Why no one wants to host the Oscars

[E. Q. Taft]

Barring some eleventh-hour intervention, the host of the 2019 Oscars will be ... drumroll please...

Nobody.

https://www.vox.com/2019/1/11/181722...ost-kevin-hart

[dfresh]

So, the only potential upside is exposure, which only really appeals to a new Hollywood person or one in need of a career rehab, and the Academy has no desire for THEM, wanting a big name to draw people, but those people really don't want to expose themselves to the potential downsides for no real reward. Hmm, sounds like a good show to miss.

[ASL]

Why not just tweet the winners? If it’s good enough for national security policy...

Seriously, though, I have a hard time watching these awards shows because the banter tends towards corny and uncomfortable. It just gets too awkward. I made it about five minutes into the most recent Golden Globes before I had to cut and run. They had just made some stupid joke about the Black Panthers (not the movie, the group) and I couldn’t stand it anymore.

[E. Q. Taft]

I think a lot of it is as the article says -- the lack of immediacy. Back in the day, you watched not only to get the news first (before the internet, you otherwise probably would have to watch the news or read the paper the next day to know who won), but also because something might happen and you might rarely or never be able to see it again. I certainly remember that I was watching live when the infamous streaker appeared behind David Niven.

But nowadays? Follow any social media and you can get the winners pretty much in real-time, and if anything "must see" happens, you can catch it on YouTube probably within minutes. You can wait for the reviews of the musical numbers, skits, and monologues to see if they're worth watching. So why sit through the dull stuff and the commercials to get to the few moments you want to see?

Same thing for the other thing people watch for: to see what the famous women are wearing. You can get all the pictures you want all over the net, without even having to wait for the next issue of People magazine to come out.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by ASL

Seriously, though, I have a hard time watching these awards shows because the banter tends towards corny and uncomfortable. It just gets too awkward. I made it about five minutes into the most recent Golden Globes before I had to cut and run. They had just made some stupid joke about the Black Panthers (not the movie, the group) and I couldn’t stand it anymore.

And the awards are so political. Movies won't get Oscars (or in some cases even Oscar nominations) because they're the "wrong" type of movie and judges won't pick them.

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

And the awards are so political. Movies won't get Oscars (or in some cases even Oscar nominations) because they're the "wrong" type of movie and judges won't pick them.

The people who vote on the Academy Awards tend towards being incredibly oldschool. I remember reading an article discussing the members' attitudes towards voting on the best animated film and many of them wouldn't even consider anything from Japan, and some of them couldn't even be bothered watching any of the nominated films and just asked their kids.

It's also a pretty open secret that awards can be bought if the studio is prepared to put enough money behind wining & dining the Academy members.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201...-at-the-oscars

[ASL]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

And the awards are so political. Movies won't get Oscars (or in some cases even Oscar nominations) because they're the "wrong" type of movie and judges won't pick them.

I wasn’t going to go there, but, yeah, that too. But I do believe there have been some interesting results in the effort to make the Academy appear less white male. Get Out comes to mind. I would have expected it to be ignored by the Academy just based on genre, but, like I said, sometimes interesting decisions get made in the name of endorsing a particular socio-political view and the outcome is a pleasant surprise.

I guess I’d summarize my view as "unconventional picks to help diversify, good. Oscar bait purpose-made to look like what the Academy wants a film to look like, bad."

Which isn’t to say Oscar bait always turns out bad/dull, it just seems like the threshold for nomination is a bit lower in terms of being good. Is that extremely loud and incredibly close enough, or am I being obtuse?

[crocoduck_hunter]

No, I definitely get you.

[musicgeek]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

I remember reading an article discussing the members' attitudes towards voting on the best animated film and many of them wouldn't even consider anything from Japan, and some of them couldn't even be bothered watching any of the nominated films and just asked their kids.

A former colleague (himself a successful composer who has written a textbook on film scoring) told a story several years ago about going to a meeting at a director's house and seeing a stack of shrink-wrapped CDs (unopened; this was shortly after that year's Oscar ceremony). - The composer looked at the stack, and asked the director "what's the deal with all these CDs?" The director said he was an Academy member (Oscar voter), and those were that past year's nominees for best score. Again, looking at the unopened CDs, the composer asked "who did you vote for?"

"Oh, I voted for Beauty and the Beast." (That year's winner.)

Picking up one of the still-wrapped CDs, the composer asked, "What did you think of the score to Hook?"

"I didn't actually listen to it, but I just figured it was John Williams' usual stuff."

Composer. "Hmm."

Now, in fairness, while I love the Hook score, Beauty and the Beast probably deserved to win that year. But the fact that Academy voters (and I doubt this was isolated to this one individual) sometimes can't be arsed to even watch/listen to the material they're voting on is disappointing.

[ASL]

I'd like to put a plug in for youtuber Lindsay Ellis. A preponderance of her videos at least touch on Disney films, but she has a lot of pretty good video essays on film industry... stuff. Apropos:

Mini - Canon: "Oscar Bait": A History

It covers many (all?) of the issues we’ve discussed so far, plus a few more, with a look at how the type of movies "favored by the Oscars" has changed over the years. It’s only ten minutes long and worth a view.

[Mouse]

Another behind-the-scenes reason the Oscars suck: Apparently the script is practically being written as the show is being performed. It goes a long way towards explaining how generally boring and terrible the Oscars are, because even the best comedians would have a hard time working under those conditions. It probably doesn’t help that the Academy is made up of crusty old white men with the bluest of blue noses, which means we wind up with up with the most boring, safe comedy ever.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by Mouse

It probably doesn’t help that the Academy is made up of crusty old white men with the bluest of blue noses, which means we wind up with up with the most boring, safe comedy ever.

So it was the crusty old white men who fired the black guy for his boring, safe homophobic jokes? Man, all this identity politics stuff has me confused.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

I read the article in the OP, and I have to say it reads to me more like "why the Oscars don't need a host" than why they can't find one.

Seaboe

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by Steve

So it was the crusty old white men who fired the black guy for his boring, safe homophobic jokes? Man, all this identity politics stuff has me confused.

Naw, it was the crusty old white men who were forced into the position of firing the black guy for his homophobic jokes when word got around and the resulting negative press was starting to make them look bad. It's highly likely that the reason they hired Hart in the first place was because of the "Oscars so white" backlash from previous years, their decision to fire him were probably similarly reactionary.

Also the black guy might have gotten away with the homophobic jokes dredged up from his past if he'd made a decent apology and indicated that he'd grown as a person and he knows better now but he chose to double down and then try and dismiss the issue when people didn't let it go. His reaction on Colbert the other day was "Don't want to talk about it" because "I'm over it".

[DawnStorm]

This man would love to host the Oscars.