Nate Silver predicts an Oscar upset!

If all you do is read the trades, you probably have no idea who Nate Silver is. But if you're a baseball fan or a political junkie, you know that Silver is the most brilliant statistical guru of our time. The baby-faced statistician came to fame as the guy who developed the PECOTA system for forecasting baseball players' career development and performance, earning the attention of general managers when it became clear he knew more about their players' potential than they did. Last year, Silver switched to politics, where he was the first soothsayer to take Barack Obama seriously when his peers were all lining up behind Hillary Clinton. After starting the ultra-cool FiveThirtyEight site, Silver accurately called every U.S. Senate race and 49 of 50 states in the presidential race (he missed Indiana).

So if Silver was right about Obama, could he be right about Mickey Rourke? New York magazine asked the Chicago-based numbers geek to work his statistical magic with the Oscars. I have to say--as someone who thinks the hapless Gurus of Gold pundits are about as persuasive as a Kennedy assassination enthusiast--the results are fascinating. Silver says he used a process called "logistic regression" to analyze a 30-year database of Oscar history, studying everything from the films' genre, MPAA classification and opening weekend box office to whether someone benefited from being nominated in another category. Some things mattered not (MPAA classification), some mattered a lot (the academy roundly ignores the comedy genre).

So here are a few of Silver's picks--with some of the justification for his choices. As with his political calls, he gives each pick a percentage of accuracy:

Lead actor: Mickey Rourke: 71.1%,  Sean Penn: 19%.  The Call: Since Rourke and Penn split the two awards that traditionally predict success in the category (SAG and Golden Globes), he gives the advantage to Rourke, since once an actor wins--as Penn did five years ago--his odds go way down, while someone who's been nominated without winning sees their odds increase.

Lead actress: Kate Winslet: 67.6%,  Meryl Streep: 32.4%. The Call: Streep has won some big awards (including SAG) but she's already taken home Oscars, while Winslet is "sitting on her sixth nod without a win."

Best picture: "Slumdog Millionaire": 99%. The Call: It's a rout.

Director: Danny Boyle: 99.7%.  The Call: This is where the academy rewards "edgy" films like "Slumdog" (Ang Lee for "Brokeback," Steven Soderbergh for "Traffic"). So Boyle is a shoo-in.

Supporting actor: Heath Ledger: 88.5%, Josh Brolin: 5%.  The Call: It's a lock.

Supporting actress: Taraji P. Henson: 51%, Penelope Cruz: 24.6%, Viola Davis: 11.6%.  The Call: A huge upset. It's the hardest call of all, since most of the major supporting actress awards were won by Kate Winslet, which, as Silver puts it, "is not so nice for our computer." He says Cruz would be the logical default, but his computer says that "Benjamin Button," which looks like a shutout everywhere else, " is the only best picture nominee with a supporting actress nod, and best picture nominees tend to have an edge in the other categories."

All I can say is that if Silver gets that call right, next year he's going to have to predict all 108 Grammy categories. Politics may be easier than showbiz, at least when it comes to reading the minds of voters.

Photo of Mickey Rourke by Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

Jerry Lewis on live TV: Julius Kelp or Buddy Love?

When Jerry Lewis takes the stage on Oscar night to receive the coveted Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, I have a feeling that many people on hand will be having the same thought: In the spirit of his groundbreaking film "The Nutty Professor," will Lewis be the sweet-natured, eccentric Julius Kelp or the unbelievably obnoxious Buddy Love?

The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips has already anticipated the academy's sense of dread, writing that Lewis should have won an Oscar ages ago--1964, to be exact, for "The Nutty Professor"--and offers two scenarios for Feb. 22.

The best-possible-case scenario, according to Phillips: "The perpetually divisive screen icon takes a gracious pill and accepts the [award] with his own brand of charm, plus a couple of inoffensive jokes, steering clear of any references to 'broads' or homosexuals or his 'kids.' " The worst-case scenario: "Lewis forgoes the gracious pill. He seizes the moment. And he tells the academy how he really feels about never having been nominated for a regular Oscar."

