3 Suggestions to the Academy

Another year has gone by with my completely missing the Oscars. I used to care, I really did, but in recent years I just haven't been able to. Anyways, from my position of almost complete disinterest, here are three suggestions to make the whole event a little better.


1. Let the Winners Speak.

Yeah, I know they don't like the show going over time, and yeah, acceptance speeches can be really boring, but here's the thing. The academy is supposed to be honouring the people giving those speeches, maybe part of honouring them is giving them a little time to speak.

If the shows are running too long there is a lot of other superfluous, boring crap that could be cut out without showing any disrespect to anyone (for example, do we really need those absurd, condescending, bits where they explain what a given award is for?)



2. Pick a Host Whose Act You Like

I don't get it when the academy picks a host, that host does the exact schick he's known for and then after the show the academy is all "that was a big mistake; we're never asking that guy back." There have been a lot of these over the years, most recently with Seth McFarland. I can totally understand why the academy didn't like the "We saw your boobs" song, but I don't know how they couldn't have expected something like that from Seth.

This was absolutely the first thing that came to my mind
when I thought of "We Saw Your Boobs".

3. Let Outsiders Pick Some of the Nominees

After the general public was upset that The Dark Knight wasn't even nominated for best picture (I don't know why anyone was surprised or upset, but there was a lot of outrage over this), the academy added more nominees for best picture, thinking that this would make it more likely that a popular film would be nominated. Of course it hasn't because they still love to nominate the exact same kind of movie they always have, and so overlap between popular with the public and popular with the academy remains the exception.

The academy faces a huge dilemma over this. On the one hand they love being the uptight stuffy awards show that does things their own way. But on the other hand, they also love the attention that comes with a popular movie getting lots of nominations (and awards).

The fix for this is simple, set aside a portion of the nominees (say 1/3) for every major award as popular choices. These could either be selected by a formula (like the highest grossing movie which fits the bill get nominated) or by an outside agency with the mandate to nominate a popular movie. This would have no impact on who wins, as the academy would still be a bunch of prunes about voting, but at least they'd get their wish and people would be more interested.