Wacky Oscar Predictions Dept.: Michael Jackson and ... Roland Emmerich?

It's possible that everyone was just hopped-up on a Halloween sugar rush, but it feels like the Oscar silly season has kicked into full gear with some hilariously outlandish new Oscar pundit best-picture predictions.

My Oscar-obsessed colleague Tom O'Neil has put up a post from an anonymous Oscar voter who, after seeing "This Is It" with an enthusiastic scrum of theater patrons, claims that the Michael Jackson documentary will grab an Oscar best-picture nod. (I wonder if that means that Elizabeth Taylor actually sneaked into a theater over the weekend.)  O'Neil also has a batch of goofy forecasts from World Entertainment News Network's Kevin Lewin, who is predicting that both "The Informant" and "Sherlock Holmes" will land best picture nominations, which means either that Lewin is an awfully big Guy Ritchie fan or that Warner Bros. (distributor of both films) is paying for his Internet connection.

But our wackiest Oscar prediction of the week comes from New York Post critic Lou Lemenick, who says that one of the 10 best-picture nominees will be ... "2012," the upcoming end-of-the-world thriller from Roland Emmerich. According to Lemenick, the logic is obvious: "Certainly there is more precedent for a disaster film (and this one is expected to open huge) to be nominated for Best Picture (as 'The Towering Inferno' was) than for 'The Hangover.' " I guess Lemenick likes long shots, since the odds of a Roland Emmerich film being nominated for a best-picture statuette are about as good as Barack Obama deciding to grab a few brews and watch the Academy Awards with Roger Ailes and his pals at Fox News. 

Call me old-fashioned, but this is another good reason why all of our nutty Oscar pundits should be required to actually watch a movie before being allowed to publicly predict its Oscar fortunes.

Hey Lou: Just to make it interesting, I'll put my money where my mouth is. If "2012" gets an Oscar best picture nod, I'll buy the person of your choice a gift subscription to the Post.

Photo: Top, Michael Jackson in "This Is It." Credit: Kevin Mazur / AEG, Getty Images, Associated Press.

The Golden Globes steal the Oscars' thunder

I was talking to a veteran talent agent on the phone this morning when the news arrived that Ricky Gervais had signed on to emcee a high-profile award show. "Ricky's going to host the Oscars?" enthused the agent, who like most agents is on a first-name basis with all the top talent, even the ones his agency doesn't represent. "That's totally brilliant!"

I said the news was slightly different. Gervais was going to host the Golden Globes. There was a moment of thoughtful silence. "That's awful," the agent finally said, a funereal hush in his voice. "For the Globes?" I wondered. "No, for the Oscars," he said. "If Gervais was available, how could they not have gotten him? This is a huge coup for the Globes. This gives them all the heat."  

Until today, the Golden Globes broadcast has always felt vaguely tacky, the award show equivalent of network stunt casting, except that instead of Oprah showing up on "30 Rock," it was the likes of Cher, Melanie Griffith, Madonna, Sharon Stone and Hugh Grant, not to mention Calista Flockhart, all taking home major acting awards. I'm not saying that there haven't been many worthy winners through the years as well, but the Globes have had a hard time shaking their reputation as a Pia Zadora-friendly organization. If I didn't have a professional obligation, I couldn't imagine ever watching the show.

But after hearing that Gervais has signed on to host the show, which airs Jan. 17 on NBC, I'm already setting my TiVo. And if the selection of Gervais is a huge victory for the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which puts on the Globes each year, it's a crushing blow to the Academy Awards, which desperately needs some heat of its own to propel its show back into the must-watch-TV category.

It's a sad commentary on the state of decision-making at the academy that after the Gervais news surfaced, the response from the first insider I spoke to there was: "Ricky who?" It's true that Gervais is by no means a movie star, his films -- like the recent "Invention of Lying" -- rarely making much noise at the multiplexes. But as the creator of the original British TV hit "The Office," along with HBO's "Extras," Gervais has something that dozens of movie stars don't  -- a rabid, cult following and the kind of comedy credibility that has earned him three Golden Globes, two Emmys and seven BAFTA awards, not to mention plenty of sellouts whenever he does a stand-up gig. (His podcast, "The Ricky Gervais Show," is consistently ranked as the most downloaded podcast in the world.)

