It is the moment feared and cherished by Oscar hopefuls: the envelope is opened, a name is read out and then the winner has to struggle to the stage to receive the coveted statuette. But not this year.
In an overhaul of Oscar etiquette, the producers of this year’s broadcast have announced that some of the awards will be presented to winners at their seats in the audience.
In other cases all the nominees will gather on stage as the winner is named.
The changes are an attempt to break up the rhythm of the event, to make the audience feel more involved and to dismantle the barrier between winners and losers. In other words, they want to make it less boring than last year.
The 2004 Oscars will be remembered, should they be remembered at all, as the night when The Lord of the Rings ran away with the show. It made for less than satisfying television.
The lengthy evening saw a procession of winners, most of them the Rings’ director, Peter Jackson, take the long walk to the stage to collect awards, and then thank the same people in every speech.
So the producers, who have no control over the identities of the winners, have done the only thing in their power and changed the formula: out goes the cosy Hollywood host Billy Crystal, to be replaced by the far edgier comic Chris Rock. Out goes the rigid separation between winners, nominees and the rest, as the host and presenters stray from the stage to wander through the auditorium of the Kodak Theatre, where the ceremony will be held on February 27. ”Seat fillers” will be paid to fill seats vacated for a mass call of nominees to the stage.
”It’s complicated,” the show’s producer, Gil Cates, told reporters at the annual nominees’ lunch. ”And I guess it could be a complete mess. But I don’t think so.”
The change will eliminate one of the few elements of the unexpected in what is normally a tightly controlled event.
Yet while producers hope to remove that sort of unexpected behaviour, there is one area where they do want their nominees to do the unexpected: the acceptance speech.
The 150 nominees gathered on Monday received the annual reminder to keep their speeches brief and not to recite a long list of thank yous.
”Please, please, please don’t pull out a piece of paper,” Cates told the stars. ”If you do, you’re done … just say one unexpected thing.”
Whether the advice will be heeded is another matter. Hollywood takes great note of the thank yous; a producer omitted or an agent left out can make the talent pay for years. And brevity is not the most natural attribute for actors trained to milk their moment in the spotlight.
Last month at the Golden Globes Jamie Foxx led the audience in a sing-song, talked about his mother and got teary. He did not seem to take the Oscar producers’ advice too seriously.
”There are so many things that I want to say, I could never run out of things,” the actor said.
”Like I’ve always said to my friends, even when we dreamt of what we want to be, we never dreamt this.”
Imelda Staunton, nominated for best actress for her performance in Mike Leigh’s film Vera Drake, admitted that the adulation had gone to her head.
”I am totally changed,” she said. ”I won’t do any domestic duties at all.” — Â