Richard Linklater has a solid pitch for how to fix the Oscars
Rather than pandering to people who don't like the Oscars, Linklater says they should go "more hardcore"
Aux News the Oscars
The 2022 Oscars ceremony was mostly a disaster, even if you were to pluck out that big thing that happened onstage, with the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences deciding to make a handful of seemingly major changes to how the show traditionally plays out in order to cater exclusively to the people who don’t watch the Oscars and never will watch the Oscars.
The confusing fan-voted categories were part of this, with “the Flash enters the Speed Force” set up to be the perfect punchline for the Oscars until that thing happened onstage, but the change that is still garnering controversy, even when it ended up making no real difference on the actual night, is the Academy’s decision to bump a handful of categories from the live broadcast. (The winners were shown and made speeches, they just didn’t do it live.)
Speaking with The Daily Beast, Richard Linklater said the Oscars had “two ways to go” in terms of how to make the show, and in trying to reach out to the people who don’t care about the Oscars (Linklater says “younger audience,” but that doesn’t seem totally accurate), they made the wrong choice. Instead, he says the Academy should “just get more rigorous” and “more hardcore” with the ceremony.
“Don’t pander. Don’t cut categories and say, ‘Well, nobody cares who edits.’ Bullshit.” He says that the industry should care about editors, and it does, but changes like what the Oscars did have “been going on for a while” anyway. Linklater also lamented the loss of the seeing the Lifetime Achievement Award presented live, since it was “beautiful” and provided an opportunity to “see the aging filmmaker come up and get their honorary Oscar,” at least partially because “usually, the person would die the next year.”
Linklater’s idea to go “more hardcore” with the Oscars seems like a good idea, though, and one that the Academy should really consider. It’s similar to how the Grammys have steered almost entirely away from presenting awards at all in favor of a show that’s really just a string of performances. No skits, no awkward pre-taped segments, just “we’re a show about music, here’s some music.” The Grammy ratings were nearly on par with the terrible Oscar ratings this year, so clearly there’s some justification in having the Oscars look at how the Grammys operate.
In lieu of just watching a movie, the “hardcore” Oscars could be a deep dive on what, exactly, people like editors or visual effects artists or costume designers actually do, giving the audience a better idea of what goes into making a movie beyond the contributions of the director and actors. It may not be as exciting on paper as the Flash entering the Speed Force, but it’s not like the Oscars have anything to lose at this point.
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Shoot them into the sun?
Stick ‘em in a stew?
Boil/Mash ‘em?
Nuke, orbit, etc.
Here’s my $.02:1. Move the show away from the big three networks. This way, maybe they won’t have to worry about ratings and running time. Maybe let HBO host is one year and see what they’re able to accomplish.2. I say this every year: please, please, please eliminate the original song performances, just do a medley of all of them.3. This is from Edgar Wright: eliminate the banter between the presenters.4. Agree eliminate the skits, (Except maybe the opening) why do they have enough time for Amy Schumer to descend from the rafters but they don’t have enough time for speeches?5. Show more clips from movies even if they weren’t nominated. The show is about movies.
The clips is the big one; sure they can get excessive, but more context needs to be given to these movies. Plenty of people haven’t seen all the nominees!
I haven’t watched the Oscars in over a decade, but I do remember how they used to show snippets of the acting performances and of the Best Picture nominees. I always liked that a lot and was really disappointed when it disappeared. I absolutely agree that I would really prefer to see clips at the very least from the nominated movies for ALL categories. Visual effects nominees? Show clips or montages that best highlight the effects from those movies. Costume design? Show a montage of shots of the cool costumes that are why the movie got the nomination. Screenplay? Include a good scene split screen with that portion of the script. I would find all of that far more interesting than silly skits and flat banter.
They used have a theme for the Oscars. Every year they would celebrate a different genre: Westerns, romances, horror, etc. I don’t know why they stopped doing that.
Yeah, the acting clips – including supporting – are where I most often had “wow” moments that made me want to see a film that may not have been up for any major awards.
I’m mostly with all of your suggestions. I LOVE clip heavy shows, and I hate that it comes and goes depending on the year. I like your HBO suggestion….HBO can make it free to access for that night for max viewership opportunity. (I’m assuming that ABC may have some kind of ironclad contract with the Academy, because I don’t understand how they wouldn’t have gone to CBS, NBC, FOX or HBO with the show this year after the ABC demand of pre-prerecording those categories!)I would even go one step further on the songs: I don’t care if NONE of them get live performances. I couldn’t care less, this show is for movie lovers. The songs can go to the Grammys for my money.Maybe a skit at the outset, but, yeah they can go way, way down on those. And, for God’s sake, the banter can’t possibly be more stilted. I don’t need to see Jason Mamoa and Josh Brolin try to be funny….get to the award!I hope someone sees these ideas you have, they are golden!
I’ve been advocating for eliminating the Best Song performances for years but there’s always some people who want them, so I say compromise, do a medley.
Just play a clip of the song from the movie. If it’s the focus of an actual scene, like the one from Encanto this year, play the scene. If it’s an end/opening credits song or otherwise not prominently used in a film scene, play the song over a short clip montage from the film.
See the thing with the Best Song performances is that they need to go whole hog or none at all. Every now and then they’ll say “only 2 of the 5 will be performed” and then once there’s uproar they’ll have all 5.
My personal taste is I just don’t like medleys either. But it could be a compromise to what they have now.
ABC has a deal with them through 2028, and its like the Olympics, sucks more every year.
Does HBO still do free weekends? Make it that weekend.
“1. Move the show away from the big three networks.”And keep going until you run out of broadcast and streaming options.
These are great suggestions. I’d also love it if some actors did some live acting. Like, say they aired the lifetime achievement award. Gather a group of actors to pre-record or give a 2-3 minute live performance— a sort of rundown of the award recipient’s greatest hits. That’d be entertaining.
