
I like Hugh Jackman, really. Enough to forgive him Australia. But this year's Oscar host seems to be heading in a disastrous retro direction, even as he and the show's new producers promise to revamp that dead-weight ratings loser.
The producers, Laurence Mark and Bill Condon, are smart Hollywood guys but their last collaboration was Dreamgirls (Mark produced, Condon wrote and directed), not an auspicious start. And they have already evoked the ghosts of Oscars past. They praised Jackman's "style, elegance" and "sense of occasion," which to me translates as "safe and dull." Mark told Nikki Finke on Deadline Hollywood Daily, "We kept saying how we were looking for Cary Grant or Clark Gable," and Jackman himself said he never imagined getting that gig "Thirty years ago when I was in Sydney watching Johnny Carson host the Oscars with my family." Yes, thirty years ago!
Here's what the producers have promised so far: less of what viewers love and more of what we hate. First, there will be no opening comic monologue. They're scrapping the part we are always most curious about, the high-wire act that launched a million Uma-Oprah jokes.
OK, Jackman is no comedian. He is a terrific singer and dancer, who was truly as maracas-shaking Peter Allen in Broadway's The Boy from Oz and a smooth host three years running at the Tonys. But the Tonys are a geezer-fest with ratings so awful he helped lift them from nothing to next-to-nothing. And while old-fashioned elegance may work for the Broadway crowd, the last thing the Oscars need is Sunset Boulevard II or The Boy from Hollywood's Golden Age. Do the producers not want a younger audience?
There are plenty of reasons the Oscars keep losing viewers -- last year's show with Jon Stewart hit an all-time low -- but sharp comic hosts like Stewart or Chris Rock aren't the problem. (Both were hugely toned down for the occasion anyway, and were still considered too edgy for the staid Academy). The television landscape has simply splintered into so many niches the Oscars will never see Carson numbers again; get over it.
Today's viewers also have awards burnout. By the time the Oscars arrive top stars have turned up at everything from the Critics Choice awards (although hardly anyone knows what they are) to the Golden Globes (although almost everyone thinks they're a joke). And unlike those other starry shows, the Oscars make us sit through the production designer thanking his grandma. (The producers are hamstrung there; the Academy insists on the number of awards presented on air.) The Oscar is still the biggest prize of all, but that doesn't make for much of a TV draw. That's why the show needs a complete, forward-looking reinvention, not some gauzy return to a past that can never be recaptured.
It doesn't sound like that's happening, so let's plead for some small improvements. Please, please, drop the lame presenters' banter. And that includes jokes about lame presenters' banter. Let the stars say something real or nothing at all. I'd love to hear what Sean Penn or Kate Winslet or Frank Langella say in their own voices, but I do not want another syllable from creaky Oscar writers like Bruce Vilanch.
And no nostalgic tributes to the olden days of movies. Maybe the silver lining in the current We're-Not-Calling-It-A-Depression-Yet is that, as in the Great Depression, people are happy to escape into movies. That doesn't mean we want to drop into some Busby Berkeley inspired musical.
Let Jackman sing and dance if he wants to, but tone down the usual cringe-inducing production numbers that make the Oscars seem like some tacky road show out of Vegas, or a South Park episode waiting to happen. (I would make an exception for a duet between Jackman and Clint Eastwood singing the theme song from Gran Torino; instant camp classic.)
And remember, Jackman may be People magazine's current Sexiest Man Alive, but he's not a movie star because he's suave. (As I said: Australia.) He's a movie star because he played a mutant in three X-Men films. Let him put some Wolverine claws into the event and play to the audience that actually buys tickets to his movies. Maybe then we can all enjoy the show and save our bathroom breaks for the Jerry Lewis tribute.