The academy can poor-mouth Gervais' star power all it wants, but his presence on the Globes -- which hasn't used a host in 15 years -- gives the show instant event status, especially since Gervais' wonderfully cheeky stint as a presenter at the Emmys (where he mocked Steve Carell) promises that he will be a bastion of comic irreverence from the moment he hits the stage.

In an era when TV viewers are already being subjected to an endless parade of forgettable award shows, having a dynamic host makes a huge difference. Gervais won't necessarily make the Globes an instantly credible show -- they'd need to hire Barack Obama to do that -- but he will get a host of people to tune in whose lives might otherwise have been too media-saturated to have made the time to focus on the event.

In fairness to the Oscars, when I did get academy President Tom Sherak on the phone, he was generous in his praise for the competition. "I think it's a great idea for the Globes to have a host," he told me. "I'm certainly going to watch him. It's also good that he's British, because they're such an international organization, so that plays to their strength. Look, everyone wants to laugh, so you have to believe he's a good choice, because having Gervais on board will make it a fun evening."

He wasn't as forthcoming about the academy's pick for its own host, saying the choice was in the hands of the show's new producers, Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman. My own sources say that Hugh Jackman, who was a success last year, especially in terms of presiding over a show that boosted its flagging ratings, is a no-go, with Jackman not wanting to make a return engagement. The Oscar producers are leaning toward a multiple-host format, which would team a pair of hosts who would have different strengths and a different generational appeal.

The rough plan would be to look for hosts who have a strong comedy background as well as Hollywood credibility. Even though these particular candidates aren't available, the academy would love to team someone like Steve Martin with someone like Tina Fey, which would appeal to several disparate audience (and academy) constituencies. Who knows? It might be fun to see two comics with different sensibilities, who could write their own material, handling the emcee duties. 

My dream duo would be Steve Carell and Chris Rock, although Rock probably never will get invited back after his tumultuous 2005 gig, where he insulted poor Jude Law and didn't juice the ratings. Maybe Jack Black would work; his impish antics would mesh nicely with Carell's smoother comic patter. Stephen Colbert would also be a good choice, although he's probably too much of a "TV guy" for the Motion Picture Academy, which still looks down on its small-screen peers. All I can say to the academy is: The choice of Gervais has raised the bar considerably when it comes to award show hosts. It's time the Oscars came up with a bold move of its own.  

Photo illustration of Ricky Gervais by Christopher Sleboda / For The Times. 

   

Do we really have to talk about the Oscars already?

The Dodgers just landed Jim Thome, who'll give the club a pinch hitter with more career home runs than even Manny Ramirez; USC has a new freshman quarterback; and the Lakers are still enjoying their summer vacation -- but, hey, it's already Oscar season, even though the awards don't unfold until next March. All I can say is: Gimme a break, please!

The always frisky Vulture blog has already put up its latest Oscar predictions, even though they admit that they've -- sigh -- barely seen any of the actual best picture contenders. As we all know from the legions of special interest groups who criticize hot-button movies without actually having seen them, it's apparently entirely justifiable to blather on about anything without having any firsthand information, so who am I to judge? My plan is to hang on to some of these early prediction sheets and revive them next February, when we can all see for ourselves whether anyone had a decent accuracy rate.

As for Vulture's best picture picks, they're going with "Bright Star," which they describe as Jane Campion's "poetry-tuberculosis drama"; the Sundance acclaimed coming-of-age tale "An Education"; Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker"; Clint Eastwood's Nelson Mandela biopic "Invictus"; Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones"; the glitzy Rob Marshall musical "Nine"; the Oprah-endorsed "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; the adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel "The Road"; Pixar's "Up"; and the Jason Reitman-directed "Up in the Air."