As any veteran Lewis watcher knows, when he says what he really feels, all hell often breaks loose. In 1990, he wrote a first-person essay for Parade magazine characterizing people with muscular dystrophy as "being half a person." In 2000, being honored by the US Comedy Arts Festival, he said he had no interest in female comics, saying it "sets me back a bit. As a viewer, I have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world." In 2007, during his Labor Day telethon, he jokingly referred to one of his cameramen's sons as "the illiterate fag." He apologized, but last October, on Australian TV, he called cricket "a fag game."

Do all these incidents pale in comparison to Lewis' humanitarian work, or do they disqualify him for such a prestigious industry honor? I thought I'd offer up a Jerry Lewis Quiz to see how everyone feels. Which one of the following statements best describes your attitude toward Lewis receiving the Hersholt award?

A) Lewis is a world-class comic. His controversial statements are ticky-tack fouls, not inexcusable insults. They gave the Hersholt to Frank Sinatra and he makes Jerry look like a choirboy by comparison. Give him the damn award. It's long overdue and he deserves it.

B) What Jerry said was awful, even if at 82, with all his health issues, Jerry may not always remember what he said the next day. But everyone has a few skeletons in their closet. I'm holding my nose, but I say he's earned it.

C) As anyone who's ever tried to sit through one of those awful telethons can testify, Lewis has been a self-aggrandizing embarrassment for years. Now he's going to get to talk forever, accepting his Oscar. I'm betting the band has already prepared a special number to play when he refuses to stop droning on about all his wonderful work. ABC better have the show on tape delay--who knows what'll come out of his mouth?

D) Jerry Lewis gets an award? Are you kidding? For torturing us with his telethon every year? For the three minutes of good comedy in "The Disorderly Orderly"? What's wrong--wasn't Rob Schneider available?

Post your answer and thoughts as a comment.

Photo of Jerry Lewis in "The Nutty Professor" from Reuters / Paramount Pictures

Box Office Report: What happened to the fabled 'Oscar bounce'?

The movie business is in the midst of a phenomenal roll, with the astounding box-office success of "Friday the 13th" helping propel Hollywood to its biggest three-day Presidents Day weekend of all time. But it was another lackluster weekend for the other movies that are supposed to be in the spotlight at this time of year--the Oscar best picture nominees. In fact, the whispers you hear everywhere around town are asking the same hushed question: What happened to the fabled Oscar bounce?

The Academy Awards' best picture nominees were announced Jan. 22, an event quickly commemorated by a blitzkrieg of expensive full-page ads in the trades, the New York Times and my newspaper, designed to use the cachet of a best picture nomination to nudge reluctant moviegoers into the theaters. But at the time when the rest of the movie business is booming, the best picture nominees--with the obvious exception of the crowd-pleasing "Slumdog Millionaire--are doing a slow fade. Only one of the five best picture nominees, "The Reader," has made more of its overall box-office take after it earned a best picture nod.

It's no surprise that "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" made the vast majority of its money before the Oscar nominations, since it was always viewed as a mainstream commercial picture, featuring a big Hollywood star, Brad Pitt, and an A-list director, David Fincher. Still, considering how much extra money Paramount has spent pushing "Button" for a best picture win, it's hard to determine whether the Oscars have made any real difference at all for the film, which grossed $104.3 million before the nominations, only $17.9 million after. Even though "Slumdog" has won virtually every major award known to man, it's still made more money ($44.7 million) pre-nominations than after ($41.8 million). Even "Milk," a film that seemed entirely dependent on a lift from the Oscars, actually had its biggest grossing weekend way back in early December, when it did $2.6 million, a weekend figure it hasn't equaled since.

