The Great Oscar Host Debacle of 2011 remains an open wound today at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, from which Academy president Tom Sherak ruminated about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of James Franco, Anne Hathaway, and/or any comics who might have assumed their places. But the real fun starts, however, with the told-you-so moment supplied by an anonymous, "high-ranking Academy member."
"The choice of hosts is a convoluted affair. It is left completely to the producers and president. There is no discussion with the board of governors.
"A lot of us said Franco, who is a good actor, is the wrong guy when it was announced," the Academy member continues. "We questioned the TV value of both hosts, and it turned out to be right."
A committee deciding on the hosts is a "bad idea," according to Sherak.
"What you have to keep in mind is, when you hire producers, you have to have confidence they are going to put on the show you are looking for," he says. "Basically Don [Mischer] and Bruce [Cohen] put on the show they promised. [...] You can't do this by committee. You will never have everybody agree. There is no Bob Hope anymore."
Except... when there is. Anyway, Sherak is relatively sanguine about the end result of Sunday's show -- a 9 percent drop in ratings and a receiving line of critics holding their noses with one hand and swinging haymakers with the other. "We didn't have an Avatar or a Titanic this year," he told THR. "We had some really good movies that did a lot of business, but it is what it is. Next year, if there is a huge movie, you'll see more people."
I don't know about that. I'll give Sherak the Avatar factor to a degree, but not a hemorrhaging-four-million-viewers degree. And to be totally fair, Sherak accurately adds: "Go back and look at what these same critics have written: 'The Academy is afraid to take chances' and 'if the Academy doesn't get younger, they'll be off the air.' So when the producers came and said, 'We've got an idea,' we said, 'Great.' We tried something." But who is "we"? Literally only three guys make a decision that directly influences an 83-year-old institution, a major network, dozens of advertisers and must be sold at ground level to the average TV viewer/moviegoer? If you're chasing the youngs, how much insight and awareness can three industry lifers with a combined age of 182 actually bring to that effort without some input?
Moreover, what if last year's audience boost -- a five-year Academy Awards high -- in fact owed more to its hosts than its nominees? Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin weren't merely a couple of safe old Hollywood dudes (though they were that, too, thus reinforcing their Oscarcast creds among the old guard); Martin interweaves mass-market garbage (e.g. Cheaper By the Dozen and/or Pink Panther remakes) with prodigious art/literary/banjo-playing pursuits, while Baldwin is one of the Emmy-winning principals on arguably television's hippest comedy. Martin alone reaches more than twice as many followers on Twitter as Franco, while Baldwin was of enough value to the Academy to return as the linchpin of the short-film opener -- a.k.a. the best five minutes of the night. This all had to cross the trio's minds at some point.
Anyway, hats off to Sherak for taking at least bit of responsibility for the Franco/Hathaway mismatch and for his forthcoming acknowledgment that the hosts' "chemistry seemed to be off." At the same time: Get with the picture, Tommy. You don't need a "committee" for this, per se, but you do need to involve some fresh blood in the early stages of the host-selection sweepstakes. I'd volunteer my counsel, but I'd also scrap the host entirely, so that probably precludes me from the running. In any case don't expect to see this kind of public postmortem a year from now: something in this process will change. And if nothing else, Oscar night can only get better, right?
ยท Academy President Tom Sherak Defends Oscars Broadcast, Franco, Hathaway [THR]