Every Oscars we all get revved up with "Oh, maybe something exciting will happen! Maybe someone will say something weird or ruin their careers! Maybe this will finally be the Oscars where Jesus shows up!" talk. It's like America forgot about the dozen or so boring ass awards shows that preceded it, and we all forgot how boring the Oscars ALWAYS are. People host parties and make little Oscar pools and get drunk on a Sunday so we can all gain the privilege of watching a long dull ceremony where rich and pretty people are congratulated for saying lines in a way that doesn't seem fake or non-human. Oh, and directors. Let's not forget the singular visionaries who piece together masterpieces from nothing. Like Christopher Nolan...who was not nominated because he made us think superheroes might be real.
So, let's get something crystal clear...Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globes, and was reviled as a pariah because he dared to make fun of the beautiful and important celebrities. Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosted the Oscars, and are now reviled as pariahs because they were the Millennial answer to Tony Orlando and Dawn.
America doesn't want excitement (although it thinks it does) and America doesn't want a competent show where nothing really happens. What they want is somewhere in between, because when it comes right down to it, this show is about money and power and who has it and why. You want to know why Hathaway and Franco were hosting? Because the Academy wanted the hip viewers they so desperately crave. But what they really should be doing to get those people is making sure that Netflix and Hulu can stream new releases directly to your flat-screen because going to the movies sucks. I like my movies at home, delivered right to my living room. I would think that most young people want that because going to the movies at an actual theater has been replaced by having food in your refrigerator for a few days.
But, what is the real problem with the Oscars? In my opinion, it starts and ends with the writing. The lame jokes and weirdo musical numbers and Franco coming out dressed like Marilyn...all that crap was not written by Franco, Hathaway, Sorkin, Hooper, or Celine Dion. It was written by Bruce Vilanch and his gaggle of overpaid idiots grasping at straws of ideas that have to be green-lit by producers and verified by censors of every stripe. Kids and old people watch the Oscars, so god forbid Melissa Leo says fuck. That'll be her last statue.
Yes, Franco was high...but wasn't he hired to be high? To do his whole meta-stoned-artiste shtick? And Hathaway looked good and can say words in the right order and basically was the girl we all wish we dated in college. And she was hired to be all of those things, wasn't she? Complaining about Oscar hosts doing the job is about as stupid as complaining that these 24 Busch beers got me SO drunk, brahs!
They are famous and young...and were supposed to be famous and young in front of a few million people. Who did you want to host, Billy Crystal? You want his tired vaudeville and smug grin after every one-liner? You want Bob Hope to come back from the dead and host it from that little YouTube box at a podium?
No, you don't want any of that. What you actually want is to make fun of it. Because it's an escape anyway, and switching to cynical snark mode is easy for everyone. Franco's gay, high, and egotistical. Hathaway is annoying and talentless. Tom Hooper had his Best Director statue bought and paid for before the show even started. Natalie Portman is a pregnant bitch. Cate Blanchett's dress looked like shit.
Because that's what we do to working actors and artists in America. We make fun of them because none of them do real jobs. Guess what? None of us do real jobs and the only guy who said anything resembling the truth last night was Charles Ferguson, winner of the Best Doc statue for Inside Job. "Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong," he stated simply and plainly.
But, seriously, fuck that guy. What's that jerkass Franco doing now?
-Eric Roach, Anderson Lawfer
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