Here's one perspective on how little the best picture nominations have meant this year. Even without a best picture nod, "Doubt" has outgrossed three of the five best picture nominees, while "Defiance" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which barely registered with Oscar voters--earning one major nomination between them--have outgrossed both "The Reader" and "Frost/Nixon." The latter film is the most striking commercial failure of the season. Losing more theaters each week, "Frost/Nixon" only made a paltry $473,000 this weekend, giving it a total of $16.3 million after 11 weeks in the market, nearly 60% of its overall grosses coming before the Oscar nominations were announced.

What's going on here?  Keep reading:

Oscar trivia quiz: The 'Ebony and Ivory' edition

I've been battling some nasty bug, so in my feverish haze, I asked Susan King, our paper's consummate Oscar guru-historian, if she would dream up a tough Oscar trivia question that might stump some of our most knowledgeable readers (or at least prompt them to dig out their dog-eared Oscar almanacs). Susan did not disappoint. Here's today's question. See if you can figure out the answer:

Robert Downey Jr. is nominated this year for best supporting actor in the role of an actor who goes to extreme lengths to play an African American soldier in "Tropic Thunder." Can you name two white actresses who received Oscar nominations for playing black women?

Our tie-breaker: What leading political figure was an obsessive fan of 1970 Oscar best picture winner "Patton," watching the film over and over during its original theatrical run?

Go ahead and give it your best shot. I'll post the answers soon.

Photo of Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder" by Merie Weismiller Wallace / DreamWorks

Oscar producer Larry Mark's deep, dark secret

Larry Mark couldn't believe his bad luck when I showed up for lunch on Wednesday. The veteran producer, who's in the midst of producing the Oscars with his pal, writer-director Bill Condon, thought I was just going to pepper him with obnoxious questions about what possible ingenious ideas he and Condon had cooked up to get anyone under 40 to watch the increasingly dowdy, out-of-touch Academy Awards. (We did gab about the Oscars--so expect to see a post about our chat soon.) Little did he know that he was being ambushed. I know that Mark has a deep, dark secret buried in the past--a secret that can now finally be revealed: He tried to hustle J.D. Salinger to give him the movie rights to "The Catcher in the Rye."

Back in the early 1980s, Mark was a baby-faced young studio production exec at Paramount Pictures, working for production chief Don Simpson, who was soon to fly the coop and team up with Jerry Bruckheimer to become one of Hollywood's uber-action producers. For some reason, the studio had decided it needed to make a teen film set at a prep school. (Mark's letter to Salinger was written right around the release of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," which might have something to do with the studio's interest in a teen storyline.) Since Mark had actually attended a tony Eastern prep school--he's a Hotchkiss grad--he got the job of supervising the project.

"We were buying books with prep school settings and having all sorts of writers come in with prep school pitches when finally we thought--'Come on, if we're going to do prep school, why don't we do "Catcher in the Rye"?' " he recalls. "Salinger was already a total recluse, but someone had recently snapped a photo of him getting his mail at the local post office. So I figured out the name of the local town and sent him a letter. I figured--what's the downside?"

The letter, which I've had on my wall for years (don't ask how I got it) as a classic Hollywood artifact, is addressed to Salinger, c/o Postmaster, Windsor, Vermont. In it, Mark explains to Salinger that the studio has been trying to develop, without success, a prep school project. He adds: "We have managed to come up with several scripts--all of them awful. You see, there's no way to do such a project--unless it happens to be 'Catcher in the Rye.' Isn't there some way in the world we might convince you to reconsider permitting and becoming involved in a film version of this novel?"

Already a shrewd salesman at a young age, Mark anticipates Salinger's biggest fear, saying, "I realize your concerns about Hollywood and its inhabitants--and I share many of those feelings. But there must be some way to have J.D. Salinger oversee each step of the way from novel to film." Then, in what Mark now laughingly describes as the letter's "42nd Street" moment, he concludes the letter by writing: "Please give a kid a break--and advise me how to go about changing your mind in this regard," signing the note, "very sincerely, Laurence Mark."