The running time issues is complicated. The telecast is the ONE time of the year that the Academy gets to make some money. They do this by selling ad space. They have no motivation to produce a shorter show with less ad space… until that running time starts to tank the whole operation and no one wants to buy ads anymore. They need to find out how to balance things so that everyone (i.e. themselves AND viewers) walks away happy.
Huh. I like the comedy bits as long as they’re funny. I’d rather watch that than A Salute to Shoulder Pads Through The Ages. They need a way to break up names-speech-names-speech and personally I’d rather see live stuff than clips. I like the idea of a medley of the songs though.
I’d rather see live stuff
A light bulb moment. They could just have the actors come up on stage and recreate a scenes from the various movies. I could be like A- lister dinner theater.
The song performances are the only good part of the show.
For me the song performances are like the halftime show at sporting events. That’s usually when I go to the bathroom.The problem for me, most of the time the songs suck. And they’re better within the context of the movie, like most of the songs nominated for James Bond Movies, which are usually played against the cool opening credits scene.
Halftime shows are also the only good part of football games. *shrug*
I watch the Oscars every year, and the only performance I consider truly memorable was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “are we really supposed to believe they’re not fucking?” rendition of Shallow.OK, maybe Robin Williams singing Blame Canada.
Couldn’t agree more. With few exceptions there are very few oscar winning songs I really like, though the theme song to Shaft is one.
3. This is from Edgar Wright: eliminate the banter between the presenters.Some of the banter goes on too long for sure, but it would be weird to have super famous people come out and simply read a list of names. They need to at least have a sentence or two of setup.
You’re right but they need to fix it.
Re the Original Songs: They aren’t good songs!!! No one wants to hear them!!! There are always some wonderful songs in films every year, and for some reason they are passed over for these bland, forgettable, harmless pastiches. Please stop nominating crap. But so long as they are crap, GET RID OF THE PERFORMACES. Or, make it like American Idol, and only the winner gets to perform. They get handed the award and a microphone and have to perform while crying through the melody while confetti rains down on them and Ryan Seacrest stands in the shadows slowly nodding out of time.
“Or, make it like American Idol, and only the winner gets to perform. They get handed the award and a microphone and have to perform while crying through the melody while confetti rains down on them and Ryan Seacrest stands in the shadows slowly nodding out of time.”
This is the way.
Except for Lose Yourself. That song is great.(Of course it also wasn’t performed at the Oscars when it won)
Great list!
And each nomination needs to get longer clips as well. That is, unless they want the actors up there acting out the scene live…Also, I’d like them to show a behind the scenes clip that shows the winning visual effects being worked on. Whether it’s CGI renders, makeup, artwork etc, I honestly haven’t watched the Oscars in a few years so I have no idea if this is done already.
I think they should change the format of the “the nominees are…” segments, with a short prepared video featuring an expert (i.e. not too fawning) talking over clips to briefly explain and demonstrate what makes each of the nominees particularly worthy in this category. This would be especially useful for the technical awards where the audience (and, let’s face it, most of the voting academy members outside of those disciplines… and some within them) have little or no clue what makes for good editing, sound, cinematography, etc. Rather than accept a lack of interest in those awards, why not take the opportunity to spend a little bit of time educating the audience on why they should care?
Agree with all but your number 2 point. The Songs, offer a nice 2-3 min break up, a small jolt or revitalisation to ones focus where they are presented with something entirely new instead of just talk.The Oscars should be 4-5 hours or how ever long they need to be.
All good points. I’d add one: I like movies so I don’t care if the ceremony is 4 hours long.If the Academy truly wanted to highlight the artistry behind the Motion Picture Arts, use the opportunity to educate people. Take Best Sound/Best Sound Mixing. Explain to the audience what goes into the criteria and why the nominee won the award.
Having three hosts really seems like a step in the wrong direction after the previous misstep of having no host. Sykes or Hall could’ve handled hosting on their own, and even Schumer would’ve been ehhhh okay, but having all three hamstrung their talents. I think they need to look more at people who have experience and are well-regarded performing on stage as well as in movies. You need someone who actually knows how to play to the back of the room, keep up the pacing, and step aside for the sake of the show to make the Oscars feel like a real Hollywood shindig. That might not always be someone everyone knows, but I think they’ll find more success looking at someone who fits those parameters than just trying to find a weird balance of name recognition and not-getting-an-award-tonight. That or Hugh Jackman does it every year.
“We don’t care about movie soundtracks, soooo boringggg right? – but we definitely want to make sure there’s enough time for Everyone’s Favorite Amy Schumer to tell a “Don’t Look Up…the reviews!” pun.” – The Academy
Let me raise that to @.04:1. I would go even further and open it up to streaming services (ABC has one of those, right?). In addition to allowing it to be streamed live, I would also archive it on the platform, both as the unedited broadcast (possibly with chapter heading) and chopped into smaller portions (a separate video for each category and maybe some compilation videos). If they want to make the archived content subscriber-only, they could do that, but it could impact the central mission (making people give a damn about the Oscars).2. I can’t say I wholly agree, but it might be one of the first time-suck I would sacrifice, after skits, so you may have a point.3. If it manages to be locally-sourced, organic banter, I have no problem with it (to a point), but the pre-written, stilted banter is just the worst.4. I tend to agree. Or put them out as videos before the show to build anticipation. It’s always shitty when one of the winners from the smaller categories gets played off as they are getting to an emotional part of their acceptance speech. John Stewart is likely never going to get another chance to host, but I did appreciate that he let an award winner back on stage to finish out her speech that had been so rudely interrupted (IIRC…I may be misremembering).5. 100%. The Oscars should make people feel like they missed out not by not seeing a movie. And there’s no need to limit to this year’s movies!Bonus round:6. I know this is unlikely given the state of movie theaters these days, but I would love to see the streaming services with nominees make a bigger push to get their movies up on the big screen, at least for a short period. I believe they technically have to have it screening in at least one theater to qualify–that may have changed–so why not try and make a bigger push?