My advice is not to take any of this stuff too seriously, although if you really want to drive yourself crazy, you could read the Envelope's Tom O'Neil's breathless critique of the Vulture's picks, even though O'Neil admits that he hasn't seen 95% of the movies either. Or you could worry about something more pressing, like whether the Earth will be hit by a massive asteroid in 2029.

Photo: The Oscar statuette. Credit: Albert Watson / AMPAS.

Attention Oscar elders: Emmys make big cuts in telecast awards

In a move that is certain to put even more pressure on the motion picture academy to drag its Oscar telecast into the 21st century, Variety is reporting that 8 of the 28 honors in the Primetime Emmy Awards will be prerecorded and then time-shifted into the main broadcast this year, according to a proposal presented to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Wednesday night.

Variety's Brian Lowry says the categories going under the knife include outstanding movies and miniseries, writing for dramatic series and movies/miniseries, as well as directing for variety, music and comedy and movie/miniseries. Translation: The Emmys are willing to streamline their TV show in the hopes of getting better ratings. It won't necessarily be a popular move, either with writers and directors of long-form programming or with HBO, which has dominated the nominations for movies and miniseries.

But as Lowry points out -- everybody's doing it, except for the motion picture academy. Only 14 of the 24 awards at the Tonys are presented live, while the Grammys only aired 11 awards in its past telecast, preferring to concentrate on far more exciting and involving live performances.

As I've been arguing for years and years, the Oscars should bite the bullet and do the same thing with the long, boring string of technical awards -- notably sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects and costume design -- which, while representing great examples of filmmaking craft, make for a snoozy 45 minutes of television. They should either be presented off camera or, better still, be incorporated in a separate, more informal show that could run on a cable movie channel during Oscar weekend in a setting where everyone could actually have a good time instead of being stuffed into the back rows of the Kodak Theatre.

The motion picture academy has always treated even the most polite suggestion of revamping its broadcast as horrific heresy, but now that even the tradition-bound TV academy has started to cut-and-paste its show, it will be harder for the Oscar elders to keep their heads buried in the sand.  

Photo of Oscar statuettes from AMPAS

Could 'The Hangover' actually get a best picture nomination?

It's always a jolt to the system to come back from vacation and see Hollywood in full hand-wringing mode, this time over the academy's canny decision to expand the Oscar best picture category.

Perhaps the strangest paroxysm of concern comes from the Wrap's Michael Speier, who is worried that the academy will water down the prestige of its best picture nods by spreading the wealth around. Or as he puts it: "Think about it. For Your Consideration: 'The Hangover.' " He goes on to add: "Can you imagine a year in which 'Schindler's List' goes up against 'Knocked Up'? That's not an unlikely possibility. A 10-movie list means well-reviewed things like 'Wedding Crashers' could be a contender for best picture. Say that out loud."

OK, I'll say it out loud: That would be fantastic. Why shouldn't the best comedy (or comedies) of the year get a chance to soak up some Oscar glory?

For years, the academy has roundly ignored comedy, even though it is an art form with perhaps the deepest bloodlines in Hollywood. Where would the movies have been without Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd, not to mention the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields and the dozens of brilliant 1930s and 1940s screwball comedies that allowed audiences to not only laugh but marvel at the dazzling precision and wit of top-notch filmmaking?

I'm not saying that "The Hangover" is in the same league with "His Girl Friday" or "My Man Godfrey," but nothing would've made the Oscars seem more relevant than to have made room in the best picture category for such smart and sassy films as "Role Models" or "Knocked Up." I hate to break it to you, but they were both better films than "The Reader." Ask any comic filmmaker: Dying is easy, comedy is hard.

But what bothers me the most about the naysayers is their lack of historical perspective. If you even casually study Oscar history, you'd realize that our era, with its rigid, Kremlin-like obsession with high art, is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to best picture status.

