I started out writing this Oscars column intending to explain the power of awards shows to channel our collective emotions.
How in the midst of the wildfires‘ unfathomable tragedies, they could heal our soul like Barbra Streisand at the Emmys after September 11, or unify our disparateness like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s posthumous win did at the Grammys in 1971, or even channel our rage like Michael Moore at the Oscars at the start of the 2003 Iraq War.
A well-designed Academy Awards on March 2, with some tasteful tributes from victims and a no doubt powerful acceptance speech or two, would be exactly what Los Angeles and the country need — the national Thanksgiving dinner that, at their best, awards shows can manage to be.
Forget all that.
I now think the Oscars should completely overhaul their formula in 2025. They should do something more radical: sideline the whole awards part.
On Sunday, Rosanna Arquette suggested on Instagram that the Oscars should be converted into “the greatest telethon in the world.” Not since Roberta hit Nolan over the head with a wine bottle in Desperately Seeking Susan has Arquette landed a blow as forceful.
The Academy has just said that the Oscars will continue as planned but without some of the run-up glitz, like the nominees luncheon (and amid several Academy governors losing their homes in the fires). It’s clear they’re still figuring out the shape and tone of this year’s show. But if they were simply to go forward with the usual list of presenters and acceptances under more somber lights and some time roped off for a tribute it would feel … not exactly tone-deaf, but certainly like a missed opportunity.
Instead I think the show should be a giant all-in arts-based awareness-raiser of the kind done best in the 1980s, while also attempting to restore the spectacle of every Oscar decade but the last. A telecast that will at once provide the must-see qualities we all lament awards shows now lack while giving fundraisers the kind of shine they haven’t had in decades. Think Farm Aid meets the Titanic year.
Here’s one way that could look:
Every nominee comes with a plus-one — but it has to be someone who was affected by the wildfires. Could be a third-generation Altadena homeowner, could be a film person from the Palisades. As long as they lost something. Because it would be pointless to have this show and ignore loss.
Then, when the winner is announced, instead of thanking every manager, agent and publicist, the trophy-holder would be encouraged to talk about the wildfire-impacted person — not what brought the winner to this moment but the moments that made their guest who they are. Instead of being Hollywood automatons, the winners would be humanizing everyday Angelenos. If they wished to, the guest could accompany the winner to the stage and speak themselves.
For individual winners, this would create a powerful sight — a big-time celebrity taking the stage with an everyday person. And letting that person be the star.
For group winners, it would take the freight train of people nobody knows and turn it into an assemblage of what was lost.
Another element: the charity part. This would work best not as the typical awards-show dutiful sideline but integrated directly into the winner revelations. Every nominee would earmark an organization they valued — a victims fund, or a firefighting charity, or an environmental group, or a shelter. Each nominee’s charity would then called out by the narrator when listing the nominations. Then, when the winner takes the stage, that charity would be flashed on the screen, and they would have the chance to describe it in more detail, encouraging people to donate.
Primetime fundraisers can be tacky, or at least not the best TV. But done subtly, with a text or QR code (and perhaps some self-deprecating humor from host Conan O’Brien), they would not only pass but raise massive sums for people who need it. (The Grammys has already announced it will build a charity component in to its Feb. 2 show but has yet to say how.)
Finally — and here’s the trickiest part — I think at least some of the Oscars ceremony should be shot remotely from scenes of the devastation. Sure, you’d still have the tuxedos and gowns in the Dolby. But there is destruction, and the Oscars would do no one any favors by trying to sweep it under the rug. The camera should cut to locations in Palisades, Altadena and elsewhere where people could tell their stories. One reason the Oscars have lost their luster is because they feel forced and choreographed in an age when social media (at least theoretically) offers the raw and unfiltered. This would tap into that latter spirit wonderfully. And platform victims besides.
I realize this is a big pivot for the Academy and ABC, both logistically and spiritually.
To them I say two things. First, it would be a ratings bonanza. Who wouldn’t tune in to see their favorite stars made vulnerable, or some of the heartbreaking and/or inspirational stories we’ve been thirsting for this past week on social media? Who wouldn’t tune in for the sheer humanity, done by some of the people you least expect to be human?
But that’s for the bean counters. For the rest of us, the argument is simple. A Farm Aid Oscars would be a chance to take one of the country’s biggest television platforms and use it both for good and for old-fashioned spectacle, the kind that is both tragic and uplifting, exciting and edifying.
It would be an Oscars for the ages. And it just might make us, for a moment, feel better about the state of the world.
Your move, Academy.
English (US) ·