Why The Oscars are Broken... And How To Fix Them

By all standards by which we measure success, this year’s Academy Awards should be the most anticipated in over a decade. Black Panther, one of the highest grossing movies in history is up for Best Picture, as are Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born, two of the biggest box office hits of the year. What is more, unlike so many years in the past, the Best Picture race is wide open. Roma, the critical darling that has won the lion’s share of the Best Director prizes, should have the edge, but it’s a foreign language movie, and that’s a type of film that has a hard enough time getting Best Picture nominations in the first place. Bohemian Rhapsody won the Best Drama prize from the Golden Globes, but its been a very critically divisive film. Green Book won Best Comedy and triumphed at the Producer Guild. In a huge upset, Black Panther won the Best Ensemble from the SAG awards. The Favorite was the big winner at BAFTA, and A Star is Born is one of the movies that the Oscars love honoring.

So, there’s a very good chance that this Sunday’s Oscars could be the most watched in a decade. But there’s also a very good chance that the ceremony could be a complete disaster.  For the first time in thirty years, the Oscars does not have a host. This is a self-inflicted wound by the Academy for not having a ready replacement when scandal rocked Kevin Hart.

In all candor, though, the Academy has been self-inflicting a lot of wounds right from the start. There was the uproar when they announced in July that they were planning to give an award for Most Popular Film.  When so many people got pissed – mainly because the Academy never defined what ‘popular meant’ and the idea of having to admit that the Oscars didn’t recognize the most popular films – they shelved it less than a week late. Then, just a week ago, they announced that several of their minor awards, including Best Cinematography and Editing, would be given off screen. The technical guilds threw a fit, and the Academy reversed itself again two days later.

All of these problems have come at a time when more and more people are wondering if the Academy Awards is relevant at all. This is nothing new; people have been making arguments about for decades. But at a time when Oscar ratings have been dropping steadily for years, reviews of the telecast have been increasingly hostile, and so much of Hollywood is under fire for charges of sexism within the industry, there are increasing worries within the Academy that the Awards may be becoming a weight around the industry rather than the crown jewel its supposed to be.

I would like to propose a counter-argument. Most of the problems the Oscars has been having are not new. There have complaints that the awards are too long, too dull, and too irrelevant since at least the 1960s, if not longer. And most of the problems that everyone says are hurting the Oscars aren’t even close to being as bad as everyone says they are. As someone who has been a historian of the Oscars privately almost since I was old enough to appreciate films, let’s deal with some of the more prominent arguments against them:

The hosts of the Academy Awards are not entertaining.

There is some truth to that of late. Jon Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock and Jimmy Kimmel are some of the funniest comedians alive, and if they can’t make viewers at home laugh, clearly there’s something wrong. But this is a complaint that has always been register at the Academy, and often with much more relevance.

Bob Hope, who hosted the awards more often then anyone history, was regarded as terminally unhip when the Awards were still given in a banquet hall. Johnny Carson, whose telecasts are now remembered with great fondness by the baby boomers, was horribly maligned the years he did so. And those were the natural entertainers: this is a ceremony that has had Charlton Heston. Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty host, none of whom were natural comedians.

Were any of them as bad as Seth McFarlane or James France? I can’t say with certainty. But I do know that there may be some kind of vacuum around the awards they sucks all the entertainment out of them.

The Oscars are too political.

This is an argument that gets made over and over again by even friends of the Academy. But Hollywood, like every other institution, has a short memory.

In the 1970s, George C. Scott and Marlon Brando refused to accept their Oscars, with Brando famously sending a Native American impersonator to do so.  When a documentary filmmaker accepting an Award for the anti-Vietnam films Hearts and Minds and gave a speech that inspired boos, Frank Sinatra came on stage to admonish the filmmaker. He and Shirley MacLaine nearly came to blows backstage over it. And Vanessa Redgrave famously pissed off everybody when she accepted her award for Julia by giving a pro-Palestinian speech. It says a lot for the decade that when Jane Fonda won both her Oscars, she gave the least political speeches of the group.

So yes, Michael Moore got booed off the stage, and there was a lot of ‘Time’s Up’ last year. But nothing has really changed about political diatribes. What has changes is our society’s reaction to it. Back then, critics actually thought the speeches livened up dull and predictable affairs. Hard to picture it now.

The quality of films gets worse each year.

This is a hard argument to make or win, so I’m going to use history as my guide. In 1975, many critics leading up to their Oscar prediction said: “It wasn’t a bad year for movie, it was a terrible year.” The nominated films were One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, and Jaws.  With the exception of Barry Lyndon, all of these movies are now considered classics, and even that film has been undergoing reevaluation in recent years.

Now, will we in thirty years time view Get Out, Darkest Hour, Three Billboards, and The Shape of Water the same way. I don’t know. They all played well enough to me.

