So now the pieces are in place. The Oscar producers have chosen their hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Ricky Gervais can do a killer job at the Golden Globes and wonder if the Academy will take note. Neil Patrick Harris can make a couple of movies and try to burnish his film credentials. Hugh Jackman can take February off, if he wants.
And while the choice of Martin and Baldwin has brought near-unanimous praise to Oscar producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman, it also raises some questions. So I’m going to ask the questions … and answer them, more or less.
(AMPAS photo, below: Steve Martin is doing the Oscars with a "30 Rock" star. Just not that "30 Rock" star.)
Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin – does this mean no singing and dancing?
Well, one of the show’s producers is a judge on “So You Think You Can Dance” who was lauded in the initial press release for his choreography skills. You do the math. Of course there’s going to be singing and dancing. They wouldn’t have hired the guy otherwise. (Shankman suggested otherwise in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, but we all know he's going to indulge his terpsichorean side at some point.)
What I think we’ll see, though, is less singing and dancing from the hosts, and more from outside pros. (Even Jackman got help from the likes of Beyonce last year.) Some of us (me, for instance) might welcome an Oscar show without any extraneous musical numbers, but this isn’t the year for that. Just don’t expect much of it from the hosts.
Although Martin might well undertake a step or two. And Baldwin – well, if it’s in the service of a joke, why not?
These two guys have an average age of 57 and a half! Whatever happened to chasing the hip, young audience?
C’mon, we’re talking about the Oscars here. They’ll book Miley Cyrus as a presenter, but dignity is important to this group. They’re going to spend years trying to bump up the ratings by adding more best-picture nominees and tinkering with the format before they’ll do anything really drastic.
Is this the end of the show-opening Oscar monologue?
For now, maybe. And maybe it’s the birth of the show-opening Oscar dialogue. In the past, multiple hosts have tended to divide the work, appearing separately rather than together. But I suspect the focus here will be on establishing a rapport between the two hosts.
Ideally, it’ll be a deadpan, dry rapport that will play off the venality of Hollywood – the starting point for every one of Martin’s jokes during his previous Oscar hosting gigs, as well as the basis for Baldwin’s character on “30 Rock.”
I’m sure we’ll see Martin and Baldwin separately at times, but I’m betting the show opens with a duet, not a solo.
Speaking of “30 Rock,” isn’t Alec Baldwin more of a TV star than a movie star these days?
Yes.
