It's been two weeks now since the Academy Awards, but the fallout keeps on coming from that Oscar telecast hosted by Seth MacFarlane.
I keep reading these stories slamming his hosting of the show. The latest complaints are from various Hollywood actresses including Jane Fonda, Jamie Lee Curtis and Geena Davis. Their complaint: that MacFarlane's act was in poor taste.
They point particularly to a now-infamous song number by MacFarlane about a certain female body part, entitled "We Saw Your B___."
You can fill in the blank for yourself. May I add, this was televised around the world to millions of people.
With the Oscars, we all should be talking about what a great movie Argo was and how visually stunning Life of Pi was, and how great an actor Daniel Day-Lewis is, and how great Silver Linings Playbook was with Jennifer Lawrence, and how great Ang Lee is as a director, and how Quentin Tarantino is a genius. Instead, we are talking about -- this.
Anyway, this "scandal" is just the tip of the iceberg with this year's Oscar telecast. It wasn't just Seth MacFarlane that was the issue - it was the entire show.
And you can add to that last sentence the words "yet again for the umpteenth year in a row," because it seems every year the Oscar show is substandard, or embarrassing, or worse.
The problem, as I see it, is that the Oscars have struggled for years to move into the modern age. For years the Oscar telecast seemed stuck somewhere in the past century with over-long telecasts and over-long musical numbers, not to mention over-long speeches. It seemed like a show aimed at stuffy middle-aged highbrow rich people.
Not surprisingly, ratings have been going down in the USA over the past number of years with fewer young people interested in this show. Movie folks know this is a problem, because the fact is that young people are their biggest customers at cinemas at the moment. They need young people watching the show!
So the Academy has continually attempted to appeal to a younger demographic. They've tried one comedian after another - David Letterman, Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres, you name it -- all of whom seem funny to people at home, but are less than that to uptight Academy members in the hall. A couple of years ago, the Academy tried to pair up Anne Hathaway and James Franco as hosts to appeal to a younger crowd, but their uncomfortable performance ended up being one of the bigger debacles in Oscar history.
The Academy also expanded the "best picture" category so ten pictures get nominated instead of five, in response to the omission of "The Dark Knight" a few years ago that outraged many young people.
In their continuing quest for younger viewers, this year the Academy tried the irreverent route with MacFarlane.
What resulted was a mess of a show - but in fairness, no worse than the usual mess movie fans have come to expect.
Of course, they threw out any semblance of class by having the creator of Family Guy as host with his grade-school humour. Bob Hope, Johnny Carson or Billy Crystal he was not.
The second mistake was the decision to counter his down-market humor with song-and-dance routines. Everyone keeps saying they don't want to see song-and-dance routines, yet they insist on putting them in the show. They had a musical number from the movie Chicago, then later brought out Barbra Streisand to sing during the In Memoriam segment.
MacFarlane's antics seemed even more out of place. Do you really think the young people who tuned in to see MacFarlane wanted to see that?
These numbers dragged down the pace of the show, which of course ran over time again. People at home who spent all year obsessing about the "Oscar race," who scoured awards websites for news so they could select their "Oscar pools," were especially frustrated. Instead of seeing awards doled out, they had to put up with musical routines, or worse yet, stupid musical routines involving MacFarlane.
In the end we ended up with a show that pleased nobody. That seems the way it is with Oscar night. Every year, every attempt to appeal to young people falls flat on its face because the Academy insists on the old ways of doing things, which drag down the show.
I think the only way for the Oscar show to improve its telecasts is to completely change the whole concept and update it for a 21st century audience. It shouldn't even be a broadcast that aims for young people or for any particular group - it should aim for the broadest possible audience, like the Super Bowl.
That's my first idea: make Oscar night after the Super Bowl. Think of it: Oscar night is basically the Super Bowl of movies anyway. Yet I get the distinct sense that it isn't a lot of fun, either for the viewers or those participating in it.
Like the Oscars, the Super Bowl is known for their musical acts - and yet the musical acts at the Super Bowl appeal to a much broader audience with names such as Paul McCartney, Madonna, Beyonce and the like. You hardly ever hear of Super Bowl musical acts being embarrassing - except for the year Janet Jackson performed, but that was an exception.
Also, all the ad agencies treat Super Bowl Sunday as their moment to go crazy with their best, most entertaining commercials, and the NFL gets to honour their own by introducing the Hall of Fame inductees and announcing their Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award. All this, in addition to the game itself.
The idea is that it's not just about a football game - it's about all the things surrounding it, too. As a result, it raises the event to a new level, even if the game itself turns out to be a clunker.
Super Bowl Sunday is fun. Unlike the stuffy and uptight Oscars, the Super Bowl is a celebration.
If I were in charge of the Academy Awards, I would aim for a similar vibe: an atmosphere where Oscar Night is a big celebration of the movies. I'd feature great popular music talent, the best ads from the agencies during the commercial breaks, and make the whole show something the fans at home would be excited about seeing.
That's one idea.
Here's another: copy what the beauty pageants are doing these days. No, I am not kidding.
Pageants have come a long way from the old days. Have you seen video from some of these old Miss America and Miss USA pageants from the seventies and eighties on YouTube?
These pageants had exactly the same problems everyone criticizes the Oscar show for these days. They would have contestants do stupid song-and-dance routines, and even the hosts would join in with singing of their own, with their own frog voices.
In short, these pageants were terrible. Just like the Oscar show is now.
But then Donald Trump took over Miss USA, and the rival Miss America pageant also changed course. Both pageants made big changes: they cut back on the stupid song-and-dance numbers and replaced them with hip musical acts with real performing artists. They also moved their pageants to Las Vegas, a far hipper venue compared to where they were previously. As a result, these days you get a far crisper, more upbeat presentation that actually looks like it belongs in the 21st century.
The bottom line is: it's worked. At one point in time the Miss America Pageant was at death's door and reduced to being shown on cable TV. But that all changed after they moved to Las Vegas, got rid of all the stupid production numbers and added some younger hosts. Now they are back on national TV on ABC.
Now, I'm not suggesting the Academy Awards move to Las Vegas, nor do I suggest that they copy the other dumb things beauty pageants are still doing to embarrass themselves, but there are some lessons there for the Oscars to adopt when it comes to creating a good production. If the pageants are able to ditch these boring production numbers and go with a well-paced, revitalized presentation, the Oscars should do the same as well.
So those are my thoughts on how to revive the Oscar telecast. Will the Academy take my great advice? I hope so -- but I'm not holding my breath.
