LOS ANGELES — When hosts Jason Momoa and Josh Brolin took the stage for the Oscars pre-show early Sunday evening, Momoa got right to the point: “It’s a different year,” he said. “We want to address the elephant in the room.”
The punchline was that the actors were not going to do the usual Academy Awards song-and-dance routine. But many of this year’s Oscar nominees were not laughing because there really was an elephant in the room: For the first time in Academy Awards history, eight awards categories were shunted from the telecast and presented in the hour before, while stars were still walking the red carpet outside Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.
Although the film academy later incorporated winners and their speeches into the telecast, the question remained: Would winners in these categories — film editing, makeup and hairstyling, production design, original score, sound and the three short-film contests — speak out about feeling disrespected by their own industry?
