The reviews might make you think there were two separate Oscar telecasts last night. Some folks, like Tom Shales, saw the one "hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by." Others, like Roger Ebert, saw the one where…well, here. I'll quote him in a separate paragraph since he's the one I think is closer to right…
After all of the speculation about the selection of Stewart as a host, his performance deserves perhaps the highest tribute: He was as relaxed, amusing and at home as Johnny Carson. The assignment is his again in future years, and in one night he positioned himself as the likely heir of a major late-night network talk slot.
The above variance of opinion may represent more than the fact that Ebert has always been a far more perceptive critic than Shales. It may reflect the fact that Ebert was actually at the ceremony, seeing how Stewart went over with the live audience, whereas Shales was far, far away, pouting as he so often does that what was on his TV set failed to please Tom Shales. (Shales also thought that Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep must have taken "weeks" to master the banter they performed to introduce Robert Altman. These are two of the best actresses alive and I'll bet it took well under a half-hour.)
I think what some folks don't get is that the Oscars are the Oscars. The movies of '05 were not the kind that generated vast amounts of dramatic tension as to who'd win and who wouldn't. They were probably good films, by and large, but well before the ceremony, America didn't care that much if it was Reese Witherspoon or Felicity Huffman. Most people didn't see either of their films, nor was there any special reason to feel that one was so much more deserving than the other. And if the underlying show doesn't matter to us, there's only so much the host can do. I thought Jon Stewart did just fine.
Also this morning, a lot of people are asking if Brokeback Mountain was snubbed and if so, what does that mean? Was the Academy afraid of being seen as too Liberal or too gay? Did they flee from controversy or what?
The problem with these discussions is that there is zero data on how people ever vote or why. You can look at a race for governor and say that there was a swing of Hispanic voters in the 18-49 age bracket who identify health care as the most pressing issue. There's polling and there are studies and there are breakdowns of how different precincts voted. About the Oscar voting, there is darn near nothing. If I declare that people voted for the films they viewed on weekends and passed over the ones they caught on weekdays, there isn't a shred of empirical evidence to argue against me. It's also highly unlikely that there was any one reason for how everyone voted.
It may be that some people thought Brokeback Mountain, whatever its merits, has received enough attention and that Crash had gone unfairly unnoticed. It may be that the local campaign for Crash — they mailed a DVD to just about everyone in Hollywood — paid off. It may be that all the Academy voters this year played Rock/Paper/Scissors to determine their votes and all across Southern California, Scissors won. It may be that…oh, just make up any silly reason. No one can prove it's wrong. Maybe Brokeback lost in certain categories by a single vote because one guy just plain didn't like the movie as much as he liked some others…or see it.
These are the Oscars, people. They matter to agents and actors and technicians and people in the movie industry whose incomes are pegged to how many tickets or DVDs get sold. They shouldn't matter that much to anyone else. I wish some of my friends spent less time caring about who wins Best Supporting Actor and more time worrying about who wins President of the United States of America. Personally, I think we'd be better off in both cases with Paul Giamatti.