For decades, the Oscars were a populist award, happily given to films that earned both commercial and critical distinction. The 1934 winner was "It Happened One Night," a delightful screwball comedy that didn't aim any higher than "The Proposal" (it was simply more inspired). In 1943, the best picture was "Casablanca," an inspired marvel of studio perfectionism without a snooty bone in its body. In 1951, the winner was "An American in Paris," a frothy, but beautifully constructed musical. In 1971, the winner was "The French Connection," a brilliant piece of genre filmmaking, but a movie that is no better or no worse than any of the wonderful "Bourne Identity" films that have been roundly ignored by academy voters in recent years. 

I could go on, but you get the point. In fact, you could argue that for a broad stretch of time, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s, the Oscars went overboard in the wrong direction, giving best picture statuettes to a string of largely forgettable blockbusters, notably "Ben-Hur," "My Fair Lady," "The Sound of Music" and "Oliver!" Have you tried to watch any of those movies lately? I mean -- yikes!

So before there is anymore moaning and groaning about the dilution of Oscar prestige, please take a look back in time. For most of their 80 years, the Academy Awards have consistently valued commercial appeal and studio craft as much as high art. It's true that there is a lot less studio craft today, but there's no better way to encourage good mainstream movies than to have a best picture list that makes room for projects from cinema's most inspired genres -- in particular comedy, animation and thrillers.

If nothing else, the best picture expansion plan is a noble experiment. It's time the academy reclaimed the populist spirit of the Oscars.

Oscar expansion: Does this mean 'For Your Consideration' ads for Michael Bay?

I never thought I'd be caught dead using the words "bold" and "innovative" in the same sentence with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but that's what any Oscar fan would have to call the academy's eye-popping decision, announced today, to expand its best picture nominee list from five to 10 pictures.

All I can say is "Bravo!" If nothing else, the ingenious idea should instantly broaden the appeal of the Oscar telecast -- which has seen a big chunk of its audience disappear in recent years -- by allowing a host of popular commercial films to compete with the vanishing array of specialty division and indie productions that have traditionally ruled the roost at Oscar time.

Yet, for traditionalists, the move also provides a link to the bygone years of Oscardom, since it was actually commonplace in the 1930s and early 1940s to give out 10  best picture nominees. Is inflation a bad thing? It certainly wasn't in banner years like 1939 and 1941, when you could argue that any one of the 10 nominees -- classic films all -- would've been an outstanding choice. 

So why did the academy, which has generally been loath to make any radical change, take such decisive action? I'd love to think that the academy elite were responding to critics like myself, who've been saying for years that the Oscars, as I once put it, "are a cobwebby relic from a bygone media age when Big Events earned Big Audiences." But I don't flatter myself. Though its members include the best and brightest of Hollywood insiders, the academy is the world's most insular institution. When it makes changes, the momentum comes from the inside, not from pesky outsiders.

That's what was so laughable about the reaction in the blogosphere, especially from the Web's new millionairess, Nikki Finke, who called the move a "terrible idea," claiming that it was "the direct result of lobbying by major studios" who used outgoing academy chief Sid Ganis to help "the studios impose their agenda." As it turned out, I had a chat with one of those nefarious studio chiefs today. He begged to differ, saying that the academy was so resistant to outside pressure that "I probably have a better chance of getting Barack Obama to listen to my special pleadings than I would with the academy. They've always kept us at arm's length."

That's not to say that the studios won't benefit in some ways from having a larger field of nominees. I asked several Oscar experts the following question: If the field had been expanded last year, what five movies would've made the cut, in addition to the five official 2009 nominees? They all agreed that the top three beneficiaries would've been "Wall-E," "The Dark Knight" and "Doubt," spreading the rest of their votes among such candidates as "Iron Man," "Gran Torino," "Revolutionary Road" and "Changeling."

Judging by those possible picks, a 10-nominee list would have included considerably more studio films, along with one or two (at most) specialty division films. With indies and specialty divisions making fewer movies each year, it seems likely that a Big Ten nominee list will feature even more popular studio films. But that's the whole idea. The entire thrust of expanding the playing field is to find a way to better engage a younger audience, which would help drive Oscar ratings up instead of sliding farther down. It could even encourage the nomination of a smart comedy, a deserving genre that the academy has willfully ignored in recent years.

