In Contention
By Josh Spiegel
February 22, 2010
And now there's dancing. Almost 70 dancers will be used throughout the ceremony, including 13 from the Fox reality show So You Think You Can Dance. This news, reported by The Wrap, was about as comforting to me as the Twitter plea. I don't doubt that the dancers are talented, and that they'll do their best with whatever routine Shankman, a choreographer by trade, will come up with. But it's the Oscars. How many of the movies nominated this year involved dance? How will the routines incorporate the movies? I have a good enough memory of the years when Debbie Allen, a talented actress and choreographer, was at the helm, and her woeful attempts to make Saving Private Ryan seem more like a tragic ballet than, you know, a violent war movie. See, being unique is fine; the problem is that unique comes with some baggage. On the one hand, we all remember the version of Proud Mary sung by Rob Lowe and Snow White at the 1988 Oscars; it was unique. But does anyone want to see that again?
What really worries me (at least, as much as something as admittedly trivial as an awards ceremony can worry me) is that this year's ceremony is likely going to be very successful. Even though I've stated my opinion on popular movies encouraging higher TV ratings at the Oscars, it's hard to see how the Oscars won't do gangbusters come March 7. When five of your Best Picture nominees have made over $100 million, and one of them happens to be the highest-grossing movie ever, people are probably going to watch. It also helps that Avatar is still a strong candidate for winning, let alone just being nominated. So, what's wrong with all of these people watching? Well, if the ratings are great, some people may assume that part of the praise should go to Shankman and Mechanic, and their work on the show.
Yes, I realize that, for all of my worrying and ranting, the ceremony that these two men help put together might be awesome. If it is, I will not beat around the bush: I'll say I was wrong, and do so as vehemently as I've ranted. But if I'm right that the ideas being bandied about by these two fall flat while the ratings soar, it's very likely that Shankman and Mechanic could come back, unless either or both of them back out. Perhaps the real issue is that the majority of Oscar memories don't come from the memorable ceremony, so much as the memorable award winners or losers. With the exception of Billy Crystal's time as host in the early 1990s, people remember the speeches, the reactions, the awards. That's what should be considered most important: the people who win. Cuba Gooding, Jr. won an Oscar, but what we remember is his outrageous acceptance speech.
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