Even before the Brett Ratner fiasco, I was planning to write a story about how this feels like the end of an era at the Academy Awards.
Even before Brian Grazer stepped in to clean up the mess that Ratner left behind, I was wondering if the Academy was really thinking clearly about what its big show ought to be.
Even before Eddie Murphy hit the road and left the host's position vacant, I had a sense that the times they were a-changin', and not necessarily for the better.
And now I'd like to know: Is the end of this era coming at too high a price for the Oscars?
The signs that the Oscars have moved to a potentially troubling new chapter began well before Ratner self-destructed:
Gil Cates (left), the man who produced more Oscar shows than anyone else, and the producer largely responsible for shaping the Academy Awards over the past two decades, died Oct. 31.
Danette Herman, the show's talent executive and one of the indispensable pieces of every Oscar team for more than 30 years, is moving into a consultant's role this year.
Bruce Vilanch, for better or worse the chief comic voice of the Oscars since 1989, was not on the list of writers that Ratner had hired for the upcoming show.
Also read: Brian Grazer to Produce Oscar Telecast, Eddie Murphy Out (Update 2)
And on Sunday, just after Ratner (right) used a homophobic slur at a Q&A and just before he detailed his sex life on Howard Stern, writer-director Hal Kanter died. His resume may be more notable for the likes of "Loving You" and "Blue Hawaii," which he directed, but Kanter was a writer on 14 different Oscar shows over 38 years.
Costume designer Ray Aghayan, meanwhile, died in early October after working on dozens of Oscar shows from the '70s on.
Throw in the fact that in recent years the Oscars have been doggedly (and often awkwardly) chasing a younger audience by bringing in different producers and younger hosts and trumpeting bookings like Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Miley Cyrus, and you've got a show that already felt as if it were struggling through a changing of the guard.
Then came the Ratner disaster -- and now it really feels that way.
Also read: Oscar Shocker! Brett Ratner Resigns as Producer of Telecast
With Ratner's resignation from the job of Oscar producer in the wake of his gay slur and crude comments, Murphy's quick exit on the heels of his pal, and Grazer's entry as the appointed savior, the story isn't just that we've seen the passing of many of the old guard from the Oscar landscape.
Rather, it's this: Who's going to replace the old guard? And at what cost?
It's silly to pretend that the Academy hasn't been facing those questions for a while: Even Cates tried to bring in fresher hosts (Chris Rock, Jon Stewart) and shake up the presentation in his last few Oscar shows, with mixed results.