Interestingly, the driving force behind this decision wasn't the academy board (who eventually approved it), but the academy's Awards Committee, which is made up of a dozen or so industry veterans, tellingly with a sizable contingent of marketing and publicity figures, including Marvin Levy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs and Ganis, once a publicist himself. (Other Awards Committee members include the producer Hawk Koch, the writer-director Phil Alden Robinson and the veteran cinematographer Owen Roizman.) It was this committee that pushed forward the change, believing the academy had to take dramatic action to save its bacon with ABC, which like all networks has less patience than ever with shows whose ratings are in steady decline. (Of course, the revenues from the show don't all go to waste. They help to fund a wide assortment of good-works endeavors from the academy.)

I instantly see several good things coming out of the decision. With votes being spread across 10  nominees, on the night of the show there should be more suspense about which film will be the winner (unlike this year, when "Slumdog Millionaire's" victory was a foregone conclusion). With 10 nominees to showcase on the telecast, the academy will ultimately have to make a long-overdue move and jettison some of the dreary technical categories that are largely an excuse for millions of Americans to take a bathroom break -- or hit the fast-forward on their TiVos. The fewer awards, the better. The Grammys usually only give out nine or 10 on-camera awards, and put on a far more entertaining show.

Anyone who's read my thoughts on the subject knows that I believe the media's obsession with the Oscars is out of control, trivializing what was once an award for real artistry. But in theory, having 10 movies in the best picture race will be a boon to my newspaper and Variety, since the studios will now see the need to support 10 movies instead of five with an onslaught of "For Your Consideration" ads. Studios are cutting back on expenses, but once you land an Oscar nomination, especially with a film with top stars and filmmaking talent, it's almost impossible for a studio to refrain from chasing the dream.

Have no fear: I don't expect to see Paramount taking out "For Your Consideration" ads for Michael Bay and his latest "Transformers" installment.  But today's academy decision makes the Oscars more inclusive and more open to popular success, which, if you study history, was always a key ingredient in the awards game. It's easy to forget that plenty of great films were also commercial hits, including such Oscar winners as "The French Connection," "The Sting," "Patton," "Rocky" and, of course, the first two "Godfather" films. It's time the academy reclaimed that tradition. This move rewards both art and commerce, which is why it may be the wisest decision the academy has made in ages.

Photo of the Oscar statuette by Paul Hawthorne / Getty Images

The Oscars: Not exactly an enchanted evening

I guess reinventing the Oscars is harder than it looks.

The academy gave the gig this year to producers Larry Mark and Bill Condon, two classy industry veterans who've been involved with all sorts of admirable films over the years. But after watching this year's Hugh Jackman-hosted awards, which were undermined by a pair of lackluster Jackman musical numbers, nearly three hours of earnestly dull, emotion-free acceptance speeches (of course excepting Kate Winslet, who's apparently been overflowing with emotion for the entire awards season) and hardly any surprises, I'm beginning to believe that saving the Oscars is a job for Iron Man or Hancock, a kick-ass superhero with the kind of unassailable powers that would allow them to radically overhaul what has become the year's stodgiest awardsfest.

From Jackman's strangely self-conscious low-rent opening musical number to Ben Stiller's very inside-the-Beltway spoof of Joaquin Phoenix's recent appearance on David Letterman's late-night show, the awards had a tone problem--they tried to be something for everyone, coming off like a movie script that had its edginess and guts airbrushed out by too many studio notes. It was hard to find any focused narrative for the awards, which were busy veering wildly from making fun of serious movies (mocking "The Reader," for example) to being entirely too reverential about the past, treating a banal montage of supporting actress "thank you" speeches as if they were lost outtakes from "Citizen Kane."