Needless to say, Salinger--who still lives in seclusion, having just celebrated his 90th birthday, which sparked a nice tribute from the N.Y. Times' Chip McGrath--never replied to Mark's heartfelt missive. Paramount had to make do without him. "I don't remember exactly what happened to the whole idea--I'm pretty sure it ended being some 'Prep School Murder' project that never went anywhere," Mark says. "But that was definitely me as a young studio guy, willing to try anything to get a picture going."

Some things never change. Now Mark, who is about to start work producing a new Jim Brooks film, is willing to do anything to get the Oscars out of their rut. We'll have more on the plans he and Condon have for the show coming soon.

Photo of J.D. Salinger from the Associated Press

Oscar silly season in full swing

What is the difference between reading Oscar bloggers writing about the Academy Awards and crackpot conspiracy theorists spinning yarns about the CIA killing JFK or the Israeli secret service being behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks? At this time of year: Not much. With the Oscar ballots in the mail, the silly season has begun, when everyone on the Oscar blogging front starts wildly speculating about who's pulling dirty tricks or which movie--often for the most bizarrely inexplicable reasons--is poised to leap into contention in the best picture race.

The wonderers who wonder have come out of the woodwork, especially with a new controversy involving best picture favorite "Slumdog Millionaire" moving from back-burner to front-page headline status. As we wrote earlier this week, this is hardly a surprise, with virtually every modern-day Oscar front-runner getting hazed by the media, who love to build 'em up and then tear 'em down. But that didn't stop the New York Post's Lou Lumenick from idly speculating: "Is someone connected with one of the other best picture nominees behind a desperate smear campaign to stop prohibitive favorite 'Slumdog Millionaire'? Smells that way to me."

Lumenick's proof? None actually, though he finds it highly suspicious--as opposed to highly coincidental--that the news about 'Slumdog's' payments to its child actors "broke the same day as academy ballots were mailed out." (The italics are his.) Lumenick goes on to say: "We all know which truth-and ethically challenged mogul would benefit most from an upset," an obvious not-so veiled reference to "The Reader's" Harvey Weinstein, who, putting aside any ethical challenges, is the only studio chief today with enough personality to merit being called a mogul. Whatever Harvey's possible past offenses, I think he deserves to remain innocent until proven guilty. If Lou has some evidence, we should hear it, instead of getting pure innuendo.

But everywhere you look, someone is cooking up a crackpot Oscar theory. What are the silliest ones? Keep reading:

'The Reader,' Scott Rudin and Hollywood schadenfreude

Once everyone finished grousing yesterday about how the elderly motion picture academy stiffed "The Dark Knight," the incredibly successful and well-reviewed Hollywood blockbuster that seems to only appeal to non-academy members--in other words, people under the age of 55--attention turned to a more pressing, schadenfreude-style area of concern: How was Scott Rudin handling the news that the two movies he produced, "Revolutionary Road" and "Doubt," failed to get best picture nods, while "The Reader," the one movie he removed his name from, ended up as a surprise best picture nominee?

As one studio chief I spoke to yesterday put it: "Wouldn't you love to have been a fly on the wall in Rudin's office when the nominations were announced? That must've been quite a scene." All I can say is, given Rudin's propensity for hurling objects when upset, I hope flies can duck. As you may recall, Rudin took his name off "The Reader" after a messy dispute with Harvey Weinstein, with Rudin claiming that Weinstein was rushing the film into release without giving filmmaker Stephen Daldry proper time to finish the picture. The academy's endorsement seems to offer plenty of support for Weinstein's contention that the picture was ready to go and--more important--was good enough to justify an Oscar campaign. (Dear Harvey: My apologies about all those disparaging references to "The Reader's" best picture chances. You were right. I was wrong. I guess that's why you have all those Oscars and I don't.)