Agreed with most of your points, but the song performances are regularly among the highlights of the telecast. Can you imagine the Oscars without those performances of “Blame Canada,” “Lose Yourself,” “Falling Slowly,” “Skyfall,” “Let it Go,” “Glory,” “Shallow”…? Music is integral to film and should be rightly honored.
Yeah I always lose that argument. For every person like me that doesn’t care for the song performances, there’s usually 10 people that love them.
I said beforehand that Best Editing was much more important than any of the Best Short awards. But Linklater’s approach would just lead to even lower ratings and less relevance. People will watch live TV for live musical performances, which works for awards focused on music, but that’s not the Oscars. Lifetime Achievement awards are very different, even if the Oscars are probably the best place for them.
Yep. You said that. And that’s definitely an opinion.
That’s the paradox of this whole thing in my eyes: maybe the audience is declining and the awards are fading in relevance, but they have a built-in audience by default: people who love da moviesh or want to see fame-os. By going through a yearly public meltdown as the leadup to each ceremony is marred by disappointing and questionable decisions, the Academy is shedding the people who watch the Oscars because they just love da moviesh. They act like the times are changing and nobody cares, but they keep alienating the people who do care, in the name of wooing the people who don’t. And I bet some of the apathetic would return if the show embraced its inability to please the mainstream.
We all love…da moviesh.
I’d say the most obvious solution is to keep the show brisk and don’t skimp on the clips. Not showing segments from the BP nominees last year was just weird. Linklater is spot-on that plenty of people are going to crap on the show’s every existence every year, so why bother paying the first bit of attention to their incessant complaining? The audience may be declining, but that’s a secular phenomenon that is not going to be reversed by changing the show to make it…what, exactly? You play to the crowd you have, and perhaps draw BACK some previous fans of the ceremony who have been turned off by the changes made, again, in efforts to attract people who weren’t going to watch anyway.
Exactly – there’s a museum near me going through the same poor crisis management. They have a great collection of paintings and artifacts that art-loving tourists and locals come see, but numbers are declining overall. Do they react by doubling down on what they do best and understanding what their core audience wants? No: instead they are increasingly shelving/neglecting and even selling their existing core collection and stretching for a new audience of hypebeasts and kids by doing trend-chasing exhibits on like Kanye’s shoes and the costumes of Harry Potter.
So now their old audience doesn’t want to go because it is no longer a serious art museum…and that new audience never came because they don’t care about museums and never will… so now their numbers have crashed even harder.
The obvious answer for your museum, alcohol. People will line up in their nice clothes and pay out the wazoo for a night of wine and art.
See also: The Democratic Party
“Hardcore” just seems like a very strange way to describe an awards show. I see your few examples: they don’t tell me much. My first thought about “hardcore” didn’t in any way conjure something like an awards show, so…..Showing and telling the audience about editing. Ok, but does the show want to be a series of micro-documentaries? The people who create the show have to decide what, exactly, kind of show they want to make. It can only be/do so much. A ‘show’ is usually about The Entertainment, and (imo) people watching don’t want to think too much. I don’t watch, but it has nothing to do with the problems most people seem to have with it.
I support his proposal for a naked Oscars.
Butt-Fucked Sluts Go Nuts 9 was outrageously overlooked by the Academy.
I know, planehugger1!Fred Olen Ray really brought so much intensity and eloquence to the anal sex scenes, too – and Linnea Quigley’s and Traci Lords’s enthusiastic moans and groans…?
Meryl Streep, eat your heart out!
Traci Lords? Is this a lifetime achievement award??
I expect they’re pretty proud of that one Oscar for sound editing, though.
The win for Costume Design was a bit puzzling.
Yeah. We all have a tendency to assume that the stuff we like would also be broadly popular, so it’s not surprising that Linklater’s suggestions for the Oscars are things Linklater would be very excited by. But the Oscars have never been for “hardcore” movie buffs — the tastes of both viewers and the Academy itself are pretty middle-brow.
“The Oscar’s have never been for hard-core movie buffs”? If that were true, then movies that could be summarized as “love letters to Old Hollywood” wouldn’t be sure-fire Oscar Bait
“Love of Old Hollywood” isn’t necessarily the same thing as a nerdy obsession with filmmaking itself — you know, people who actually know what a gaffer is and what production units are and the like.
There are actually several award ceremonies for adult entertainment where “hardcore” would be appropriate. Disappointingly, most of their awards ceremonies are quite tame and mimic mainstream ones, though.
Showing and telling the audience about editing. Ok, but does the show want to be a series of micro-documentaries?Not only that, but won’t the people who watched last year remember whatever lessons you imparted previously? If the goal is to cater to serious movie lovers, then you don’t need to give them the same spiel about what a cinematographer does every year.
““Hardcore” just seems like a very strange way to describe an awards show.”
Only if you’re an idiot.
Instead of a host, what if each year, the ceremony has a new, high profile director overseeing it all? That excites me more, the idea that each new ceremony could/will have an entirely different flavor, based upon the stewardship of that particular person. The Academy Awards, produced by…Greta Gerwig, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Steven Spielberg, Shonda Rimes, Ryna Coogler…the skies the limits. Really make the show a reflection of the state of the art, by choosing one of its best practitioners to shepherd it. Instead of trying to make minor/major adjustments each year in the hope that it’ll some how fix it things, each year just reinvent the whole thing from scratch with someone knew behind the wheel. Maybe one year Scorsese would do it and it would be a love letter to Old Hollywood, and another maybe Linklater does it, and it’s a more bold and formalistic endeavor emphasizing the crafts. Honestly, the last thing the Oscars needs now is formula. They need reinvention, and not just one time, but every time.
And this year’s Oscars will be directed by… last year’s winner for Best DirectorThat could be fun
85% of them would never want to, which would ruin the point of a system like that.
How long would the 2005 Oscars have been if Peter Jackson had directed them? They might still be going on.
It would’ve been broadcast for 5 hours every day for 3 months.