It's hard to blame the producers for some of the problems. It certainly wasn't their fault that "Slumdog Millionaire" swept the evening, robbing the proceedings of any real suspense--you know you've got a drama deficit when the biggest upset of the night came in the foreign language film category. New ideas were attempted but not always executed with success. It was a treat to see Queen Latifah crooning and Sophia Loren paying tribute to Meryl Streep. My 10-year-old son was especially impressed that all his favorite movies were represented in a nicely edited action film montage, although it reminded us only of how cloistered the Oscars have become, since virtually none of the films in the montage were nominated for any major awards (and the visual effects Oscar went to "Benjamin Button," the one non-action film in the bunch.

It also wasn't the producer's fault that the much antipated Judd Apatow comedy sketch, which featured his "Pineapple Express" costars, was so hit and miss that the best line in the whole bit came from Polish cinematographer Janus Kaminski, who waved his Oscars and, with perfect timing, apologized by saying, "They made me do it, Mr. Spielberg, [work is] really slow in town."

But you'd have to say that Jackman was a bust. The idea of having a song and dance man instead of a traditional comedian seemed like a step in the right direction. But Jackman never radiated any real heat. His shortcomings were especially obvious when Will Smith, someone with real star power, showed up to give out a bunch of technical awards. You wanted Will to stick around--he had real presence. Jackman disappeared for so many big chunks of the evening that I found myself shouting at the TV: "Who kidnapped Hugh Jackman?" (Of course, I also found myself shouting: "What does Philip Seymour Hoffman have on his head?)

I find it hard to quibble with anything "Slumdog" director Danny Boyle might have to say after making last year's most wonderful movie, but when he announced on stage that the show felt "bloody wonderful in the room," those of us at home, on the couch, begged to differ. After all, the Kodak Theatre crowd gave six standing ovations during the course of the evening, including one for Jackman just for showing up, but back at home, we were mostly sitting on our hands. Even Jerry Lewis, who was expected to bring some loose-cannon fireworks to the evening, was surprisingly restrained, giving a very pro-forma acceptance speech for his Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. And where was Jack Nicholson--at a Lakers game?

Jackman was supposed to earn his stripes with a knock-'em dead musical extravaganza created by Baz Luhrmann. But the much-vaunted, Busby Berkeley-style number felt like most of the rest of the show--awkward, listless and underwhelming, the opposite of what Luhrmann brought to his great Oscar-nominated film, "Moulin Rouge." It hardly felt like a surprise to see Jackman trading licks with Beyonce, who (memo to the academy) has been wildly overexposed lately, showing up everywhere, including at the inaugural ball.

What the awards sorely lacked--with rare exception--were the wonderful unexpected, unrehearsed moments that make live TV worth watching, one of the rare exceptions being Boyle's Tigger-like pogo bounce after he arrived to accept his director award. It was a joyous burst of spontaneity in an otherwise over-scripted evening that made Hollywood's oldest award show feel even older and more in need of reinvention than ever. 

(Photo courtesy Getty Images)

RELATED:

PHOTOS: Best & Worst: Oscars 2009

PHOTOS: Oscar arrivals

STORY: The Oscars show itself was puttin' on the fritz

STORY: 'Slumdog' strikes it rich

Complete Oscar scorecard

Secret Oscar footage: Plant or leak?

Everywhere I looked today it felt like April Fool's Day. First, my paper had a great story from Chris Lee about Scott Weiss, a loopy party crasher who actually sneaked into last year's Academy Awards. Even though the awards were, as Lee put it, crawling with high-priced security guards, federal agents, FBI and bomb squad specialists, Weiss managed to use a forged all-access badge to slip in undetected.

The Web was also full of posts about an is-it-real-or-isn't-it-real crime-scene photo of Rihanna that may have been leaked by an LAPD staffer, prompting the police department to launch an investigation into how the photo of the battered songstress fell into the hands of TMZ and other celeb websites. And now the Web is full of posts about a supposed video of Hugh Jackman rehearsing his act for Sunday's Oscar telecast.

