How to Fix the Oscars

It’s Oscar season! The drama! The glamor! The fashions! The Academy trying to desperately reclaim audience share with idiot stunts!

The only thing more popular on Film Twitter than arguing about the nominees is complaining about how badly the Academy is botching the Oscars telecast. And there is a lot of complaining about the telecast. Ratings for the live awards show have been declining for years, ever since the all-time high for Titanic’s big year in 1998 and bottoming out at a record low for last year’s awards that were severely impacted by the pandemic. There have been a lot of attempts to chase those ratings, and this year the Academy has doubled down on the wacky factor. They shuttled eight of the “minor” awards off the air, where they’ll be pre-recorded and the winners announced at various points in the evening. This caused outrage among editors, musicians, makers of short films, and makeup artists. They didn’t invite the star of a picture nominated for seven academy awards (at least not until Twitter raised holy hell about it) but they found room to bring Tony Hawk, Shaun White and DJ KHALED! in to present awards and chase that young. male viewer!

DJ MOVIES!!

I should say right off the top that I am an Oscars junkie. I’ve been a film buff since I was 13, and I used the list of Best Pictures as a guide for me at the video store to learn about movies. And as soon as I started watching Best Pictures, I learned just how middlebrow Academy tastes were and how wrong they get it a lot of the time. But credit where it’s due, the Academy has made a major push to get its membership less white than that town in The Harder They Fall. And they do manage to get it right every so often, sometimes a few decades late.  Heck, I used to live blog the Oscars back on my old blog, ages ago! But even while the nominated films as a whole have gotten stronger and more varied, the broadcast continues to get worse.

So in the spirit of the season, I am offering my suggestions to improve the broadcast. Understand that I come here to trash the Academy out of love. You are ruining something I enjoy and I would very much like you to stop. 

NO MORE “COMEDY”

Please end the endless comedy bits. Please. I’m begging you. I don’t need to see Jimmy Kimmel drag a busload of unsuspecting tourists into the theatre. I don’t need Ellen to take a big selfie. The last comedy segment that I remember laughing at was when the Waiting for Guffman cast did a focus testing group for The Wizard of Oz and that was over a decade ago. 

There was so much consternation the last couple years when they couldn’t find a host. You know what? It’s fine! We don’t need Bruce Vilanch to cough up some bad jokes for a dumb monologue. Start the show with a musical montage of the Best Song or Score nominees. 

So, please, just limit it to a couple bad dad jokes here and there. Throw it to the pretty people in fancy gowns and give out the awards. And speaking of fancy gowns…

DRESS FOR SUCCESS!

It’s a cliche that non sports fans watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Likewise, a good portion of the audience is tuning in to the Oscars to see pretty people in high fashion gowns. The problem is, things have gotten so boring lately.

Quick, off the top of your head, what’s the most memorable gown you can think of? Is it Cher, in her black, sparkly, Bob Mackie bikini and headress when she won for Moonstruck? Is it Bjork, in her swan dress, laying an egg purse on the Red Carpet? Or Matt Stone aping J-Lo when the South Park guys got a nomination for Best Song? 

They understood the assignment. Is that what the hip people say now?

Those are all at least 20 years old. In recent years, it’s been a succession of mermaid dresses. Maybe someone gets wild and wears a long train. Whee. People are too afraid of getting mocked by the Fashion Police on E! or on Twitter that they play it safe and conservative (i.e. booooooring) 

C’mon people, take a few chances. So what if the ghost of Joan Rivers makes fun of you? I can’t tell you what one person wore last year, but I absolutely remember the swan dress 21 years later. Give them something to talk about! As for talking…

LET THEM SPEAK!

When I was a kid, it was a hack joke that the acceptance speeches were too long. (I think Irene Cara brought up a phone book when she won Best Song for Flashdance. At least it felt like it.) Now it’s swung back in the other direction, with winners getting played off by the orchestra to (literally) the theme from Jaws.  

And sure, you can get very trite speeches by people thanking their director and their agent. But you also get some wonderful, tender moments, like Jamie Foxx thanking his late grandmother. Also some cray-cray ones, like the warring producers of the Best Documentary Short Music for Prudence almost coming to blows. 

