Kimmelized
Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel’s best gag of the night on Sunday did not come until the final credits had actually started rolling. Maybe that’s why you didn’t see it. Or maybe you didn’t see it because you didn’t bother watching the Oscars at all. A lot of people don’t anymore, but I do, and I sit through the credits at the end. Maybe you do too, which would make you as weird and strange as I am. Greetings, friend.
The gag was that, as Kimmel left the stage, there was one of those boards that you often see in industrial workplaces. Usually, they announce how many consecutive days there have been since an accident. In this case, the board announced how many consecutive Oscar ceremonies had been held “without incident.” Kimmel paused and, using a grease pen, filled in the blank space with the number 1. Not only was it funny, it actually said everything there was to say about this particular Academy Awards telecast. It was entirely devoid of incident.
There weren’t even any real surprises among the winners. Even my usually pitiful predictions didn’t turn out too bad.
After a few years of experimentation born of Covid-era necessity—and in reaction to various criticisms of the awards had been receiving—things were firmly Back To Normal this year. Back to basics, you might say. The boring award categories—untelevised in recent years in a bid to cling to distracted viewers’ attention spans—were back in. There were no extended comic bits or performances unrelated to the nominated songs. Just the awards, thank you very much. And the acceptance speeches. Luckily, most of those were pretty good because there seemed to be concerted effort not to play anybody off with music—at least when it came to well known people.
So it was 2017 again—the first time Kimmel hosted the Oscars. Wait, no, that year something interesting actually happened. That was the time Warren Beatty read out the name of the wrong Best Picture winner, despite seemingly being aware it was the wrong one, but he did it anyway because it was written down on that paper in his hand. So Sunday was more accurately 2018 again. That was the year I coined the apt phrase—which amazingly still has yet to catch on anywhere else that I’ve noticed—the Jimmy-Kimmel-ization of the Oscars. By that I meant that the Oscar telecast had become just an extended version of some mediocre late night chat host’s show.
In fairness, Kimmel was funny—enough. Kind of the way that Bob Hope, in his complacent later years was funny—enough. Some zingers landed. He had a couple of good ones at Will Smith’s expense. Some quips disappeared into the ether. At worst, his shtick got cringe-worthy—as when, apparently told to kill time during some behind-the-scenes set-up, he tried to drag audience member Nobel Prize laureate and terrorist attack survivor Malala Yousafzai into an obscure comedy bit. And then he tried to recover from that by trying to drag Jessica Chastain into yet another iteration of his tired in-joke bit about his ersatz feud with Matt Damon.
On the positive side, no one got slapped.
Thank goodness the winners stepped up and made things mostly watchable. Everyone involved with Everything Everywhere All at Once was cocked, loaded and ready to fire. There wasn’t a dry eye as Ke Huy Quan let loose emotionally about his life’s arc. It got better when Best Picture was announced and he got to be on stage with presenter Harrison Ford to whom he was the sidekick in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The moment was only slightly marred when Ford appeared not to know who he was, but then Ford never seems to know who anyone is.
Likewise, Jamie Lee Curtis was particularly winning in her winning, as she seemed genuinely surprised and spoke with no prepared notes. The only nitpick with her late-in-life Cinderella story was when she reminded us that both her parents had been Oscar nominees, thereby introducing a hint of entitlement.
Michelle Yeoh was another recipient you couldn’t help but be happy for. Her speech’s joy and exuberance transcended all the people she had to thank.
The best acceptance speech of the night? Of course, it had to be someone Irish. When Tom Berkeley and Ross White picked up the Best Live Action Short statuette for An Irish Goodbye, they didn’t bother thanking anybody or telling any inspirational stories. They just noted that very day was the birthday of James Martin (his 31st), the Belfast actor with Down’s syndrome who stole the movie, and they led the entire Dolby Theatre in singing “Happy Birthday” to him. Now that’s a good use of precious scant time with the whole world watching.
That was the evening’s bright spot for the Irish who, as a nation collectively, have been dining out on their 14 Academy Award nominations for weeks. Sadly for them, though, their best hope (the nine nominations for The Banshees of Inisherin) came to naught. Nor did Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl stand a chance against the juggernaut that was All Quiet on the Western Front for Best International Feature.
How I had been hoping against hope that somehow I would hear Bairéad up on the stage saying go raibh maith agaibh to the academy for recognizing his Irish language film. And we did hear those words—but not from him. They came from the mouth of Dublin-born Richard Baneham, speaking on behalf of the team that won Best Achievement in Special Effects for Avatar: The Way of Water. He must have gotten wind of how some people found it kind of hot when actor Paul Mescal (another Irish nominee-but-not-winner, for Aftersun) used a cúpla focal of his schoolboy gaeilge in a red carpet interview at the BAFTAs in London. (Gee, when I try it, people just step nervously away.)
Here’s my own thank-you speech for evening. Thank you to the solar system or the universe or the Greenwich Royal Observatory or whoever is responsible for the clocks in the U.S. being moved forward by an hour on Sunday. It meant that I could start watching the Oscars in real time at midnight instead of 1 a.m. and finish by 3:45 a.m.
Since Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t make the time go faster, I definitely needed the extra help.
-S.L., 13 March 2023
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