Nikki Finke, for example, has put up a post claiming the footage was taken by a personal assistant and will cause the stodgy Motion Picture Academy to "freak," adding in an updated post "quick, someone revive Sid Ganis." I guess she didn't bother to actually watch the video, which is not the work of an amateur. In fact, to the contrary, it looks like a terrifically clever attempt by someone on the inside to create a little Internet buzz for the Oscars with faux bootleg video footage. As any advertising exec could tell, the clip is professionally shot and edited to "appear" unauthorized. In fact, its message is pretty obvious: Hey, fans, we're putting on a cool show, so don't forget to watch. No one needs to revive Sid Ganis. I bet he's ecstatic that the academy has finally done something remotely hip.

It's surely not by chance that the video has Jackman himself delivering the pitch, saying not-so-casually: "We want to have that feeling that, 'This is live, anything can happen... Yes, ladies and gentlemen, change has finally come." I mean, that's good dialogue. Hugh delivers it well, but whoever wrote it should be backstage, writing some good "ad libs" for everyone Sunday night.

Here, watch for yourself:

Oscar producer: Worst job in the world?

At the Oscars, the spotlight, as always, is on the stars in their sleek suits and designer gowns. But this year, inside the industry, the high beams have been on Larry Mark and Bill Condon, who have one of the least enviable jobs in showbiz--producing the Oscars. Like managing a baseball team, it's a job nearly everyone thinks they can do better than you. The dirty little secret about the job, which past producers privately acknowledge, is that you're not even in control of much of the event, since all but about 25 minutes of the show is basically unchangeable.

In its slightly madcap devotion to tradition, the academy insists that all of the awards, no matter how obscure, must be given out on camera--compared to say, the Grammys, which only presents 8 or 10 of their 100-plus awards on their telecast. With the Oscars, once you add the musical numbers, the tribute to deceased luminaries, honorary awards and host and presenter patter, you don't have much time to try anything new. That hasn't stopped Mark and Condon from broadly hinting to virtually every reporter they've talked to--including me, at lunch the other day--that they're determined to freshen up the awards as much as possible. Besides the most obvious change--hiring Hugh Jackman as host--they've brought in Baz Luhrmann to do a big production number, have Judd Apatow paying tribute to comedies (the wildly popular genre that, ahem, never wins any awards), asked documentary legend Albert Maysles to celebrate documentaries and persuaded Queen Latifah to sing a show tune during the in-memoriam  segment. There are sure to be other surprises as well, starting with a new look for the audience seating.

But will it be enough? As if Mark and Condon didn't already have enough pressure already, the recent Grammys telecast set the bar higher than ever. Even though awards telecasts have been in a steady ratings decline, the Grammys made a surprising rebound, drawing a 10% bigger audience, with an even higher ratings spike among the key 18-to-49 age group. If the Oscars' ratings drop again, the academy won't be able to pin the blame on a showbiz-wide audience decline.

Mark isn't entirely sure it's fair to compare the Oscars to the Grammys. "Don't get me wrong--they put on a great show, it really blew everyone's socks off," he said. "But they have the luxury of staging all those great musical performances and giving out comparatively few awards. But that's just not what the Oscars are all about." I suggested that the show would be dramatically improved if the academy gave out half as many awards, handing out the technical Oscars on a separate broadcast. The producers weren't buying it, although their answer clearly leaves the door for change slightly ajar. "For the moment," Condon said, "one has to respect the academy for hanging on to its name--after all, it's the Academy of Arts and Sciences. We have to respect that and figure out a way to live within those parameters, while still shaking it up a bit."

So far their efforts to shake things up have yielded mixed results. On the one hand, the producers have clearly raised media expectations, prompting various Oscar pundits to predict that this year's show will have a far more populist air than past shows, which felt stodgy and out of touch with today's culture. On the other hand, they've had a couple of pratfalls, starting with the news that Peter Gabriel had dropped out of the show, refusing to perform his "Wall-E" musical number, clearly believing that the musical numbers--which have been largely reduced to a glorified medley--weren't getting proper respect.

