LOS ANGELES — The Academy Awards, wherein golden statuettes are bestowed upon heroes of motion picture arts (and sciences), took place once again Sunday night, for the 95th time, with the traditional invocations, celebrations and ritual naming of the dead. And as has happened since before anyone nominated can remember, it was broadcast on television (on ABC). For whatever else the Oscars represent, it is, for all but a small handful of humans, a television show.
Because what we mostly, if not entirely, remember from last year’s ceremony is Will Smith and the Slap, the project this year — including a “crisis team” hired to keep the academy looking good in case of emergency — was to get through the evening without distracting unplanned high jinks. (Smith, last year’s lead actor winner, was banned from academy events for a decade, and, coincidentally or not, last year’s producer, Will Packer, was replaced by the team of Ricky Kirshner — son of Don Kirshner, of “Rock Concert” fame, I cannot resist mentioning — and longtime Oscars director Glenn Weiss.) To mount something extraordinary — but ordinary! Something uncontroversial — yet exciting! Relevant — but glamorous!
Jimmy Kimmel, who has hosted twice before and runs a generally uncontroversial late night talk show, must have seemed like a safe choice, notwithstanding his having intruded upon Quinta Brunson’s Emmy acceptance speech in September, by playing dead at her feet. And, indeed, he did a fine job setting the tone for the evening, which ran efficiently, and one might say exuberantly — there was much cheering, many hugs, more than a few tears and a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for “An Irish Goodbye” star James Martin — and with a minimum of the industrial self-congratulation that at its worst can make the Oscars broadcast an argument for the demise of the movies. (An unilluminating, pointless montage celebrating 100 years of Warner Bros. and a segment promoting the academy museum and its “fantastic museum store,” were — thankfully brief — exceptions.) It was as if the room were breathing a collective sigh of relief now that the movies have proved themselves not entirely dead and that the odds of anyone being on anything but their best behavior were low.
