This Year's Oscars To Be Even More Unwatchable

By Amelie Gillette  |  February 2, 2009 | 7:20pm
TV Features TV

Last year's Oscars were the lowest-rated, least-watched Oscars ceremony ever, a fact that most people blame on last year's nominated movies. No one really saw or cared about those movies, the theory goes, and also too many Europeans won, so no one watched. While that may be true—after all, everytime a European wins an Academy Award, a bald eagle dies of disappointment—another theory for the general awfulness of every Oscars ceremony has surfaced: The people who put the show together are complete idiots who haven't been a part of society for decades.

The proof? From an article in the NY Times, here's one of their ideas for garnering a bigger audience for this year's Oscars:

Producers of the show — to be hosted by Hugh Jackman and broadcast Feb. 22 on ABC — are even trying to liven up the proceedings by asking studios and others to provide scenes from future films, according to a request sent to various companies last month.

The idea, if the clips prove watchable, is for Mr. Jackman to sign off the broadcast with fresh 10-second snippets of two dozen new movies, to run on a split screen with the end credits.

Scenes from future films! Why didn't anyone think of this before? No one ever gets to see scenes from future films until they become present films. You know, come to think of it, movie studios could probably use scenes from future films to advertise those films by maybe cutting the scenes together with music and playing them before movies currently in theaters, or releasing them online. They could call them "pre-sees" or "before-looks." This is going to change movie marketing forever!

But integrating trailers into the Oscars broadcast isn't even the most misguided part about this terribly misguided idea. No, that would be that the trailer clips wouldn't run until the very end of the show. Sorry, Oscars producers. No one is going to chase the exclusive Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian clip carrot through three hours of droning speeches, "Movies Are Magic" montages, and Hugh Jackman showstoppers.

The bad ideas don't stop there!

Others said the show itself would have a narrative line, with the awards arranged to tell a story that will involve presenters as well as nominees. In all, it is a bit of show business elaborate enough to require guidance from Fatima Robinson, who worked with Mr. Condon as choreographer of his film of the musical “Dreamgirls.”

Right. I've seen that narrative before. We all have. It's called "Award Show." And since when does "choreographer from Dreamgirls" entice anyone to do anything but stay far, far away?

Then there's this:

Exactly who the presenters might be remains something of a mystery. Academy officials said last month that they planned to preserve an element of surprise this year by declining to identify in advance the stars who will hand out the prizes.

There has been a whisper as well that some celebrity arrivals on Oscar night might not walk the red carpet at all — a twist that would force the curious actually to watch the show itself to see all the celebrities and the gowns, rather than getting their fill from outside news media that cover the arrivals for a host of outlets.

Nice mystery, Oscars producers. I'm guessing that the secret presenters will probably be semi-recognizable movie actors. What do I win?

So these super-secret mystery presenters won't be revealed to the public in advance, and they also won't be walking the red carpet. This forces people to watch how? Because they want to see what the unnamed mystery celebrities are wearing? But you can't have sartorial curiosity about people who aren't there. No one is going to watch the red carpet coverage thinking, "Hmm. I wonder what the celebrities who aren't on this red carpet are wearing," because the answer to that is simple: yoga pants.

 
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