“How are they doing a live show in slow motion?! Why is everyone crying???”
That’s about as exciting as being 15 and still having to read the 4 Questions at Passover.
You saying that you wanted this year’s Oscars to be entirely in Korean? Have it be a frigging K-Drama or something?
We need a David Lynch Oscars.
I’d take it one step further; best actor/actress decide on the presenters.For absolute chaos, the winner of the previous year’s category decides the nominees for the next year.
I think this kind of confuses what a director does, and particularly what skills are needed to successfully pull off a live broadcast.
Well there’s the switching director who calls cameras and assembles the show live, and then the creative director/producer who orchestrates and coordinates. And you’ve had filmmakers who have done much the same for live events. Danny Boyle, for example, directed the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. Same idea.
Directing feature films and directing live events are a completely different skill set, though. I think Danny Boyle is really an exception in that he can do both well; I wouldn’t expect it widely.
There does seem to be a slight bridge between the two though – for example Danny Boyle was artistic director of the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, which was very well-received. Aware it’s not the same as an Oscars ceremony, but still…
Don’t do it as a live broadcast. Pre-record the whole thing, then edit out the boring crap, like watching winners walk to the stage.
I think all the excitement comes from learning who the winners are live.
That’s the conventional wisdom, but I’m skeptical that people wouldn’t prefer a well-constructed that doesn’t go over time every year.
We have some evidence against your theory. NFL games are broadcast live, then the highlights from the game are put together in more slickly produced packages that cut out the boring parts of the game and air later. Far more people watch the initial airing of the game.
Fair point, but what if you didn’t give them the option? Would those people migrate to the pre-recorded version or not watch at all?
Denying people any options but a thing is a strange way to demonstrate that they like that thing better.
That wasn’t really my point. I don’t really understand sports-fan mentality as I don’t care about sports. So, I was just curious whether going the pre-recorded route would really reduce viewership in the absence of other options.In most cases people don’t have the option of choosing. They get what is presented. People are used to the Oscars being a live event, and assume that’s the way it oughtta be, but may find that they would prefer the pre-recorded version if that helped addressed complaints people have about the show.
Are you saying you don’t want to watch Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Winners?
Are you forgetting Steven Soderbergh directed last year’s Oscars? This is how we get Best Actor after Best Picture.
They did kinda try that last year with Soderbergh, but would be nice to see what full creative control in a non-pandemic year would look like: https://www.gq.com/story/oscars-2021-steven-soderbergh-production
maybe i’m in the minority, but i loved the Soderbergh Oscars last year. only a true maniac would choose to shoot a live event in 2.35 and primarily with steadicams but that’s why we love him, yeah? it looked cinematic as hell and maybe more importantly and to your point, completely different. it got rid of the cheap sheen of that ‘live presentation’ look completely. it’s the only awards show i’ve ever seen that seemed to have an actual person with an actual aesthetic vision behind itmaybe it was out of necessity due to the unconventional venue and maybe it’s not what everybody wants to see every year, but it was something
All those potential choices, and they’d probably pull Woody Allen and Roman Polanski instead.
I agree that would be super fun, but I’m also pretty sure that’s the last thing any of those directors would want to spend their Jan-Feb doing (if they even had the time).
Please God give me David Lynch Presents: The Oscars
[As Adam Driver goes up to accept his Oscar]Mystery Man/Presenter: I’ve given you this award before. Don’t you remember? In fact, I’m at your house right now, staring at it. CALL ME.
Spoilers: the mystery man is John Oliver.
Live TV directing has little in common with cinema. It would be like asking Scorsese to direct the Super Bowl.
The audience at home should win things just for watching.
They could just stop caring about ratings if they turned into a non-profit and explored alternate sources of funding — though I doubt that would even be necessary.Big picture: they’d still be able to produce the show in some form, and they could aim it squarely at members, and fans of moviemaking.
I don’t know about its profit status (I suspect it’s “for”), but that’s entirely the goal of their museum.
Ron Howard as host.
The solution is adding Greg Turkington and real movie expertise
The Oscars should feel like a glamorous party the wittiest, coolest, people are invited to and you can watch. So keep the funny hosts. Keep the funny presenters, but make them entertaining. Assume everyone wants to hear a sound effects editor thank his mom. Assume sometimes the sound effects editor will go off script, lecture us about climate change, and the hosts have to roll with it. Get hosts talented enough to do that. Allow the danger of it being a live event to mean something. That happened this year and we’ve been obsessed with it for a week. Drop everything that doesn’t involve MOVIES RELEASED THAT YEAR. Why the hell am I watching a tribute to the Godfather in 2022? Why did poor Seth Macfarlane (underrated host, the problems with the show that year weren’t his fault) have to shill “A Salute to Musicals in General and Chicago in Particular”? That kills the show dead. Play the song nominees, but NO INTERPRETIVE DANCE NO ONE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET CARES. Show the fashion, let’s all pretend this isn’t a work event and half the crowd doesn’t want to be there and are chafing under 10 pounds of foundation and spanx, and let us live the fantasy.
“Why did poor Seth Macfarlane (underrated host, the problems with the
show that year weren’t his fault) have to shill “A Salute to Musicals in
General and Chicago in Particular”?”Because the producers of the Oscar that year had worked on Chicago and wanted to congratulate themselves.
“Why did poor Seth Macfarlane (underrated host, the problems with the show that year weren’t his fault) have to shill “A Salute to Musicals in General and Chicago in Particular”?”
Probably because he’s well-known to be a pretty good singer.
Academy Member 1: “We need a bigger audience of regular folks – more skits, comedy, populist movies, it should be a big dumb fun show with huge ratings”Academy Member 2: “No, we’re serious about the movies. This is an industry show and winning an Oscar should mean something. Let’s double-down on the Letterboxd crowd and not sacrifice our legitimacy for trend-chasing.”Da Boss: “You’re both right – let’s do the worst of both worlds! Too pretentious and self-serious for the gen pop crowd, but also eliminate the technical awards and replace then with Amy Schumer in a Spiderman suit, so we lose the cinephiles too. Oh, and it should be way too long for anyone!”
