Um, can we talk about the acceptance speeches?
During the recent nights leading up to Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast, my dreams have been haunted by this wicked little vision:
A proud actor has taken the stage to claim the Oscar. A wide grin is pasted on his or her face. The audience is going nuts. There is electricity in the air. But suddenly, things take a drastic twist as the actor reaches into his pocket and plucks out a piece of paper with a long list of people he wants to thank. Noooooooo!
It’s at that very moment, in this wicked vision, when a giant trap door on the stage floor opens up and the actor plunges through the dark depths until he lands in a mosh pit full of starving grizzly bears. Cut to commercial. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating that bodily harm come to any member of movie-star royalty. But this awful vision underscores a problem that continually plagues Hollywood’s biggest night: The boring, long-winded acceptance speech.
Of course, we all know that the typical Oscar telecast is something we endure more than enjoy. And there are plenty of things we can blame: An unfunny host. Pointless prepackaged montages. Lame musical numbers. The annoying number of awards categories that we care nothing
about.
But lengthy, cringe-inducing speeches belong at, or near, the top of the list. Why? Because they suck the air out of the room. They kill ratings. And they put undue stress on our DVRs.
It’s ridiculous when you think about it. Nominees will devote endless hours pondering what they want to wear and which parties to attend on Oscar night, but when their big moment finally arrives, they’ll often gaze blankly at the audience and say, “I’ve got nothing prepared.”
Then they’ll start thanking everyone from their agents and their co-stars to their personal trainers and dog groomers.
And that’s when our fridge run begins.
Please, people, this isn’t a Nancy Pelosi filibuster. It’s your Oscar speech. Your one shining moment. A chance to make memories and seal your glory. Don’t blow it.
Those of us welded to our sofas and stuffing our faces
with Pringles don’t want to hear a laundry list of names that mean nothing to us. We want you to speak from the heart, like Viola Davis and Mahershala Ali did last year. We want you to reveal a little piece of yourself. We want raw emotion. Some spontaneity. Maybe even a dash of humor. We want Cuba Gooding Jr.-like jubilation. Some Jack Palance push-ups.
And we want it all in 45 seconds or less.
You would think that Oscar winners — especially actors — would know how to deliver the goods in front of a camera. But maybe they’re so accustomed to following a script that they lose their way when trying to go off-the-cuff. (See: Julia Roberts, 2001). Or maybe Oscar jitters simply overwhelm them. Whatever the case, all too often the orchestra has to chase them off the stage, while the show grows as bloated as Gary Oldman in “Darkest Hour.”
And it’s not as if the Oscar producers don’t realize that rambling acceptance speeches make for bad TV. Over the years, they have implored nominees to keep those thankyou lists in their pockets. One year, they even offered a high-definition TV set to the winner with the shortest speech.
Perhaps they would have had better results if they offered a role in the next “Black Panther” flick.
Of course, these glossy, self-important Hollywood robots aren’t about to change. Sunday night is sure to bring more excruciatingly bad speeches (What, Oprah isn’t nominated for anything?) And the problem might even be exacerbated by those who are eager to delve into politics and/or the #MeToo movement.
That’s not to say those issues shouldn’t be raised in front of a captive audience of millions. But there’s a limit to how much of that we can stomach on a night when many of us just yearn to escape reality in favor of a few hours of snarky Twitter comments about hairdos and gravity-defying dresses.
Whatever goes down on Sunday, you can bet that my finger will be poised on the remote control and my mind will be filled with wicked visions of onstage trapdoors and starving grizzly bears.