why many people dislike Best Original Song and Score: more often than not, the nominees (especially for the first category) are terrible. While this is partly due to the fact that Oscar voters seem to have shitty taste in music (Really? You nominate not just one but TWO songs from The Princess and the Frog and ignore “All is Love” from Where the Wild Things Are?), it’s also because sometimes, the best contenders are simply ineligible for the award because they weren’t the first song played during the closing credits or they were written by more than one person. The whole thing seems rather arbitrary anyway: why could Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross be nominated for The Social Network while Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard deemed ineligible for their work on The Dark Knight? Regardless, how amazing would it have been to see this performed live during the Oscar ceremony (assuming, of course, they didn’t cut it in favor of a montage dedicated to people in movies eating cheeseburgers or some other bullshit)?

9. Stop playing it safe. Here’s an idea: what if the nominees were allowed to drink alcohol or curse as freely as they wanted? Yeah, yeah, I know the Oscars are supposed to be classy and blah blah blah, but frankly, if by “classy”, they mean completely predictable and bland, I’d take trashy any day.  God knows we could use some spontaneity once in a while. Don’t be afraid to take risks. Heaven forbid something mildly controversial happens and people actually talk about the Oscars for once. Stop taking yourselves so seriously, let loose and have fun. We all know that the Oscars are escapist fluff masquerading as prestige, so why keep pretending?

10. Nominate good movies. As much as I hate it when people treat the Academy as though it was a hive mind of some kind, this has to be said. More and more, it feels as though Oscar voters vote for what they think is supposed to be nominated (i.e. serious-minded dramas with star-studded casts and well-respected directors) rather than what they actually think should be nominated. It would be nice to think that a full-on comedy like The 40 Year Old Virgin or a lighthearted science fiction blockbuster like J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek had a chance in hell of getting nominated for Best Picture; I’m pretty sure that everyone can agree that Drive (as well as countless other movies like Shame, Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, The Muppets, etc.) deserved that nomination more than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. On the flip side, though, the Oscars should not be a popularity contest. To the people that constantly whine about the Academy not rewarding movies that “people actually see”, I say this: go fucking see them. It’s not the Oscars’ fault that the public would apparently rather see Twilight: Breaking Dawn than a movie that is actually romantic and entertaining like The Artist. The Hurt Locker (by the way, one of only three non-drama Best Picture winners in the past decade) should not hold the dubious honor of being the lowest-grossing BP in history. In general, everyone should just keep an open mind. Who knows? You just might fall in love with something unexpected – and isn’t that why we watch movies in the first place?