An actor said in an interview (I honestly forget who) that his theory on why the Oscar ratings are declining is that it used to be one of the few places you could see actors out-of-character and now we’re seeing their texts to their exes on the daily. I do think there’s something to that, but that is not something they can ever fix. I think they should just focus on making the awards show the Academy wants to see/attend and either the wiff of sincerity will slowly lure people back or it never does and that’s that. But “chasing clout” as market research tells me the tweens say, just makes a product alienating to all.
Half the audience is leaving because they’re cutting cable or have Netflix to catch up on, and the other half thinks everyone in Hollywood is harvesting infant blood.
I was thinking the same thing, looking at those ratings numbers. You’re losing younger viewers to cord cutting, likely leaving you with a more conservative crowd that doesn’t want to hear another political lecture from a high school dropout. Quite the conundrum.
It’s absurd. Only some people in Hollywood are harvesting infant blood. A lot of people there are on a no-hemoglobin diet. It’s trendy — most of them aren’t really hemoglobin-intolerant at all.
Have you tried the new Impossible Infant Blood? It’s plant-based, but you can barely tell – tastes just like real adrenochrome!
i heard it’s just corn syrup with red food colouring
Here’s what you do:
1. Put it on streaming.
2. Add six more categories—not hard to do
3. Cut the skits. No one gives a shit about the skits.
4. MORE MOVIE MONTAGES!!!!
5. LONGER OSCAR CLIPS!!!
I have some: Best Movement Design, which would include stunt, dance, and other movement. I’d love to make Dance/Movement Choreography separate from Stunt, but I don’t know that enough movies come out every year with enough interesting dance/movement work that isn’t stunts to make it its own category. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to limit the category to ONLY stunt design.Best Voice Acting, which is underrated work that isn’t covered in the current acting categories and which should absolutely get recognized.Best Soundtrack Design (or whatever you’d want to call it), for all the movies that have an awesome curated playlist of music soundtracking it. (There used to be a Best Original Song Score category that might be similar to this, but I’m not sure.) It would be where such films as those made by Sophia Coppola, Edgar Wright, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino would shine. Effectively, it’s an award for making a kickass mixtape while also using it to optimum effect to enhance your film (i.e. great needle drops). It would be one of those categories where you can have anywhere from 3 to 5 nominees depending on whether enough movies have good enough quality soundtracks.
Ive been wanting a stunt category for years. If the Oscar’s truly want to make it more interesting to the average movie goer and bring in the audiences that only watch summer blockbusters, this is an avenue to truly acknowledge the skill it takes to coordinate a scene of that nature. Stunt Coordinators and stuntpeople, bringing more awareness of the danger they face and how little prestige they get from the general audience despite how their work helps a film succeed, and often drives the box office results.
Best VA is loooooong overdue. I would even say “best VA casting” for a conglomerate and “best voice acting” for an individual.
Or to tag on to another response to my comment, add the following: Best Voice Acting (a genderless category) and Best Ensemble, which could include voice only casts as well as live action casts. (And if after a few years, it seems like they need to break up the ensemble awards to two different ones, do that.)
Dovetailing with your Best Movement Design category, as well as the Best Voice Acting category, there should absolutely be a Best Mocap Performance as well. If for no other reason than to finally get Andy Serkis some official recognition. But given the nature of that type of performance, it would usually also get a couple of the “fan-favorite” movies into the mix.
Best Ensemble is a category in many other awards shows that would be great at the Oscars – a perfect fit for movies like Knives Out, Ocean’s 11, Breakfast Club, etc.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the issue seems to be:The Academy has a TV deal until 2028 with ABC that was last re-upped in 2016Viewership has declined by more than 50% since 2016The Academy made 83% of their annual revenue in 2016 off of the Academy Awards and related events (can’t find more recent) and their biggest expense was putting on the AwardsSeems like if viewership stays down, the next TV deal will be way less lucarative and will result in the Awards themselves having a much lower budget and being less glitzy and glamorous.So I don’t know if this suggestion fixes much of anything. I don’t know if there is a way to fix the situation at all – people have tons of options for what to watch these days and a 3-4 hour program of celebrities giving themselves awards isn’t that compelling.
Award show viewership has declined sharply in the exact years where our society has become increasingly uneasy. I’m shocked.
Beyond people having other things to watch, they have other awards shows to watch. The Golden Globes (and to a lesser extent the SAG Awards) have crept up as headline-grabbing entertainment, in no small part because they’re loose and drunk. On top of that, the monoculture has moved away from the kinds of middlebrow movies that tend to get Academy Awards. I’d forgotten CODA came out this year, or which streaming service it debuted on.
I still don’t think I know anyone with Apple+. If I do, then none of them ever talk about anything that’s on it. This comment will look dumber if it turns out CODA is on some other platform but I seem to remember learning about it being on Apple+ last week. It’s called Apple+ right? Not Apple TV? Is that a different product?
Not so much the Golden Globes any more, MiFroChi….
I stopped watching the Oscars after I wasn’t able to stream it easily (I’m in Toronto, and the last time I checked was a few years ago; maybe it’s different now).
Deciding the budget based on the TV contract seems a bit silly. They’re sitting on piles of cash, they can afford to go a little in the red for a ceremony if it means potentially bringing back viewers.
The Oscars is a victim of its own branding more than anything else. It’s really no different than any of the other awards. It’s arbitrary and in a lot of ways just a popularity contest of industry insiders. How many of the Best Picture winners of the past 20 years would most people disagree with, even just working within the list of nominees? But now they’ve built themselves up as this be-all-end-all, ultimate award and are suffering the consequences of that fact. They’re really just an elite clique giving kudos to themselves. They don’t want to admit this because it devalues what they’re pretending to be, but at the same time, they crave popular validation (and financial support) for their little statues. It’s an awards ceremony so that professionals in the field can honor other professionals in the same field for their work. When you put it like that, it sounds no different from the person who gets the Mary Kay Salesperson of the Year Award because it really is no different.So, yeah, I am inclined to agree more with Linklater than the ideas to make the Oscar broadcast more “fun.” The People’s Choice Awards are for popular shit. Lean in to what you really are and stop pretending that you should be popular.