Hey, Documentary Short… That’s one of the awards producers want to send off to the kiddie table! This goes without saying, but...

SHOW ALL THE AWARDS!

For the documentaries and short films, this is their shining moment! Let them have it. And put the Honorary Oscars back as part of the ceremony. Samuel Jackson is getting one, but you won’t see that live! Wouldn’t that be cool to see? Wouldn’t you have enjoyed seeing James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury get their awards in recent years live and on stage? Of course you would! Because you love movies! That’s why you’re watching this! And to that point:

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!

The kind of people who love the Oscars  - who love to argue about movies, debate who should be nominated, get angry about who got snubbed - are the kind of people who want to see every award. These are the people (and I include myself among them) that REALLY CARE about categories like Best Score and Best Makeup. We have Oscar parties and run Oscar pools. WE ARE YOUR CORE AUDIENCE! And yet, here are the Oscars basically giving us a giant middle finger while sweatily pursuing a mythical audience of cool kids. 

We are also the people who fucking loathe the idea of a “Hashtag Oscars” moment or a People’s Choice award. They put that nonsense in to appease the people who thought Spider-Man should have gotten a nomination. You know what was leading the poll at one point? The crappy Cinderella movie with James Corden. Dear God. 

Oscar!

Look, people who think the Oscars are “cringe” (or whatever the cool kids use to call something  “lame” these days) are not going to tune in to the Oscars no matter how hip you try and make it. And they aren’t going to tune in to see them mention Army of the Dead on the air either. (Another bad movie that was up there in the voting.)

And speaking of “cringe…”

EMBRACE THE CRINGE!

Mark Harris, film historian and entertainment journalist, has written that the Oscars should be run by people who aren’t embarrassed by them. I couldn’t agree more. The Oscars are big, self-important to the point of self parody, tacky, gaudy…

AND THAT’S WHY WE LIKE THEM!

The Oscars are never going to be cool. And there is nothing less cool than someone desperately trying to be cool. Chase the youth demo all you want, you aren’t going to get the young males aged 18-35 to tune in in large numbers. You ARE always going to get the film nerds like me who will complain about Robert Mitchum getting snubbed for Night of the Hunter and fill out Oscar predictions like March Madness brackets. You are always going to get people tuning in to watch the fashion parade. You are always going to get a core audience who loves films and cares about them. PLEASE do not chase us away because you want to sit at the Mean Girls table. 

In conclusion, how to fix the Oscars? STOP TRYING TO FIX THEM. 

This isn’t hard! Just copy what the Tonys do!  While I certainly have my issues with them as well - like not showing excerpts of the Play nominees - they wholeheartedly embrace their theatre kid energy. They understand that the Tonys are a big commercial for Broadway and a celebration of live performance. They aren’t stressing about trying to get 50 million viewers, because they know their audience. They aren’t embarrassed to have the Pointer Sisters come out on stage and sing “It’s Raining Men.” They revel in it!

Look, do you think I take JOY in spending 1700 words writing about how the Academy is screwing up their marquee event? I’d rather spend the energy writing about how the Academy is full of morons who think Don’t Look Up is a better movie than The French Dispatch, In The Heights, and tick tick BOOM. (You know, normal things.) I’d rather be discussing whether or not Spielberg is more deserving of a third Oscar or Jane Campion should get her first, or if CODA or Belfast could sneak in and get a Best Picture win. I’d rather talk about the merits of Denzel vs Will Smith, or Olivia Colman vs Jessica Chastain. I would rather be talking about MOVIES, not about what zany thing Tony Hawk and Shaun White are going to do. 

Really, I’m not asking for much,

Well, maybe that and a write-in Oscar for The French Dispatch. 

Victor Catano lives in New York City with his wonderful wife, Kim, and his adorable pughuaua, Danerys. When not writing, he works in live theater as a stage manager, production manager, and chaos coordinator. His hobbies include coffee, Broadway musicals, and complaining about the NY Mets and Philadelphia Eagles. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @vgcatano and find his books on Amazon