I could write a much longer essay on why people have argued about the films that compete at the Oscars, but the biggest blow Hollywood has done to itself is self-inflicted. If you’re going to flood the multiplexes with bad action movies, unfunny comedies and adaptation of teen dystopia films, and simultaneously released all of the major contenders in two theaters in New York and LA in December, don’t be shocked when people say they haven’t seen a nominated movie this year. You can’t promote box office eleven months of the year and then choose to honor greatness in December. If nothing else, you’ve made damn sure members of the Academy have memories of goldfish. You especially can’t argue that The Dark Knight isn’t an Oscar movie and Benjamin Button is. I’d say you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face, but since this is Hollywood you might view this as a compliment.

So, most of the arguments are not new. Is there a way to fix the problem with the Academy? I’ll deal with that later in the week.

As I said, the Oscar hosts in recent years haven’t done much to liven up the proceedings. Indeed, I can only think of three in recent memory who have made the show entertaining: Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and Hugh Jackman. Crystal has always had the gift of making the clichéd entertaining with his remarkable ability to improvise. Martin has the dry, self-deprecating wit, and as a bonus, when he hosted the show, it usually finished earlier than most of them. And Jackman’s gifts as a song and dance played remarkably well the only he time he did it, and I really wish he’d chosen to return.

I won’t repeat the problems most of the emcees have had over the past decade, but I will make an observation. Other ‘lesser’ award shows have often gone hostless. From 1997 to 2009, the Golden Globes never had a host, and it always managed to be entertaining and often surprising. I don’t know why  they felt the need to hire Ricky Gervais in 2010, as his sole gift of awkward laughter doesn’t fit the need for self-congratulation most award shows require.

And the SAG Awards didn’t bother to have a host for the first two decades of their existence. Now granted, the audience is much smaller and it airs on basic cable, but its always moved efficiently, with charming presenters, and amusing speeches.

So considering all the problems the Academy has had in recent years in finding an entertaining host at all, why haven’t they tried to cut the Gordian Knot and have no host? Six words. Allan Carr, Rob Lowe, and Snow White.

In 1989, Allan Carr, one of the most successful producers took on the job of handling the Academy Awards. Now, the Oscars have had their share of horrible opening numbers over the years, but none of have ever gone down in infamy with Snow White showing up on stage being told to “Follow the Hollywood Stars”. (Why a Disney trademark was being asked to say Dorothy’s most famous lines is a question that really should’ve occurred to Carr before hand. She then began an elaborate song and dance number that really had too many atrocities to count, but the most notorious was when she went into the audience and got Rob Lowe onstage to dance with her. You wouldn’t think a show could go any further downhill from there. You’d be wrong. Maybe the reason the show had no host was because no wanted to go anywhere near this train wreck.

It took Lowe nearly a decade for his career to recover. Carr’s never did. On his obituary in Variety, the headline dealt with how he created the absolute nadir for Academy Awards. Thank God Billy Crystal came along the next year, or the Oscars might’ve died right then.

So, it’s understandable why fans view this host-less Oscars with trepidation. I certainly do. But what could the Oscars to solve its problems that have plagued it for at least twenty years? I have no suggestions about the host. As for other things:

Get rid of the montages.

I can not emphasize this strongly enough. Through all the Debbie Allen dance numbers and ridiculous songs, I find the majority of the montages that I have sat through on the Oscars pointless and find that they add nothing. Put one montage at the beginning honoring all the films that were nominated and keep the ‘IN MEMORIAM’. People already complain that this is the most self-congratulatory night on the air. Spending three minutes building up to a half-hearted applause sequences about the importance of ‘film as universal language’ doesn’t really help your case.

Let the technical winners speak as long as they want.

I don’t expect editors and visual effects people to say anything groundbreaking, but considering this is literally the only night where they get any recognition, I think they’re justified in speaking for a couple of minutes. How to we find the time?

Cut down the remarks leading up to the awards.

Actors are a lot more knowlegable then most people give them credit for being, but how much do Brad and Angelina really know about sound mixing? These moments usually leave them looking foolish, which most people will tell you isn’t that hard. On the other hand…

Bring back Lifetime Achievement Awards.

I realize that this will defeat the purpose of shortening the show, but a lot of these actors, writers and directors have labored in the field for decades getting next to know recognition. I think we can afford to have one per Oscars. Forget the Irving Thalberg and Jean Hersholt Awards – not even the people who get them even know who they were. I would’ve like to have heard James Earl Jones or Steve Martin give a speech at the Oscars. And be honest: so would you.

Whoever the host is, let them have some connection to film

However gifted Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel are on Late Night, and Neil Patrick Harris is on stage, they clearly don’t have the gifts to present at the Oscars. I realize that this methodology led to James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosting (which almost made me yearn for Snow White)  but we somebody who can speak about film with sincerity and admiration without sarcasm. Maybe Anna Kendrick? She’s funny, she’s self-effacing, and she can sing too. All things I admire.

Well, these are just my suggestions. They may not be as inspired as letting Seth McFarlane lead a chorus of ‘We Saw Your Boobs’, but I suggest it just the same. For next year, anyway.