Yeah but those observations have pretty much always been the case. You sound like one of the people Linklater is talking about, who isn’t going to watch regardless of how the show is reconfigured.
On the flipside, though, most of what the Oscars have been doing over the last few years have been designed to chase pretty much exactly those kind of people, and they haven’t seen a lot of roaring success. Judging from the viewing figures that have been seen around the place, this year they had to witness a major movie star slap the shit out of a comedian to get any kind of serious boost in the ratings, and much as we might joke about their desperation for people’s attention I doubt that sort of thing is practical to either arrange or enact on an ongoing basis. At this point, there just doesn’t seem to be a significant base of people who probably would watch the Oscars but for whatever reason just haven’t had the right combination of flashy gimmicks and earnest cinephile appeal to appeal to them. It kind of seems like the Academy has two realistic options at this point — either go full populist, with Marvel movies getting Best Picture nods and all the “fun” bright noises and shiny things they can cram in there, or just admit that it’s basically a kind of niche industry conference of ultimately limited appeal to people who aren’t insiders or dedicated cinephiles, and tailor it accordingly.
Viewership for last year’s show covering 2020 releases was definitely damaged by the fact that there were almost no movies to include. I think most people watch because they have some rooting interest in films they’ve seen and enjoyed, so taking that away reduces general interest. So I wonder how much of this year’s ratings situation was a continuation of the industry finally digging out. I’m not sure we’ll know until at least the 2023 version.
The Oscars want to have it both ways. They want to keep being The Award™©®, but they also don’t want to have to substantially change how they consider the awards. The reason a lot of people don’t watch is because they see a list of movies nominated that they probably haven’t seen and may not even have heard of. For the Oscars to get more people interested, they’d have to have more popular movies nominated, but that would also mean dropping their current artistic standards, which they don’t seem to be willing to do (and some would say they shouldn’t).I would also argue there is definitely some unfair snobbery towards genre films. Some of the most interesting filmmaking work is often done in horror (especially a lot of acting and directing), but horror rarely gets any awards attention, which is entirely a bias problem. It’s not super common that other genres flicks get awards love, but when they do, they rarely win the major categories and are relegated to technical awards or maybe one token smaller major category (e.g. Jordan Peele winning Best Original Screenplay for Get Out). It’s funny how many Best Movies of 2010s lists listed Mad Max: Fury Road as the best movie of the decade (https://www.avclub.com/how-fury-road-became-the-movie-of-the-decade-1839965577), but the Oscars certainly didn’t think so, choosing to give Spotlight the statue.My sort of rambling point is that I feel like the majority of potential viewers have one reason or another not to tune in, and it may take more than just retooling the ceremony format to fix it. A lot don’t tend to care about the nominees, and those that do often feel like they’re not giving the award to the right one. It’s driving away people who like populist movies AND people who enjoy the more artsy fare the Oscars tend to celebrate. Not saying they always get it wrong. They just often make middling, safe, boring choices, which isn’t interesting. (It’s funny how their adding ranked choice voting was supposed to solve that, but all it seemed to do was reinforce it.)
I’m somewhat duplicating a comment I made above – that pretty much all there were in 2021 and to a lesser extent this year were smaller films. Plus miserablism (yes I made that up) seems to be critically popular right now. Thus Nomadland as best picture. But I agree about the types of movies that are being nominated. Action franchises are the biggest box office winners, and are VERY expensive to make so you get crowding out of mid-budget films. Well-constructed stand-alone films are derided as dad movies. The only nominee last year that could remotely be marketed as a crowd-pleaser was Promising Young Woman, for crying out loud. This year was better in that regard, so I’m hoping we’ll stay on an upward trend. It’s still too early to tell.
There is also the case in which Hollywood changed but the Academy didn’t. I don’t know if you followed Tom Breihan’s Popcorn Champs column on here (https://www.avclub.com/film/features/the-popcorn-champs), but there was a time in the 1960s where popular movies were winning Best Picture (or at least being frequently nominated for it). It’s not that the movies being honored were less artful than they are now. It’s more that major studios’ fault stopped investing into those kinds of movies. Some might argue that it’s because tastes changed, but I wonder if that gets into a chicken vs. egg debate. (Did people start seeing more dumbed down action fare because that was what was being promoted to them or did dumbed down action fare become the norm because that’s what more people were going to see?) There is also a strong argument to be made that capitalism drives studios to try to duplicate game changing successes, but that they often fail to properly understand what it really was about those movies that made them so great. (See Die Hard, Jaws, and Star Wars for good examples of movies that inspired massive paradigm shifts in popular movies, not necessarily for the better artistically. Good examples of the kind of issues I’m talking about are covered in this video.)
A Best Ensemble/Cast Award
I don’t see how the “hardcore” Oscars suggested by Linklater is in any way “similar to how the Grammys have steered almost entirely away from presenting awards at all in favor of a show that’s really just a string of performances.” If anything, both the Oscars and Grammys are doing much the same thing right now — moving away from live award presentations, because viewers find them boring. If the Grammys are working better, that’s largely because the thing they’re celebrating is easier to depict during an awards show. A person who has never seen BTS can watch a performance of a full song and say, “That was pretty cool,” whereas it’s not like the Oscars can show everyone The Power of the Dog during the broadcast.
I don’t know that awards presentations are boring in and of themselves. But the fact is, the Grammies turning their show into a concert is both smart and doable (and pretty much what they’ve done all along). The comparable thing would be having Oscar nominees do live performances of scenes from movies they’ve been nominated for…which sounds impractical, but just writing it out, I’ve learned it’s something I’d like to see them try, just because it would be strange and different. Still, it would be weird for the ultimate celebration of cinema to be a live TV presentation of, essentially, a miniature stage play.
