Oscar Producers Ditch Best Song Performances

So, OK, just a few hours ago, we wrote about the producers of the Oscars telecast requesting that the winners perpare two speeches, one for the show, one for backstage where all the perfunctories are dispensed. Not the best idea in the world, really, because the show is roughly 75% speeches. And they're more memorable than almost anything else in the show. In that article, I threw together a quick fix for the Academy Awards if the producers are so concerned about it being broken. "Make it primarily about the major categories presented by big stars," I offered, "throw in the Best Song nominees, do the tribute, the lifetime achievement, and a couple other performance pieces that are easy to promote ahead of time." Scratch that part about the Best Song. Yep, Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic won't invite the nominees in that category to the show, according to Entertainment Weekly. Well, that's just stupid. I'm not really a big fan of there even being a Best Song Oscar for reasons I'll be happy to go into later if you're interested, but when it comes to the telecast, it's a pretty easy thing to get right that Oscar almost always gets wrong. You're on for three-and-a-half hours; that's less than one song per half hour. How is there not time for that? But in recent years the Academy Awards has thrown in medleys, abbreviated performances, and Beyonce singing everything instead of just letting the songwriters or artists put together something special. Remember two years ago when Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová performed their song from Once and then gave one of the night's most memorable speeches in acceptance (watch it here for a reminder)? Making it even more memorable was Jon Stewart bringing Irglová back out later in the show so she could complete (or even start) her speech. Yeah, nobody would ever want to sit through that again. So the idea is now to deprive front-runner Ryan Bingham of that golden opportunity and showcase his brilliant song "The Weary Kind", one that actually does factor into the film itself? For what? A lame Steve Martin bit? Hey, Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman: You're being dumbasses.

Comments

[MRPigg]

It's dumb to cut out the songs, they should just not let anyone speak. Afterall, everyone knows that the speeches are the single most hated thing about the show...

Instead of trying to trim down the awards portion of the program, why not just cut out all the stuff that doesn't have anything to do with anything? In Oscar history, have there ever been any memorable clip montages or production numbers not memorable for their sheer awfulness?

Here's a novel idea: the host(s) tells a few jokes, all the songs get sung by the artists who created them, the Best Picture nominees get introduced with clips, and then everything else is woven in to the presentation speeches.

[ned]

True, I never watch the whole show but I thought they stopped doing the best songs years ago. Bob Dylan's Wonder Boys song, "Things Have Changed" was the last performance I can remember seeing. I think he wore a cowboy hat and there were cutaway shots to the audience where Jack Nicholson was seen tapping his toes.

[Get The Big Picture]

Dylan wasn't even there, by the way. He performed and won in absentia. However, when I saw him later that spring at the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, he had his Oscar duct-taped to his amplifier. Pretty cool.

They've done all sorts of stupid things with the songs. I remember in 1999 or 2000, they had all the nominees on stage at once and there was one eight-minute medley or something. Then Beyonce sang multiple nominees a couple years ago, none of which from films she otherwise represented. Last year they were 90-second snippets, causing Peter Gabriel to back out completely.

That's not the first time an Oscar-nominated Genesis singer wasn't on stage; Phil Collins wasn't allowed to perform "Against All Odds" back in the 80s, because the producers didn't know who the hell he was. Instead, actress-singer Ann Reinking performed the song. Not the proudest history among Oscar categories.