Salma Hayek and the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sid Ganis announce the 79th Oscar nominations.
Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images
Wednesday’s announcement that the beautiful married women Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas will be presenting the Oscar nominations on Monday morning was received mainly with a barrage of treatises on the relative levels of fame and prestige of the duo. Are they worthy enough? actors being so closely associated with Oscar’s adjacency, or are they just the two most photogenic faces willing to appear on camera at 5:00 pm PT on a Monday, the morning after daylight saving time? But those are not the important considerations. Or they are just secondary considerations. As the world’s Priyankas and Nicks are asked to put on a little zazz (™ The prom 2020) on the morning of the Oscar nomination, it is important to collectively regret what we missed while the Academy has strayed so far from the ideal scenario for a morning nomination: the Academy President and an Oscar-winning actress presenting the nominees on a podium in front of some monitors of video. Each evolution of this format has sacrificed tradition and seriousness for an inexpensive shine, and we must take a moment to celebrate its passing.
In the late 1980s, the announcement of Oscar nominations passed through commercial newspapers and was transferred to TV. Broadcast morning programs such as Today and Good Morning America, as well as on the cable, where AND! Having done the event as much as possible at the time, bringing “expert” awards and getting immediate reaction interviews from the nominees, they were – and continue today – a glorified reading of a press release. And as the format of the event for the press remained the same for more than two decades, it gained the brilliance of tradition.
The elements were simple, but very consistent: at the wicked hour of 5:30 am, Pacific time, whoever the Academy president at the time would be joining a Hollywood artist on a podium, in front of a quintet of video screens, and start reading the nominees in the main categories (Photo, Director, all four acting categories, scripts and Foreign Language Films; eventually, Animated Feature joined). Very often, the performer who joined the president of the Academy was an Oscar-winning actress, lending seriousness and glamor to the moment. Anjelica Huston, Shirley MacLaine, Sigourney Weaver, Kathy Bates, Mira Sorvino and Marcia Gay Harden took over the task at one time or another. The dryness of the shape was a feature, not a bug, and allowed small ephemeral things to burst. And if Oscar-obsessed people love anything, it is making ephemeral things a big problem. The way Weaver opened the 76th Oscar press event with a guideline to “hold your hats” (she wasn’t kidding, either, since that year’s ads included shocks like Whale RiderKeisha Castle-Hughes in Best Actress and God’s cityFernando Meirelles in Best Director). The way the press and advertisers gathered at the peanut gallery screamed in approval when Javier Bardem got his first nomination for Before nightfall.
In 2007, announcing the nominees for the best films of 2006, Salma Hayek (not an Oscar winner, but a former nominee for Frida) took the stage and gave what is still the best performance of an actress who read the Oscar nominations in history. There were dramatic pauses, outbursts of joy (like when her best friend Penélope Cruz received the nod for Best Actress for Go back), and an emotional climax full of tears and poignancy when Mexico Pot maze was nominated for Best Foreign Film (immediately followed by a stoic return to stoic stoicism for the final candidate, Canada Water) It was a turning point in Hayek’s bravery, and I propose to you that his intensified air of high drama amid a bureaucratic backdrop would not have been possible in the modern nomination format.
The contemporary history of the Oscar is a story of nervous turning in the hope of preventing erosion of the public. Attempts have been made to add dubious new categories, pack the show with youthful appeal, catch all possible Avengers to be presenters and run out of presenter to make the broadcast as short as possible. Unsurprisingly, the appointment morning stoicism became a target for patches before long. The 2013 announcement saw that year’s host Seth MacFarlane accompanied by Emma Stone for a 10-minute affair that positively groaned under the weight of all the bits, jokes and comedy forced on its captive pre-dawn audience. MacFarlane opened with a monologue, and Stone managed to kill the supporting actor category suspense with a little bit noting each nominee as a previous winner.
The Academy has since stepped back from anything like that year’s live theater, establishing itself in what has been a pre-recorded streaming video presentation hosted by names like Tiffany Haddish, Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae in recent years. And while there should be zero complaints about the talent involved – particularly when discussing the Haddish backspin put in the phrase “Call Me By Your Name” – there is something overly produced and stuffy about the new format. Look no further for evidence than the fact that the most memorable moment in the past ten years of Oscar ads came when they went back to the old format for the 2015 ad: Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, accompanied by Chris Pine (no an actress, but so beautiful!), reading the nominations for Best Photography and misinterpreting Mr turnerDick Pope as Dick Poop.
One of these days, the Academy will end up pulling the trigger for a special indication that airs during prime time. It is almost a certainty. It will be an hour long and will feature six pieces of man on Jimmy Kimmel Street, and the identities of the nominees will be guessed Masked singer–Style by the hosts of In cash. It will be a circus, and we will all hate to watch it, but we will have missed something. A moment like “Dick Poop” only happens once a generation. The devastating “… and fromCanada de Salma HayekWater”It’s a comet shooting in the night sky. These are moments of madness and fabulousness against the backdrop of a morning task. You won’t be able to do that with Priyanka and Nick playing prerecorded pranks on YouTube.