Another thing running under the current of all these declining ratings and ruminations on “why” is that award shows and sports are the leisures of a comfortable society. We aren’t a comfortable society and haven’t been in 4, 5, 10, 15 years. And we’re only getting less comfortable.
Awards shows are fucking dumb.
Squid Game!
Thunderdome.
Lisa needs braces!
Oscars jumped the shark when they ballooned the best picture category.
It seems like the most obvious solution is to have two awards shows. You put the celeb-fest Oscars on ABC and it is just awards for acting, directing, best song, best picture, best animated feature, the honorary award that Sam Jackson got and maybe screenplay. You make it 2 and a half hours and make the 30 minutes after it an after-show or give that timeslot to a series to make it the kind of big deal like the show after the super bowl. And instead of comedy skits throw in like behind the scenes making of featurettes about the nominated movies to actually promote them.Then you have the separate movie geek Oscars. It’s going to get fewer viewers so put it on TCM or YouTube or Prime Video. Then give out all the rest of the awards including the science and tech awards. Maybe add some new ones too like the best stunt that has been suggested for years, or best voice acting performance or best casting or best trailer. I would be way more curious to see the award for best trailer than best live action short.
Or, two words: Puppy Oscars.
“And the good boy is…”
Why the hell was Samuel L. Jackson’s honorary Oscar not in the main show? Those awards certainly used to be.I agree. Unfortunately, the Academy and ABC, which it has a deal with, are greedy and want the ratings.I think they should absolutely make NO effort to pander whatsoever and make it all about the winners and the awards. Fuck all the other bullshit.In 5-10 years, it’ll just be on Youtube. Go back to when it was a private party that wasn’t even televised.
The Oscars are at their best when they give the viewers more appreciation for what each category really means. I remember one ceremony that, when listing the screenplay nominees, showed and narrated a page of the script while simultaneously showing that scene. Or when the costume design and production design nominees would show the designers’ sketches, and then the same costumes/sets from the film.And yes, please bring back giving the Lifetime Achievement awards to the recipient at the ceremony. Watching a sizzle reel of a Hollywood legend’s career followed by a heartfelt speech with no walk-off music is way better than some dumb “hey, we’re all dressed like characters in recent movies” skit.
Free advice for the Academy: You know how millions of non-football fans watch the Super Bowl every year for just the friggin’ commercials? Work with the studios so major summer tentpoles are dropping trailers all night long during the Oscars. Viewership would jump dramatically if the audience was getting first looks at the next Marvel/Mission Impossible/dinosaur/alien invasion movies coming out.
You know, Roman Pilot?You may be onto something….
Only if they can somehow prevent those from getting released onto the web for at least a little while afterward.
All that has to happen is let the movies the general public care about get nominated again, like it used to be. No one cares about the activist films that now get nominated and win. They want to see movies they love (and will watch over and over again) receiving awards.
Honestly there’s a very simple solution for how to improve the Oscar’s, make it into an episode of The Eric André Show.
The best way to improve it is the suggestion I’ve made for years: give me $50 and as many sandwiches as I can stuff in my pockets, and I’ll have everyone in and out in an hour, a tight 75 tops.
I agree, but there should be a change in the way the movies are voted on too, because now the Oscars skew towards feelgood movies a lot of people like, but nobody loves instead of more outspoken or adventurous movies.And although I am not an American, I would make it a celebration of the American movie industry. Nothing wrong with e.g. Parasite, but there are international film festivals like Cannes and Venice (and of course the Korean movie industry’s award) for that. The Oscars are the awards of the American Academy.
They’re voted on by members. How do you propose to change the whims of individual members?
Award shows are so antiquated. Why sit through a 3-hour telecast (i don’t sit through anything for 3 hours. who does?) when you can read the results the next day and watch clips if there are any worthy of watching?
I sat through Avengers: Endgame — that was three hours.And unlike the Oscars, I considered it time well-spent.
But you could always read the results the next day, back to print news days. I think the show’s producers need to accept that part of the audience is gone forever, so give the people tuning in what they expect from the Academy Awards. The best they can do at this point is shallow out the attrition rate.
Weird place to flex that you didn’t see “The Batman,” but cool.
You want to be more hardcore? Have the nominees duke it out on stage to decide who wins the Oscar.
I honestly thought his pitch was going to be, “I’ve got one word for you: Rotoscoping!”
the change that is still garnering controversy, even when it ended up making no real difference on the actual night, is the Academy’s decision to bump a handful of categories from the live broadcast. (The winners were shown and made speeches, they just didn’t do it live.)NGL, that worked really well for me and I hope they continue doing that.
It sure beats waiting for the technical-award winners to climb down from the cheap seats.
The Oscars needs more – and I cannot stress this enough – full penetration.
I’m trying to think of changes they could make to get me interested in rich people giving each other handies and…maybe if they paid me?
somehow I think they’ll survive without you
Eh, apparently they need more viewers to survive or something.
Wait, you might be on to something: what if the handies weren’t just metaphorical? Would you watch then?“You’ve got to tune in! Dame Judy Dench is going to thank Michael Fassbender! He isn’t even in the movie with her, but she wants to thank him anyway!”
Ooohh so you’re saying instead of just slaps we get some of the ol’ slap ‘n tickle? That might work, that just might work indeed…
Cut the skits and banter. Just have one of our myriad late night hosts do 10 minutes of lightly roasting the nominees at the top of the show and then go right from one category to another. If you want Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock to come onstage together to present best cinematography that’s fine, but just have them read the nominees as clips showing why there were nominated play and then open the fucking envelope. The show seems to think that every category aside from best film/best/director/best actor/actress needs a jokey intro and banter to keep the audience interested, but that shit is so cringe it hurts to watch, and it contributes to why the show is so unnecessarily long.
