2015 Oscars

Even though the Oscars got smart this year and imported Neil Patrick Harris from the Tonys, they didn’t import enough Tony class. Neil Patrick did what he could with what they gave him—a great opening number and a bunch of promptu and impromptu jokes,

even a funny nod at Keaton’s Birdman when he came out in his tighty whities, but it just wasn’t enough to save the night from too many overlong and really stupid acceptance speeches. When will Oscar learn that they could award some of the minor categories (the ones only folks in the industry understand) all at one time with only one acceptor for each award? I know, I know, everyone deserves his/her 15 seconds of fame and recognition, but too often it takes too long for the three or four or sometimes more people in each category to make it through the crowd and onto the stage where they then sort of dodge around to see who gets first dibs on the mic and often the mic winner uses up all the time while the others are looking like they could stab him in the back for his selfishness. They should all take a look at the Tony Awards show to see how winners give classy, succinct, meaningful acceptance speeches, and none of them is ever guilty of reading from a folded sheet of paper (Shame on you, Patricia Arquette). Some speech highlights: Graham Moore, who nearly killed himself at 16 because he felt weird and different, urges young people out there who feel weird and different to accept themselves for what they are; J. K. Simmons wants us all to call our mothers and fathers more often (“Call,” he says. “Don’t write or text or e-mail.”) to tell them we love them; Patricia Arquette speaks for wage equality for women; John Legend tells us our nation is still one of incarceration, where more black men today are incarcerated than were enslaved in 1850 (Did he mean that most black men are imprisoned unfairly?). There were no real surprises among the winners, although I would say that no rap song (and I still find it hard to call rap “music”) should have won over “Lost Stars” from Begin Again or Glen Campbell’s “I’m Not Going to Miss You.” “Glory,” as sung by Legend and spoken by Common, was emotional, as witnessed by the many teary eyes in the audience, but its win was more a result of the meaningfulness of Martin Luther King’s march and the Civil Rights Movement than because it was a great song. Then there was the evening’s musical surprise, Lady Gaga singing a medley of tunes from Rogers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. It was a surprise and a revelation to hear her sing so wonderfully and not at all like anything we’d heard from her before. Now if she’d just left the red rubber cleaning gloves at home. It all took over three and a half hours and it felt more like five. Can’t wait to see what happens next year.