10 Do's and Don'ts for the Academy

The New York Times recently revealed that Dawn Hudson, CEO of AMPAS and therefore a huge molder of our beloved Oscars, is going to invite Academy members for their input into the ceremony and its outreach programs.  My first thought when I read this: "Danger!  Danger Will Robinson!"  The Academy Awards rarely change for the better, and from the looks of comments around the web, most of the suggestions so far have run the gamut from tripe to blasphemous.  Therefore, I wanted to offer up my ten Do's and Don'ts for the Academy.

Do Bring back the Honorary Awards to the Telecast:

The Oscars are missing out on a huge part of the audience by ignoring when Lauren Bacall, Oprah Winfrey, and Francis Ford Coppola were snatching up Honorary Awards in recent years.  Honorary Awards involving Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Kirk Douglas in the past have been some of the biggest crowd-pleasers.  If people haven't heard of these legendary performers, you can pick a presenter who will give them a crash course in film history, and you know, teach and inform about movies like the Oscars are supposed to do.

Don't Combine the Acting Awards: Listen, it may be tempting to have Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis compete against each other for trophies, but let's be honest-the Academy has always had a bit of trouble spreading the wealth when it comes to gender equity (if you don't believe me, name a female cinematographer that has an Oscar nomination), and so I worry that we'd see a large number of male actors against a comparatively smaller number of female actors.  And I love the Best Actress category, so that would break my heart.

Do Pick a Specific Number of Best Pictures: You know what's worse than the 10-wide field the Academy came up with for Best Picture?  This inane "how many Best Pictures will there be?" guessing game.  Pick something uniform, preferably five but ten also works (for those that complain about the ten-wide field, remember that we got a Best Picture nomination for The Tree of Life out of that deal), and stick to that number.

Don't Expand the Best Acting Nominees to a Larger Number: This one is pretty self-explanatory, but the more nominees, the cheaper the honor.  Five is a perfectly fine number, don't add a sixth just because you couldn't fit in Leo DiCaprio or Ann Dowd or because it was a particularly good year for a category.  They'll have other chances.

Do Bring Back Best Song Performances: One of the few recent changes I wholeheartedly approve of was last year's changes in the Best Song category, where the voters were no longer voting against a film and instead voting for a nominee.  This was a step in the right direction, but this "pick and choose based on the magnitude of the star" thing that happened last year was crass: skipping Life of Pi and Chasing Ice even if they didn't have a chance (no one was going to beat Adele) was extremely tacky.  Have all five perform: the show is going to run long, it always runs long, and if you really want it not to run long, don't cut the actual nominees, cut the "We Saw Your Boobs" number.

Don't Limit the Best Song Nominees: There are some limitations that I am apathetic toward (limiting an actor to one nomination per category per year, for example), but limiting the songs from a film doesn't work.  For starters, there's a decent chance that some writer is going to be the third choice song and miss out on a nomination.  And secondly, this would encourage films to create original musicals again, which I think we can all get onboard with, right?  Remove the two-song limit, and let's see what happens (Disney doesn't do as many musicals as it used to, so we don't have to worry about every nominee being Alan Menken anymore).

Do Keep the New Timing: You know what was exciting about last year-for the first time in eons, there were actual races in major categories.  Best Supporting Actor was a tossup, as was Animated Film, as was Best Director.  People may gross about the Affleck snub, but it got people talking about the movies, and it wasn't so egregious that it cost the Academy credibility.  It was an exciting moment, and that's when the Oscars are at their best.

Don't Do Genre-Specific Best Pictures: I saw this one over at Awards Daily and it made me shutter.  Animated films are at least a complete and separate entity onto themselves (ditto Foreign Film and Documentary Feature).  A Best Effects Film, Best Blockbuster Film, or a Best Comedy Film would be a complete, unmitigated disaster.  It would cheapen the Best Picture award, it would be too confusing (Comedy and Effects are both subjective terms), and it would put films like The Avengers on par with Zero Dark Thirty, and that would be idiotic.  It's particularly stupid to throw out as an idea after the Academy honored a slate of films that people saw in droves, with seven $100 million films amongst the nominees.  Effects films do get nominated (Avatar, Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Life of Pi, and District 9 have all proven this true in recent years), they just have to be good enough to do it.  If you want only blockbusters honored, the MTV Movie Awards should be your cup of tea.

Do Keep a Host for the Oscars: Seth MacFarlane, Chris Rock, Anne Hathaway, and James Franco in recent years have proven that having a host may not be the best way to go, but the host matters at the Oscars, even if he or she just gets us through the opening and along the slower patches.  What we need our people that understand if you play to the audience in the Dolby, you'll essentially play to the audience at home.