Perhaps the most influential change the producing duo have made has been largely overlooked: They've hired a new director, Roger Goodman, a Roone Arledge protege from ABC Sports who co-directed the 1984 Summer Olympics, directed the 1988 Super Bowl and, more recently, has worked the political beat, directing ABC's coverage of the Democratic National Convention and the Obama inauguration. I admit that I'm biased, since it's the exact move I've been advocating for years. The rationale is obvious. As anyone who watches Fox's NFL broadcasts or ESPN's baseball programming can attest, the most innovative work in television is coming out of sports telecasts, which make better use of the visceral nature of the medium than almost anything else on the air.

"If Roger learned from Roone Arledge, then he learned from a true innovator," says Mark. "He was completely excited about the challenge of doing something new. And we think he'll make the show more exciting too."

It's patently obvious that the Oscars are in need of far more systemic change--it's still a wheezy, old jalopy in a fast-paced new TV era. But I left our lunch feeling the awards were in good hands, since the producers have shown through their own work--they collaborated on "Dreamgirls" --that they have smarts and class. They both have career challenges to tackle outside of the Academy Awards: Mark is about to produce a new James Brooks movie, while Condon is embarking on directing a film about Richard Pryor. But this Sunday, they'll be judged on one thing and one thing only--did they help reinvent the Oscars?   

Photo of  Bill Condon, left, and Larry Mark by Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

PREVIOUS POST: LARRY MARK'S DEEP DARK SECRET:

Oscar's ad woes: Is erectile dysfunction next?

When you work at a newspaper that's about to have another round of layoffs, you know all too well how bleak the advertising market is today -- one of the few ads we had in our Tuesday sports section was a "stimulus offer" from the Ultimate Performance Medical Center, which specializes in erectile-dysfunction-type issues. But how bleak is the advertising picture for networks running awards shows like the Oscars?

So bleak that ABC just scored a new Oscar advertiser: Culver Restaurants, a regional hamburger chain that will run its first national TV spot during the Academy Awards, a 60-second spot touting its "unbelievable" customer service. As MediaWeek describes it in a post today, the spot features "a fairly psychotic-looking cynic, "Dave," who can't believe how polite the Culver's waitress is in one of the chain's commercials. He shakes his head at this "outbreak of neatness."

This comes on the heels of another story, also from MediaWeek, reporting that, with less than a week to go before the Academy Awards telecast, ABC is scrambling to find replacement sponsors for the cosmetics firms that customarily advertise on the show. MediaWeek said that L'Oreal Paris, which had spent nearly $41 million in Oscar advertising since 2004, has entirely dropped out of the telecast. It's a big loss because, last year, L'Oreal had bought 180 seconds of airtime, second only to the 210 seconds purchased by General Motors, which has also backed out of this year's show.

While the ad slippage is clearly sparked by the country's economic woes, many advertisers are abandoning the Oscars because of its steady ratings decline. As the ratings slide, so do the ad buys. According to current estimates, ABC could have a 15% drop from last year's estimated $81.1-million ad take. MediaWeek quotes Brad Adgate, an aptly named research executive at Horizon Media who was bearish on all awards shows. As he bluntly assesses the problem: "The shows are too long, and too much time is spent on the less prestigious categories." He added that the Oscars now have a median viewer age of 49.5 years, which puts it outside the target 18-49 audience most advertisers seek.

Awards show supporters contend that the Oscars remain a huge draw for female viewers. But as Adgate points out: "Everybody always calls the Oscars 'the Super Bowl for Women,' but the Super Bowl is the Super Bowl for women. More women watched this year's game than all the people who watched last year's Oscars, male or female. If you're looking for a female audience, maybe you need to start looking at [New England Patriots quarterback] Tom Brady instead of Tom Cruise."

Ouch! The media-buying community's bleak outlook only reinforces my sense that this is a make-or-break Oscar telecast. Producers Larry Mark and Bill Condon have promised wholesale changes, fun surprises and an emphasis on popular films that aren't necessarily up for actual awards. I hope they pull off a major reinvention of the show Sunday night because, if they don't, next year we could all be watching ads for Roger Dunn Golf Shops and Dr. Ziering's Art of Hair Restoration, just to mention two of my paper's most valued advertisers.