Last night was my first time watching the Oscars purely as a spectator in six years.
Years ago, I used to love watching the Oscars. I never went to Oscars parties, because people would talk over the speeches, and I wanted to catch every single minute of everything. I would order indulgent food just for me. I would revel in the show, soaking it up: the musical numbers, the jokes, the speeches. I loved watching the Oscars even when "Titanic" beat "L.A. Confidential."
Then I got a job at a movies site, and watching the Oscars that way went out the window. After a couple of years of making minor news updates, we started doing a full-court press on Oscars coverage -- news, features, photo galleries, video -- and I was put in charge. Therefore I spent every Oscars weekend stressed about the thousand things I had to take care of and the million things that could and did go wrong. Then I spent the show with one eye and ear on the ceremony while I was working, barking out instructions, putting together galleries, generating ideas, editing copy, troubleshooting disasters. We'd pay attention to the big things so that we could capture them for our readers, but we missed a lot of the little details, and we didn't have a DVR to rewind and catch them.
We did have fun, though. We always ordered good food (covering the Oscars marked the first and second time I ever sampled the heavenliness that is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que) and after a few years started adding alcohol to the mix. It was entertaining to watch the show while eating and drinking (and working) with your colleagues who knew what they were talking about, and with whom you were entered in a viciously competitive Oscars pool with results monitored by your intern on a moment-by-moment basis.
This year, since I no longer have that position, I was finally going to get to watch the Oscars without having to work. Free! I was free at last! ("Free" in this context is not entirely a good thing, since I'm "free" of a job, but let's just go with it.) I was disappointed that this monumental work-free Oscars was going to be so boring, though. I didn't care about any of the nominees (my favorite movies last year were "Warrior" and "Bridesmaids"), and though I was oddly looking forward to Billy Crystal at host, I can't say I was excited about it.
Here's the interesting thing I noticed, though. All those years I was working the Oscars, we would sit in the room and the snark would fly freely. We hated everything. I can't even remember the last ceremony any of us thought was good. (I vaguely remember thinking Ricky Gervais was funny at his first Golden Globes, but I can't remember a single thing he did or said.) All of us thought Hugh Jackman was awful, and then were surprised the next morning to hear that most of America liked him.
Last night, as I was watching, I checked in on Twitter to see what people were saying. Most of the entertainment editors and writers I follow hated Billy Crystal's performance, loudly and consistently declaiming how unfunny he was, how old and unbearable the humor, how terrible a show it was.
I didn't necessarily disagree with any of that -- Crystal's schtick was old, and corny, and stale -- but curiously enough, as a viewer, I found that I didn't mind so much. And I realized that when I had to cover the awards for work, I approached the Oscars with a cranky, already critical eye, bemoaning how long and tedious the ceremony was getting because the longer it went, the later I'd be getting home that night; and the more boring it was, the less there'd be to write about. Though at the same time, it's far easier, and more fun, for a writer to bash something than to heap it with praise (particularly if it's faint praise).
Watching the ceremony last night as a member of Joe Q. Public, I forgave Billy Crystal a lot even as I was unmoved by him. Last year, I would have spent the entire three hours complaining about how this was the worst Oscars ceremony ever, and how the jokes were so bad and the filler so boring. This year, I thought, how mean everyone on Twitter is being! Give the guy a break -- hosting the Oscars is hard. (Just ask James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Or Rob Lowe and Snow White.) I came to the show willingly, and therefore I was rooting for it to succeed.
And in the end, I realized, does having a great host even matter? Sure, we remember Billy Crystal getting wheeled out as Hannibal Lecter or joking about Jack Palance's one-armed pushups, but that's not the reason we watch the Oscars. It's a competition: We want to see who wins. We want to root for the films we like. We want to be there when those impromptu water-cooler moments happen, like Christopher Plummer gives a charming speech, or Dean Pelton from "Community" sticks his leg out like Angelina Jolie. The rest of it, the host part? All the banter and filler? Eh, who cares? If it's funny, great; but if it's not -- if, at worst, it's inoffensive, like it was last night -- we'll sit through it just to be shocked that Meryl Streep beat Viola Davis for Best Actress, and be glad anyway because her speech was so adorable.
Sure enough, this morning there were plenty of critiques from movie critics and editors talking about how tired and unfunny Billy Crystal was and how boring the ceremony had been, and sure enough, in response there were comments from readers exclaiming that critics don't know anything, because Billy Crystal had been great.
I won't disagree that the ceremony could use some livening up, but then again, so could the movies. (Last year was a pretty off year in film.) And goodness knows Billy Crystal was just a stopgap here -- the Oscars do need someone with fresher material and a more modern take on things. But then again, it's the movies that need to be fresher and more modern, as do the Academy members that vote on them. I really am disturbed by the recent Los Angeles Times report finding that Academy members were 77 percent male and 94% white.
When it comes to the host, though, there's a limit, because the Academy doesn't want edgy, and neither do most viewers. Chris Rock was hilarious last night, but remember, he hosted the Oscars once, and he was never asked back. Last night people on Twitter were saying things like, "Let's get Robert Downey Jr. as host," or "Let's ask Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis to host" -- anything but Crystal. You think any of those actors would work as Oscars host? Please. No. You need someone a little funny, a little dull, a little safe. Because that's what America likes, and that's what Hollywood has become, and I'm not necessarily saying that as a criticism. I love Jon Stewart, but as a host he wasn't everyone's cup of tea, least of all an audience ranging from a theater full of self-important Hollywood types to millions of viewers whose favorite kind of movie is one that stars Kevin James.
Anyway. All I'm saying is while I'll always have somewhat elitist taste, I'm finally starting to get that whole "critics don't know what they're talking about" thing. Force someone to do or watch anything mediocre, and they may get stratospherically cranky about it. Stay at home with your lemon-rosemary chicken and a bottle of wine, with no pressure to do anything at all but watch the parade of stars in front of you, and maybe, just maybe, you'll give what's going on in front of you a little break.
For the record, I was fine with "The Artist" winning, but I sure hope something excites me more next year. My money's on "The Great Gatsby" or "The Hobbit."