On the night of Sunday, February 9, or daytime February 10, depending on where you are, welcome to the Greatest Show On Earth — if your preference is to see a bunch of mostly Hollywood talent pat each other on the back. We are, of course, talking about the Oscars. After some incendiary tweets of his surfaced, comedian Kevin Hart quit as the 2019 host. The ceremony, and its host’s monologues, have always been a big part of the Oscars, but it went ahead last year without a host, and there’s none this year too.
As Bob Hope and Johnny Carson were before my time, my earliest memories of funny Oscar hosts begin with Billy Crystal, who seemed to host it every year. In fact, he hosted it eight times. That was a time when we were in thrall to his movies that included When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Forget Paris (1995) and Analyze This (1999). Crystal used to do elaborate cinematic opening sequences for the ceremony, and insert himself into them. I particularly remember the 1998 opener, where he takes the place of Kate Winslet in Titanic , for the nude painting sequence. He was also irreverent to the point of political incorrectness, but used to get away with his routines with his sheer joie de vivre . For example, at the 1993 Oscars, he said, with a straight face: “Ironically, 1992 has been a very poor year for women’s parts. Some of the most talked about women’s parts were Sharon Stone’s in Basic Instinct .”
Seth MacFarlane on stage during the Academy Award ceremony in 2013.
Contrast that with the 2013 ceremony, possibly the worst ever, where host Seth MacFarlane left the audience scratching their heads because of the sheer bad taste of his routine, much of it centred on female nudity in films. There’s no point perpetrating that annus horribilis by repeating some of his ‘jokes’ here. Needless to say, MacFarlane wasn’t invited back.
In better years, Whoopi Goldberg managed to pull off a successful hosting gig in 2002, in a country still hurting from the tragedy of 9/11 that took place just a few months ago. “What a night!”, Goldberg said in her opening monologue, “Movie stars, Oscar winners, great big party, my God, is this Liza’s wedding?” bringing the house down. She was of course referring to the epic wedding of the year where Liza Minnelli married David Gest, where Elizabeth Taylor was the maid of honour and Michael Jackson was the best man.
Steve Martin was a delight both the years he hosted, but the ceremony in general has been steadily losing audience, until last year, when, without a host, it actually saw an uptick of 12% in viewership. Is that because there was no host? We don’t know. What we do know that this year, like the last, there will be a galaxy of stars to present the awards. They include Rebel Wilson, fresh off her biting speech at the BAFTAs last week, Taika Watiti, Tom Hanks, Mindy Kaling, Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Colman, James Corden, Keanu Reeves and Kristen Wiig.
