brent johnson examines the strange disconnect of this year’s Oscar telecast …
James Franco toted his cell phone on stage. Twilight received an auto-tune makeover. Anne Hathaway practically called anyone over 40 a geezer.
So much of the 83rd Academy Awards was devoted to showing us just how young and cool the Oscars can be.
But then, in the end …
The most coveted statue of the night was given to a film about a monarch. In buttoned-up Britain. During World War II.
“Talk about having your finger on the youthful demographic,” Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers noted today about The King’s Speech victory.
It wasn’t a surprise. Speech was the expected winner. And even though I’m 27 and a product of the digital age, its triumph didn’t crush my spirit. It’s actually a more modern, colorful film than Oscar pundits would lead you to believe.
But I was left a little befuddled last night. For all the hoopla over how the Academy was trying to court younger viewers, how can you expect them to care when The Social Network — the first Oscar-caliber movie to truly speak to the Facebook generation — is the runner-up?
The irony was not cool at all.
Not that young people were around to notice. The New York Times reported that the broadcast attracted 12 percent fewer viewers than last year among the 18-to-49 age bracket. Overall, the audience dropped by four million viewers.
That’s not fair, of course. Last year, Avatar — a hip 3-D film that happened to be the highest-grossing movie of all time — was vying for the top prize.
But all you needed to do was look at Franco’s face to witness the strange disconnect of this year’s telecast. Most of the blogosphere wondered: Was he tired? Burned-out? Apathetic? High?
Personally, I thought he was funny — and douchey at the same time.
Oscar got what it asked for. Facebook may have given us a world where millions of “friends” are just a click away, but this is also the age of Perez Hilton, Star magazine, Jersey Shore. Being cool these days means being disenchanted. In other words, the opposite of enthusiastic, jokey — or anything else that hosting usually calls for.
Maybe the answer is having two Academy Award ceremonies:
One would be hosted by someone like Hathaway. She’d dance, sing, change costumes, introduce Kirk Douglas, point to her mom in the crowd.
In the other, Franco would Tweet the winners, guest-star on a soap opera, and watch the world blog the death out of it.
Or maybe the Academy should do something it used to: pander to people who like the movies — i.e., pretty much everyone. Didn’t Billy Crystal draw rave reviews each year by simply singing about the nominees and teasing Jack Nicholson for wearing sunglasses indoors? Last I checked, you don’t need an iPod or an AARP card to understand that.
Or maybe just hire Ricky Gervais. Cruel and controversial as he may have been at the Golden Globes, people young and old paid attention.