Personally I feel like they should lean into the whole Flash thing and add more populist categories, then deliberately troll people by picking alternate winners (even if the polls themselves don’t get bombed by Snyder fans for example)What I’m saying is that the outrage from people getting mad that the “Fine we’ll acknowledge the MCU Award” (because let’s be real we all know that’s what it was) didn’t go to an MCU film was delicious and I want more.
The Academy isn’t a meaningful organisation, the Academy Awards aren’t actually prestigious, stop it.
Start the show at 7 instead of 8 and more of the east coast will watch til the end.
No speeches, other than to say, “Thank you.”Or, send winners to the stage via catapult.
Richard Linklater is a know-nothing nobody who don’t do nothin’ good for no one! You wanna fix the Oscars? You listen to yer dear ol’ Pops:1) Movies not only need to be better, they need to be louder. Award-winning movies are lost in the noise of other better movies that are totally in my face with their outrageous behavior across all social platforms. How the hell am I going to appreciate the subtleties of “Drive My Car” or “Worst Person in the World” when I am constantly being reminded by “Jackass Forever” that it exists, and I should watch it? 2) Hosts need to explode. Period.3) Get rid of the red carpet, replace it with a nice long-running shag.4) Give the broadcast rights TO THE MOVIE THEATERS. The Oscars are about celebrating our biggest form of entertainment? Put ‘em right where they belong. That way, it will free up the broadcast networks to air more shows with Tim Allen.5) Instead of a sad-ass “In Memorium” segment, just have a running clip montage of movies that weren’t nominated in their year, and go beyond the recent hits (No more references to hot movies like “G.I. Jane.”) — and it should be called “You ever see…?” and it just shows the title cards. And people clap when they see titles they remember. This way, more people will run out to their local Family Video to rent “Meet the Deedles.”
The Academy is a non-profit that exists to promote the interests of giant media conglomerates, why do the ratings matter at all? Produce a feed and give it to every streaming platform that wants to broadcast it live.
The Academy used to fund itself primarily through sales of a published directory of its membership. In the internet age, that’s all but useless. The Oscar broadcast is the only real cash flow they have left.
The Oscars television show is about making money, that’s the entirety of it’s reason for being on TV. The only way to make money on ad-supported TV is to get more viewers, and that means ‘pandering’, to use the words of a director of small films that aren’t overly concerned with making money.
Yes, ratings are down, but they still dominate the competition on the night they air. The overwhelming majority of viewers want to see the celebrities (actual celebrity combat was a bonus), and couldn’t give a shit about video editing. Video editing is vital to the film industry, and should be awarded, but that doesn’t mean it makes for good TV.
Then the show should just be an hour of hardcore porn and explosions.FFS, I get the “blah blah ratings blah” argument but try for a *little* fucking nuance, yeah?And “video editing”??? Come on, man.
If the Academy wants more viewers, have Howard Stern host. You may hate him, but he is a draw. You’d get more viewers to tune in than have watched in a few decades.
Scott Feinberg of THR has some ideas, I really like #10.
10 Suggestions to Save the Film Academy and the Oscars – The Hollywood Reporter
Regarding clips, you know those huge trailers that people put together at the end of the year that includes EVERY movie from that particular year, that’s usually like 5 minutes or more long and has several different songs in it, and gets posted on youtube, and has millions of views, and every site that talks about movies imbeds it or links to it, and everyone thinks its awesome? The Oscars needs two of those. One to show the movies that were released the previous year and are being recognized during that Oscars show AND one that has clips of all the upcoming movies, all the blockbusters, all the Oscar bait movies, and all the movies in between that are coming in the upcoming year. As Scott Feinberg on THR says, instead of the Superbowl, make the Oscars the the place where new trailers are dropped, that’s bound to get people watching.
Maybe they can start by rewatching past successful ceremonies, such as the rightly lauded one hosted by Hugh Jackman in 2009? This isn’t some big mystery – show clips, honor your legacy (was there even any mention of any media pre-Godfather during this year’s ceremony? Film is over a century old! Acknowledge its rich history!), and focus on the craft and artistry. Bring back the number of the ceremony in the name of the show – the generic branding of just “the Oscars” completely disavows a legacy nearing 100 years.
The problem is who the nominate and that’s why no one cares. The Irishman did not deserve to get nominated for anything but got nominated for a bunch of stuff because Martin Scorsese while better films like Midsommar didn’t get nominated for anything. However you feel about Awkwafina she put in a great performance in The Farewell, better than most the people nominated and she didn’t even get nominated. I had to look up how that Oscar race was because I couldn’t remember anyone. It’s just a lot of silliness for something that is so political they can’t even fake it that it’s not.
The Irishman did not deserve to get nominated for anything
Yes, the problem is that subjectivity exists….Like… I get your frustration and I’ve had similar feelings when films or artists I’ve liked have been “overlooked” but the nominees are a matter of Academy opinion. The winners and losers are a matter of Academy opinion. Pretending that other people not sharing your standards is the reason those people are failing in the popularity contest of ratings is just… bleh. Bleh, I say!
I know subjectivity exists that really wasn’t my point. If they want young people to care about the Oscars they are going to have to pick films that they care about. If they want to keep giving participation nominations to Martin Scorsese for being Martin Scorsese well….you become a thing no one cares about.
“…at least partially because “usually, the person would die the next year.” Except David Lynch. That mf will never die
If the first Hardcore Lifetime Achievement Oscar doesn’t go to Annette Haven I don’t know what else to tell you.
Probably an unpopular idea because sentiment always wins out over professionalism, but I would suggest only having presenters with the presence and focus to read their lines without stumbling or mumbling. If you want to honor film legends, honor them, don’t make them perform live. And if Harrison Ford or whoever doesn’t seem into being a presenter, don’t ask them to do it. There are plenty of sharp performers in Hollywood who can feign enthusiasm for the couple minutes it takes to present an award.
Maybe ….just stop doing them.Watching hollywood smell its own farts for three hours is just….pointless.