Don't Add a Best Cast Category: In the same vein of the genre-specific Best Picture, this is perhaps the "Don't" I'm screaming the loudest.  Giving away a Best Cast award to selected members of a cast would completely make the four acting awards lose all of their credibility, and to prove my point, look at it from this point of view: Russell Crowe for Les Miz, Bryce Dallas Howard for The Help, and Rachel McAdams for Midnight in Paris would all likely have Oscar nominations at this point if this were a category.  The actors have four categories-that's enough.

Do Add a Best Stunt Category: This is the only category that I'd venture you should add to the Oscars, because unlike the previous categories, there's no way to honor the brave men and women who complete the stunt work currently.  I'm not 100% sure how you'd honor the stunt team (limit the number of recipients to 4-5?), but it's an idea worth exploring.

Don't Cut the Short Categories: No, most people don't see them, but you know who will see them if they cut these categories?  No one.  The short films are a way to honor up-and-coming filmmakers, and to honor a part of the Academy's history.  Dismissing them would do a disservice to people trying to get a start in the business, and would also deprive all of us of the wildly profitable ShortsHD project that the Academy has done an excellent job of sponsoring.

Do Celebrate the Tech Awards: You know what would make the tech awards more exciting?  Actually celebrating them on-stage.  You could have the presenters walking in and out of the sets of a movie for Art Direction or models doing a runway show for Best Costume.  Get the audience more involved with the tech categories-that's the way to get people to interact, unlike...

Don't Move the Tech Categories to the Commercials: Listen, I love Billy Crystal, but when he said that "no one at home cares about the tech categories" he is lying.  Most film fans care-I want to see Sandy Powell take a snipe at the Oscars for giving her a third trophy and I hold my breath that Kevin O'Connell will one day end his losing streak-even if you don't know their names, you know that you loved the effects of Life of Pi and the costumes of Anna Karenina.  The Tony Awards, SAG Awards, and BFCA Awards have all taken to pushing some of their awards off the telecast, and I think that's just plain wrong.  Awards shows are for awards, not for more clip shows, unnecessary tributes to recent musicals, and giving the host more monologue time.  And no one needs a damn Twitter update during the show!

Do Bring back an Oscar Special: This one's less for AMPAS (though I imagine they shape this a bit) and more for ABC.  Make this an event night-I know that Barbara Walters was an ideal choice, but you have a team that includes Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts, and I'm sure Oprah Winfrey or Ellen Degeneres would love a crack at an annual special interviewing some of the nominees.  Bring this back to the hour before the pre-show.  And don't let the host be Ryan Seacrest.  His red carpet presence is inane.

Don't React Enormously to One Big Snub: This is a terrible idea as well.  While the Academy is filled with this sort of reaction, most of the time this is a bad idea when you react to a snub of a film in a huge way (the exception being creating the supporting categories, but that was over seventy years ago).  Just because The Dark Knight doesn't get nominated does not mean that you have to nominate ten films for Best Picture and just because Ben Affleck doesn't get nominated does not mean that you should allow write-in votes again (they didn't do it, but you know there was talk).  You're an institution-act like one.

Do Find a New Billy: The interchangeable, different host every year thing is not working.  You need to go back to a Whoopi/Steve/Billy sort of roster, where you repeat hosts and add some tradition to the telecasts.  Jon Stewart was a good start, but why not have him alternate with Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Hugh Jackman?  Have the four of them fill up the next 6-7 years, and you'll have people debating about the host in a more productive manner, and we'll have less James Franco disasters.

Don't Pander to Every Audience: Listen, I'm going to be honest here-you're probably never going to get the Justin Bieber crowd, and that's okay, so please don't have him present (in three years we won't know who he is and they'll have grown into the sort of people the Oscars do appeal toward).  The Oscars, like the Super Bowl and the Olympics are an institution and trying to change that to make it more "hip" is a terrible idea.  Change is fine, when its small and doesn't alter why you're here, which brings us to...

Do Respect Tradition and Don't Forget Why You're Here: The Super Bowl and Olympics are timeless, and the Oscars are as well, but if you spend all of your time trying to become a newer, sleeker model of yourself, you'll lose your core audience.  The movie industry may just be interested in getting twentysomething men to the cinema, but the Oscars don't have to react that way.  The show is at its best when it isn't adding nonsensical presenters like Miley Cyrus and Vanessa Hudgens, and when it celebrates both the classics and the new classics of the past year.  Hire hosts in the Bob Hope and Johnny Carson mold, celebrate the films that are actually nominated and not just the ones that were popular, and remember the point of the Oscars is to honor the cinema.  It's not the red carpet, it's not the ratings, it's about honoring movies and the artists that make them, and if you do that, the audience will come along for the ride.  After all, that's why we go to the theater in the first place.