Evan and I enjoyed watching Jon Stewart host the 78th Annual Academy Awards this year. His jokes were witty, classy, and at times – downright hilarious in that dripping-with-irony characteristic to The Daily Show. That being said, it was *very* obvious that his proximal audience did not find him as amusing as we (and from the reviews I have read this morning, most of America) did. It boils down to the fact that many Hollywood figures, whether consciously or subconsciously, believe themselves to be members of an elite class, and it was painful evident that they are unable to laugh at themselves. They failed to realize they were being delivered first-class entertainment and often appeared unenthused when Stewart would deliver a well-crafted joke about wealth/class or Hollywood stereotypes or Scientology. They also failed to understand that Jon Stewart has been more effective in bringing a huge audience to the side of their causes than most of them combined. If they are dissatisfied with President Bush and the war in Iraq, then they should be kissing Jon Stewart’s feet. In any case, I think MSNBC’s article (thank you for this one Evan) describes the evening very well – click here to read it.
Now for bragging rights – I correctly chose 17 of the 24 winners this year in the various categories. Some of them I had not seen (short action live film, etc) but correctly guessed merely based on the titles, which got me to thinking – if people vote for politicians without researching the candidates, are they possibly voting on Academy Awards without actually seeing the films? The one major category I missed was Best Supporting Actor – I knew George Clooney had won the Golden Globe for Syriana, but I was impressed enough with Matt Dillon’s performance in Crash to go out on a limb and place my vote behind him. While I thought Munich was a better film than Brokeback Mountain (although Brokeback was excellent), initially I thought the “Best Picture” award would go to Brokeback because of the publicity it had received. That is, until I saw Crash last week, and I knew it had to win this coveted category. It was, by far, the best movie of the year, and there have been a lot of good ones. The storyline, intricacies of plot, editing, acting – all flawless. It was the perfect movie.
I wonder if the actors appreciate even the very simple fact that Jon widened the audience of the Academy Awards show. I have to think it was a strategic decision to have Jon host, realizing that perhaps the average cynical and irreverant Jon Stewart fan [not sure if I'm the typical one] would not care to spend 3 hours watching such a self-aggrandizing event without someone there to capture the irony and bring it back down to the level of us lowly, non-theatrically-inclined lay-people.