After years of being pretty inflexible about the Oscars and seeing the TV audience for the show start to dwindle as a result, this year the Academy has seen the benefit of making a few changes (we can thank the more relaxed Hugh Jackman ceremony last lyear for making them see the light). We’ve already had the Best Picture nominees raised from five to 10, in order to get more big name films in the largest category and hopefully attract more viewers, while the always tedious honorary awards have been moved out of the main ceremony entirely and given their own show in November.
Now comes news that they’re trying to make the acceptance speeches a bit more interesting. One of the biggest problem with awards shows is that they’re always slowed down horrifically by people making endless speeches thanking everyone from their goldfish to the person who made the tea on set. It’s a list of people you’ve never heard of, and is often as much a business consideration to ensure certain people aren’t upset because they’re not mentioned, rather than the person genuinely wanting to thank them at that moment.
However at the Oscar nominees luncheon yesterday, a new plan was proposed to try to put an end to the speeches that are little more than a list of names, and hopefully make the ceremony a bit more interesting. Nominees have been asked to come up with two speeches, one of which is a more interesting one that they’ll give on stage, talking about what winning an Oscar means to them (expect all nominated actors and actresses to start practicing their crying immediately for this), while backstage there will be a ‘Thank You Cam’, where winners can gush about how wonderful the studio executives and tea boy were. These thank yous will then be put on the internet, so that egomanical producers can check they were properly thanked.
It might not make the speeches brilliant, but it’s got to be better than the endless thank you list. However, the Academy isn’t making this compulsory, so we may still get some very tedious acceptance speeches (especially from those who are afraid they’ll look stupid if they start emoting, and so go with the ‘thank yous’ because it’s a safe bet), but it’s still a good idea and is one more things that should tighten up this year’s ceremony and stop it being the four-hour drag it’s lately become.