As you may have noticed, when the academy announced "The Reader's" nomination, it had a big "TBD" sign next to the film, meaning that the academy hasn't settled the issue of which of the film's four listed producers are eligible to accept the Oscar if the film were to win. Upset over the scrum of producers who showed up on stage when "Shakespeare in Love" won for best picture a decade ago, the academy has a bizarre rule limiting a film to three producers, a rule that caused a furor when the academy arbitrarily disqualified two of the five "Little Miss Sunshine" producers when that film was up for best picture in 2007.

"The Reader's" producer credit issue is even more sensitive, since two of its four producers--filmmakers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack--died last year before the film's release. The other two producers are Donna Gigliotti (one of the scrum of producers who won for "Shakespeare in Love" and a former USA Films production chief who made "Traffic" and "Gosford Park") and Redmond Morris, a veteran line producer and production manager who is a longtime Neil Jordan collaborator. After a lengthy vetting process, the Producers Guild recently recommended to the academy that all four producers share credit. But the academy isn't taking the PGA's advice, insisting that one of the four be excluded. Insiders say Morris will be the one to go, with Gigliotti and her late colleagues remaining the producers of record.

Interestingly, Morris didn't initially have a producer credit. But after Rudin took his name off the picture, Morris went to the Producers Guild and requested the credit, with Rudin's backing. Believing Morris had done ample work to merit the credit, the PGA approved him. By the time "The Reader" was released in December, his name was in the producer's credit box along with Gigliotti, Minghella and Pollack. As it stands, "The Reader" will end up as a true rarity--a film with three producers, all of whom have won Oscars. 

Photo of Scott Rudin by Kevin Winter / Getty Images

The Oscar Loser Club

Everyone's been writing about which films will enter the magic circle when the academy announces its best picture nominations Jan. 22, mercifully putting an end to the annual year-end demolition derby that finds nearly all of the year's best films being released in the last 10 weeks of the year. In other words, come Jan. 22, there will be five winners -- and lots of losers, admirable, well-made movies that will quickly drop off the media radar screen, with the five best picture finalists sucking up all the air in the room. So, with a consensus forming around five films that could nail down the best picture slots ("Slumdog Millionaire," "Milk," "Frost/Nixon," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "The Dark Knight"), it seemed like a good time to take a look at which movies will go home empty-handed -- and why they didn't make it to the finish line. Feel free to fire away if you think I've slighted any of your favorites, but here are my thoughts on the most obvious also-rans:

'Wall-E': A wonderful, critically beloved movie, "Wall-E'' in any normal world would be a shoo-in nominee for best picture. Its problem? It's an animated film, the one genre (along with comedy) that gets no respect from the academy -- no animated film has ever won an Oscar for best picture, even though many classics, notably "The Lion King," "Toy Story 2," "Spirited Away" and "Ratatouille" were just as good as the live-action winners in their year of eligibility. Actors, who make up the biggest branch of the academy, almost never vote for animated films, so it's virtually impossible to put together enough support from other branches of the academy to register a win. Hence, the best animated film ghetto, which allows an animated delight like "Wall-E" to get some recognition without having a legitimate shot at best picture stardom. Some commentators have suggested that if Disney had spent just another $20 million to push "Wall-E," it could've gotten over the top, but Disney is probably right not to throw good money after bad -- too many academy members have a built-in bias against animated films, viewing them as just not "important" enough to vote for. 

'The Reader': There is a lengthy treatise to be written about the perils of adapting challenging literary material to the screen -- the old adage being that bad books often make the best movies. But since this is a blog, I'll give the short answer: You can't land an Oscar when no one likes your movie. For all its filmmaking and acting pedigree, "The Reader" simply doesn't cut it as a compelling drama. And it would have to be truly compelling to impress academy voters, who after being suckers for years for virtually any story about Jewish oppression, finally seem to have a legitimate case of Holocaust fatigue.

