It’s March 21st, 1999 and my mom’s arms are filled with pancakes.
I was 10-years-old and we were fresh California transplants, having moved from the Midwest in search of a better life (aka my dad got a new job). I had begged to be taken to the red carpet bleachers at the Academy Awards because the only thing I loved more than movies were women in ball gowns competing for trophies.
So, off we went to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It’s unclear what we expected, but upon arrival, there were hundreds of people lining the streets in tents, lawn chairs and other camping vessels, claiming their rightful spots for the following day’s carpet. While the idea of talking to a stranger is enough to send me into a weeks-long anxiety spiral, my mom loves it (personality disorder??) and she started to plot a way for us to get in. Eventually, she found some people who said that if we came back the next morning with breakfast, they’d let us cut in line. Thus, pancakes.
Not only did this give me an early lesson about scheming and cheating and lying to get what you want in life, it meant we were in. It meant that my little closeted gay ass was about to be at the epicenter of the pop culture universe.
There are images and moments in all of our lives that we will never forget. A first date, the birth of a child, a wedding day. For me, it was seeing Celine Dion’s backwards tuxedo with my own two eyes.
It’s difficult to state how important and gigantic and prestigious the Oscars used to feel. In 1999, they were coming off a year were “Titanic” won 11 awards in a telecast watched by more than 57 million people in the United States alone. I didn’t even know 57 million people lived in the entire country!
Leonardo DiCaprio could have killed somebody on the Oscar stage that night and we all have applauded.
So, what’s gone wrong?
It’s important, of course, to acknowledge that television ratings are dismal everywhere you look. The pandemic, the sheer volume of things to choose from, the people who love to tell you about how they’ve actually never heard the word “television” and only listen to podcasts hosted by women who drink rosé and debate whether or not they can solve the Zodiac case. It’s impossible to garner anybody’s devoted attention anymore.
But, that’s only a small part of the problem here. The 93rd Oscars, which were viewed by as astonishingly low 10.4 million viewers and held in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express, were an absolute slap in the face to the people who have made the brave decision to devote their entire personalities to movies and the shows that reward them.
The Oscars used to be exciting because you got to see a room full of movie stars, but unfortunately movie stars no longer exist. Actually, there are three remaining movie stars: George Clooney, Julia Roberts and the girl from the “you either get the vibe or you don’t get the vibe” video.
So with the concept of celebrity being a thing of the past and the increased presence of streaming services making the media landscape almost overwhelmingly robust, making it virtually impossible for the average movie fan to keep up, there’s only one solution: tailor the Oscars to the people who actually give a shit.
You don’t know how to find “Nomadland” on your Roku? I DON’T CARE, CAROL. You don’t agree with paying $20 to rent “Promising Young Woman” at home? GO RIDE A BIKE, DAVE. Your favorite movie of the year was “The Trial of the Chicago 7?” YOU DON’T DESERVE TO BE HERE ANYWAY.
The biggest failure of this year’s telecast was the absolute refusal to celebrate, uh…movies????? We were graced with exhaustingly long and aimless introductions for every nominee, a frenetic In Memoriam segment and an asinine restructuring of the ceremony (Best Picture should always be last and I will be starting a GoFundMe to support this), but nothing that inspired an ounce of confidence that anybody producing the show had ever seen a film. Or been to a movie theater? Or, I don’t know, been alive for the last year.
When the most exhilarating part of the show was Regina King walking in a straight line? Houston, we have a problem (“Apollo 13” reference).
May I interest you in a montage?
This four-minute celebration of cinema for the 90th anniversary of the Oscars has more heart and soul than this year’s entire telecast, and that’s including when Glenn Close did “Da Butt.” This montage is what the show should be about. Celebrate and reward the viewers who care. I’m of the belief that the Oscars should be 12 hours if they really want to be! Who cares! Give me countless John Williams-scored video packages to distract me from the darkness of everyday life and the certainty of death!!!!!!!
Now, this brings me to the most egregiously unforgivable part of this year’s Oscars telecast: the lack of clips. If you produce an Academy Awards broadcast without acting clips for every single nominee, you deserve prison. At the very least!
Acting clips are a fundamental part of the Oscars experience. They are fun reminders for viewers who have seen the movies, provide context for the viewers who haven’t and, most of all, provide an opportunity for us to say “you know, I guess Meryl did deserve to be nominated after all.”
The Oscars have been successful is almost entirely scrubbing acting clips from the Internet (A copyright thing? I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer), but the aforementioned 1998 telecast miraculously exists on YouTube, in order to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
09:45 - Best Supporting Actress
23:50 - Best Supporting Actor
41:15 - Best Actress
1:37:56 - Best Actor
Come for the clips, stay for being reminded that Helen Hunt and Hank Azaria were married!
Having the clips rules, not having the clips drools.
But if you’re absolutely dead set on doing something different, why not attempt to recreate something like they did in 2009?
Actors gushing over other actors while saying things like “extraordinary depth” is almost enough to make you want to go live on a mountaintop, but at least it’s campy and classic and unapologetically Hollywood.
Because, ultimately, that’s what was missing this year and, frankly, had already started to wane with recent broadcasts. Give me glitz! Give me glamour! Give me a bunch of rich assholes giving standing ovations to people for wearing fat suits!
The Oscars are at their best when they lean into their ridiculousness, but that ridiculousness is what makes them important. I started to love movies because of the Oscars, and if they abandon their sense of grandiosity, they've abandoned everything.
Without that, there won’t be anymore weird 10-year-olds in hockey jerseys so desperate to catch a glimpse of Gwyneth Paltrow that they bribe a group of strangers with hot breakfast on the side of the road.
And that’s just not a world that I want to live in.
While you’re here, some other stuff I’ve been working on:
I interviewed Andy Cohen and Eboni K. Williams for Interview.
I recapped “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and interviewed all the queens, including winner and light of my life Symone.
I ranked every single WrestleMania match in history for Cageside Seats, because why not?