All the Rage #40

What the fuck is up with bitching about the Oscar telecast? The inevitable complaining in the days following its broadcast is always ten times more annoying than the show itself, and like Jack Nicholson's lecherous glances, it happens every year. Like clockwork, there's an expectant apprehension for the big night. Like clockwork, the show's too long, things go wrong, experiments fail. And like clockwork, the same moronic pundits line up to write their obligatory eight hundred words about how crappy the Oscar telecast is.

What the fuck do these people expect? Every year it's too long. Every year there are awful moments. Every FUCKING year. With the exception of David Letterman's lone stint as an Oscar host, I cannot recall a SINGLE Academy Awards ceremony that I would qualify as high-caliber entertainment for its entire length. There are always excruciating stretches of boredom, ugly moments of cloying sincerity, and alleged "jokes" that fall flatter than Matt Stone's bosom. The show is always this fascinating mix of the obnoxious and the transcendant, a night that celebrates great art with a heaping dose of crap. It has never--and will never--change.

What the fuck was so bad about this year? They made a lot of changes that I thought streamlined the operation, even if the show did run its usual length. Peter Coyote doing all that announcing while standing amid the Oscars to be awarded that evening? Cool to me. The ABC official pre-show featuring Chris Connelly, Meredith Viera and Tyra Banks? Yeah, Tyra was annoying, but otherwise, no complaints. Billy Crystal? Funny. "Blame Canada"? Cleverly handled. Roberto Benigni? Insane. Other than hacking out those pointless clip compilations and banning Garth Brooks from the Oscar stage for eternity, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

What the fuck would you change about the Oscars? If you take out all the extraneous crap, you have two hours of stars trotting onto the stage, reading names from an envelope and then thanking their agents and God. That sounds like a real entertainment coma to me. And if the Oscar show were actually GOOD, then why watch? Half of Oscar's fun is that it's live and occasionally unpredictible. There's always at least a few moments every year where the rich and famous are caught in slightly compromising positions. I'd argue that this year, watching Angelina Jolie make out with her brother right before she was announced as winner was worth every other minute of subpar action. If suddenly the Oscars were to become sure-fire quality entertainment, where would we go for shameless elebrity schmaltz and self-serving ass-kissing? The Golden Globes?! Yeah, right.

What the fuck do people do during the Oscars, anyway? Do they sit there in silence for the duration of the show, notepad in hand, scribbling down complaints until they're ready to declare in the voice of that Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, "Worst episode ever"? I always have much more fun mocking a bad Oscar show than I do enjoying a good one. It just isn't the Academy Awards without verbal abuse of anything happening onscreen.

What the fuck? If I were producing the Academy Awards, I'd make the show longer. I'd bring back the obnoxious dance numbers, I'd trot out Harvey Fierstein every year to do a fifteen-minute one-man performance of every Best Song winner from the past forty years, and I'd add twelve more lifetime achievement awards, all of which would go to the most decrepit and babbling ancient celebs I could dig up. It would be twice as long--maybe we could space it out over two nights.

I'd watch every minute, because if there's one thing I love more than good TV, it's bad TV, and no matter how entertaining the Oscars are, they're still the only dependable night of bad television we can count on every year. Long live Oscar, I say.