'The Wrestler': Film festival sensations are rarely Oscar winners. That goes double for "The Wrestler," which is propelled by a dynamite performance from Mickey Rourke but has failed to ignite with academy voters, who have reacted a bit squeamishly to the movie's deliberately rough-hewn portrayal of life on the wrestling circuit, especially the staple-gun antics and other graphic in-the-ring violence.

Where does this leave such heavyweights as Clint Eastwood, Sam Mendes and Baz Luhrmann? Keep reading:

Oscar short sparks controversy

If you’re a documentarian, you know that while it’s a great honor to make the academy’s short-list for best documentary short, it’s almost impossible to get anyone in the media to write about your movie, since they’re almost totally obsessed with handicapping the ups and downs of the various actor and best picture races. But thanks to the Canadian government, in particular Alberta’s minister of culture, Leslie Iwerks’ documentary short “Downstream” has a shot at a little notoriety, which is just what a doc-short needs to steal a little attention from the endless speculation about Kate Winslet’s Oscar chances.

Iwerks is no rookie filmmaker. The granddaughter of Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney’s first great animator, Leslie recently directed a documentary about Pixar, “The Pixar Story,” and was nominated for a 2006 Oscar for “Recycled Life,” her doc-short about the Guatemala City dump, the largest toxic landfill in Central America. In her pursuit of other environmental subjects, Iwerks discovered the controversial saga of the oil sands in Alberta, a parcel the size of Florida that is a big part of Canada’s oil excavation industry, even though the extraction of oil is apparently causing a huge increase not only in greenhouse gases but in human illness.

The main character in Iwerks’ short—which will eventually be part of a feature-length documentary—is Dr. John O’Connor, a family practitioner who discovered extraordinarily elevated cancer rates in the local aboriginal Indian population that lives near the oil sands. “The doctor suspects that the suspiciously high rates of cancer are the result of the dumping of toxic material in the local rivers,” Iwerks told me when we spoke this week. “But when he talked to a local reporter about his findings, he was charged with causing undue alarm in the community. If that charge is proven, he could lose his license.”

Eager to present a balanced point of view, Iwerks sought out a variety of oil and energy executives as well as Alberta’s minister of environmental affairs. “But no one would talk to us. The only person who went on camera was a media rep for the Canadian petroleum producers’ lobbying organization.”
Of course, doing a documentary about a potential environmental disaster in the distant reaches of Canada wasn’t what finally got Iwerks some attention. It turns out that when she raised funds for the film, which is largely bankrolled by Babelgum, a Web-oriented film network, she managed to score a $67,000 subsidy from the Alberta provincial government. But news of her short being short-listed for the Oscars prompted Alberta’s minister of culture to criticize the film, saying he didn’t know what the film was about when he approved the subsidy.

Now there’s talk about the provincial government imposing more creative control over the content of documentaries it funds—meaning, of course, that it might be impossible to fund a film in the future that is critical of local government policies and programs.

Iwerks defends the film’s objectivity. “I don’t think I’ve made a negative film at all,” she says. “All we’re doing is shedding light on a human rights issue. I’m not a scientist, but I think the proof is in the pudding. The authoritative reports that I’ve seen all show high levels of toxic chemicals in the water in that area. It’s not some tiny output of poison. The tailing ponds of toxic sludge are so big that you can see them from outer space. And that’s the water that often gets dumped into the local rivers. It’s something everyone should be concerned about.”

I’m getting a copy of the short to see for myself, but it sounds like exactly the kind of story that needs to be told. It certainly wouldn’t hurt if it got a boost from some awards-season attention. It’s another unsettling chapter in the story of America’s addiction to oil, since as Iwerks points out, we get the majority of our oil, not from Saudi Arabia, but from Canada. There’s a price to be paid for all our gas guzzling, a price that rarely is seen by those of us who simply pump gas into our cars. Iwerks has gone to the source, showing what our addiction has done to the health of the people who live near Canada’s oil sands. That’s where the picture isn’t very pretty.

