Every year, people complain the Oscars are too long. Okay, that's a fair comment. But some of them don't seem to get that the show is not more than three and a half hours because its producers keep trying to do a much shorter show and failing. The show pretty much comes in each year at the length they plan it to be, give or take ten minutes. This year's ran about five minutes over its anticipated time.
Bitching about the Oscars being too long is like kvetching that 60 Minutes runs an hour…the one key difference being that 60 Minutes tells you how long it's going to be. The sin of the Oscars that relates to its length is that they fib and say "three hours" when they know darn well it's going to be 3.5 and change. I assume that's mainly so that folks in the East Coast won't say, "I gotta go to work tomorrow…maybe I can't afford to stay up until it's over, in which case maybe it's better to not watch any of it." Or something of the sort. Saying it'll be three hours instead of three-and-a-half may fool a few people who need to be in bed by 11:30 and cause them to tune in.
Could they cut it? Sure. Dump the dance numbers. Cut most of the clip packages. Trim the long walk-ons for presenters, plus have fewer presenters. The year Jerry Lewis hosted back in the sixties, some columnist claimed, apparently as a joke, that what Jerry wanted to do with it was to stage a two-hour Jerry Lewis Special and in the last twenty minutes, he'd just open all the envelopes, bring up the winners and let them make their speeches. There have been years since when that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. (What Mr. Lewis actually did that year was a pretty typical telecast, except that he hurried through things so much that the show actually ran short — the only time they ever had to fill at the end. I believe he brought out all the winners and had them all sing "Hooray for Hollywood" or something.)
But they're never going to cut the show…much. Not unless the ratings really plunge. A certain part of the audience tunes in to see the fashion show and another portion just wants to see celebrities. Most of all though, you have to remember that the broadcast exists primarily to promote product. The studios want those clip packages in there. They want someone to come out and tell you all about films up for Best Picture…all ten of them, this year. It's really an infomercial done in formal wear. Worse, it's an infomercial that contains lots of real, unabashed commercials that go for a high price. The longer the telecast goes, the more of those the network gets to sell.
I didn't watch much of this year's but it seemed to me like either Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin alone would have been better than the two of them. If you ever want to know what show biz people mean when they say "no chemistry," that was a sterling example. Most of the speeches I saw were fine. The only thing I caught that seemed real bothersome was those moments where a friend of the nominee comes out and tells the nominee what a great human being he or she is. Yes, it is possible for there to be too much fawning at the Academy Awards.
The "In Memoriam" reel started with Patrick Swayze and ended with Karl Malden. Many on the Internet seem outraged that Farrah Fawcett was omitted and there's also a groundswell for Bea Arthur. They both had grand careers but neither was in that many movies, which is what I presume explains the decision. Oddly enough, I didn't see anyone on the web upset that Henry Gibson was bypassed. Henry was in a lot more theatrical films than Fawcett and Arthur put together…and one of Mr. Gibson's was the highly-acclaimed Nashville.
Apparently, there was a nail-biter over whether the ceremony was even going to be transmitted to Cablevision homes in New York due to a contract dispute between that outfit and ABC. The fight was settled some fourteen minutes into the show and then the remainder was available. Apparently, someone doesn't like Neil Patrick Harris…who, by the way, has now become to award shows what Charles Nelson Reilly used to be to every other kind of program. An hour or two in, I tweeted something about how New Yorkers were demanding that their cable companies stop transmitting the show.
I have no comments on any of the winners, other than that it would be nice if some day, a woman could achieve something in some field without someone cuing up the song, "I Am Woman." I suppose if the black guy had won, the band would have played "Ebony and Ivory."
Nor do I have any predictions about the ratings. The thing in New York will complicate matters a bit since even after Cablevision began carrying the show, a lot of people didn't know it. That won't lower the numbers much but what might is that there was no real emotional issue where half of America was rooting for one person or one performance. Still, you never know with these things. I would expect though to see some new record set for most Twitter Tweets in a 3-and-a-half hour period. I was following a couple of folks, including Roger Ebert, Bill Maher and Rob Corddry, all of whom were a lot more entertaining than the broadcast. Mr. Ebert's Tweets are archived here. Maybe by next year, they'll skip the televised ceremony completely and just give the awards out on Twitter. It would certainly race along nicely if winners had to keep their acceptance speeches down to 140 characters.