(Also read: "Banned 'Hurt Locker' Producer Gets His Oscar.")
Tom Sherak became president of the Academy in August, shortly after the board of governors voted to expand the Best Picture category from five to 10 nominees. In his first seven months in office, he hired producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman to oversee the 82nd Oscar show; presided over his first Nominees Luncheon and Sci-Tech Awards; announced the Oscar nominees on live TV; introduced the inaugural Governors Awards ceremony; and served on the committee that made the controversial selection of who to include and omit from the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” sequence.
Sherak, a longtime studio executive, talked with theWrap about his initial Oscars experience this week.
What did you think of the show?
Well, I learned a hell of a lot, I gotta tell ya. It was a real interesting learning experience, watching as the producers put it together.
That show is as tough as anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Can you imagine putting on a show like that, and you’ve got the people who are in the show for five or 10 minutes one day, and then you’ve got stand-ins. It’s hard. I thought they did a number of things that were brilliant and heartwarming and heartfelt.
And I’ll answer the next question for you before you ask me: Could it have been shorter? Yeah, of course I would love it to be shorter. But we’ve done a lot of research, and we know it played very well to America in general.
Can you be more specific about what your research showed?
When it comes out, I think you’ll see that more Americans stayed with the show than ever before. I think you’re also gonna see that the demos got a little bit younger, which is what the producers were trying to do.
We’ve also got independent research that shows that Steve and Alec played very good, that the people liked the show, basically. And I think the ratings showed you that.
And one more thing – those ratings were a little bit impacted by what happened in New York. Three milliion people – and I’m not saying all 3 million would have tuned in – but 3 million people did not get the signal until 18 minutes into the show.
When I spoke to Adam and Bill a few days before the show, and then again reading some of the things they said afterwards, there seems to be frustration over things that the Academy said they could take out of the show, and then forced them to put back in.
The piece the Acacdemy asked them to put in the show, the total time was less than two minutes. I don’t think that determined that the show went three hours and 32 minutes without credits.
But it’s always about making tough, tough choices. Do I run this package, do I run that package, do I leave this out, do I put this in? Do I walk people out, do I sit them closer? How do I cut time? It’s a difficult thing.