If you want to learn more about the film---and the buzz it's started--go to its website http://downstreamdoc.com and see for yourself.    

Photo credit: Babelgum Presentation

Hugh Jackman: Oscar's hosting gig gets a face-lift

I'm beginning to think that Larry Mark and Bill Condon, the producers of this year's Academy Awards telecast, actually have a few tricks up their sleeves. More important, I think they're determined to take the woebegone Oscar telecast in a fresh new direction. That's the clear message of today's selection of Hugh Jackman as the host of February's broadcast. By opting for Jackman, a classy movie and theater star instead of a big-mouth comic, Mark and Condon are signaling that they're trying to turn the Oscars into a party instead of the usual three-hour-plus cobwebby self-congratulatory snooze-athon.

The first thing Mark said when I got him on the phone this morning told me all I needed to hear. "In keeping with the thinking that the event needs to be more like a party," he said, "we're trying to make it very much like a party." Mark believes Jackman has the perfect party-host persona. "The Oscars are a celebration of movies, so who better to host than a movie star," Mark said. "Hugh can not only hold the screen, but he can hold the stage too, which is no small feat these days. He's done major theater work, from 'Oklahoma!' to 'Sunset Boulevard,' and he's not only hosted the Tony Awards, he actually won an Emmy for hosting them."

Mark laughed. "That's not to suggest that the Tonys were an audition, but in a way they were. The fact that he was brilliant doing the Tonys certainly spoke well for his abilities."

As it turns out, before Mark had seriously thought about casting a host, he saw Jackman perform at a benefit show for the Motion Picture and Television Fund (a show that Mark produced with "Milk" producer Dan Jinks). "Hugh was a hoot," he recalled. "He did a duet with Kristin Chenoweth on 'Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,' completely off the cuff, with all sorts of improvised humor, and well, he was great. So when his name come up recently, we all thought, 'Wow, remember that night he did "Anything" and how he killed.' ''

Mark also became convinced that Jackman had a special star quality after Mark saw him in "Australia."  "Our whole idea for the show is that we want you to feel like you're not at a late-night TV show, but at a nightclub, where the host is saying, 'Welcome to the party--let's have a good time.' We're going for the contemporary feel that you'd have at the Cocoanut Grove or the Stork Club, where everyone is encouraged to have a good time. If this were the old days, we'd be asking Cary Grant or Clark Gable to be the host. I think Hugh has a lot of those same qualities. He's one of the few actors who has a real sense of occasion, who can say, 'Let's have a ball.' "

So he's looking for someone who looks good in a tux? "Exactly," said Mark. "Not just that Hugh would look good in a tux, but that he looks comfortable in a tux." Would Jackman be doing a musical number himself? Mark hedged: "Let's just say that with Hugh, there'd be a good reason to do it. It's certainly extremely appealing. He's definitely not going to be doing a 10-minute comedy monologue."

So how much does the Oscar host really matter? Can Jackman actually reverse the show's steady ratings decline? "I think the host matters on that night," Mark said. "I don't believe, in general, that people tune in to see the host. They tune in to see the Oscars. If the host gets to excel, that's an extra. So really a big part of our assignment is to get people to watch the show itself. It's not all on the host's shoulders. He's really there to set the tone and make everyone feel comfortable."

Doesn't that mean that the burden to turn the show around is, well, on the producer's shoulders? Mark laughed again, this time more nervously. "I shudder to think, but I guess it is on us. But what really  makes me optimistic is that Hugh was absolutely enthusiastic about doing it. He wasn't one of these people who'd said, 'I'd never want to do the Oscars in a million years.' He was really excited about it. I think that's a good sign. If nothing else, we're going to try to have a good time and really make this an event."

My colleague Mary McNamara has her own view on this. Here's the link:

Hugh Jackman hosts the Oscars? Bring the smelling salts

Photo of Hugh Jackman by  Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times