' ' Cinema Romantico: Who Should Host the Oscars?

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Who Should Host the Oscars?


“People are always afraid of what’s different,” noted philosopher Yul Brynner opined in the not-yet-released-to-Criterion 1993 comedy classic “Cool Runnings.” Indeed, even if there if always clamoring for the Oscars telecast to do something different, a few years of doing something different, specifically going without a host, culminated in last year’s Steven Soderbergh-helmed Academy Awards casual trainwreck. Now things will return to some semblance of normal – A New Normal? (throws up in own mouth) – by not only returning to an early spring telecast but by re-instituting a host. One problem: no host has actually been named. That led to a great deal of social media fun the last couple days with Internet comedians suggesting hosts like Werner Herzog, the baby puppet from “Annette”, or Jared Leto in character as Paolo Gucci. Whoever it is, of course, has no chance, because, as we have written before, the only thing one can count on with the Oscars is that no matter what they do, no one will like it. Not that this will prevent us from proffering a few emcee suggestions. We wouldn’t be properly filling up space on the Interwebs if we failed to suggest the next Oscar host.

Nothing to see here, please disperse.

My Faux-Serious Suggestion: Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer. This, however, would be contingent upon them being left alone by the producers to do whatever they wanted which would never happen. And anyway, I would never ever want to put this juju on Abbi & Ilana. In fact, forget I ever wrote this.


My Not-Serious (Totally Serious) Suggestion: Brad Pitt as Westray, his character from “The Counselor.” I have lobbied for this before, as loyal frustrated followers might remember, to no avail. Still, I’m hoping to see it, Pitt Westray in a luxury sling back chair off to the side, wryly commenting on the proceedings. “Near as I can tell, the people most liable to tell you awards don’t matter, are the ones who’ve never won any.”


My Real (Sort Of) Suggestion: Like the “Point Break” stage show where the character of Johnny Utah is not part of the cast but selected from the audience at random, let’s just pick an Oscars host from the audience at the start of the show. I imagine Lady Gaga enthusiastically raising her hand, desperate to be picked, and Adam Driver, sitting right next to her, slinking down in his seat, hoping not to be noticed, and being seen anyway by Tina Fey who I’m picking as the Oscar-host picker because I like imagining Tina Fey in her Tina Fey voice saying “You, Driver, get up here.” And then an absolutely miserable Adam Driver having to go through the motions of hosting the Oscars.


My Other Real (Sort Of) Suggestion: Let’s continue with the “Point Break” stage play theme but combine it with that Jimmy Kimmel Oscar bit where he brought a bunch of unsuspecting tourists in off the street to gawk at Hollywood’s finest wherein one of the tourists is chosen by Jimmy Kimmel to host the Oscars. Except we will plant Matt Damon as his “Stillwater” character in with the tourists and have him be picked as Oscar host, a kind of comical fake populism that should helpfully fuel the social media discourse for days. 

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