Jackman as Oscar host

I’m beginning to think that Larry Mark and Bill Condon, the producers of this year’s Academy Awards telecast, actually have a few tricks up their sleeves. More important, I think they’re determined to take the woebegone Oscar telecast in a fresh new direction. That’s the clear message of Friday’s selection of Hugh Jackman as the host of February’s broadcast. By opting for Jackman, a classy movie and theater star instead of a big-mouth comic, Mark and Condon are signaling that they’re trying to turn the Oscars into a party instead of the usual three-hour-plus cobwebby self-congratulatory snooze-athon.

The first thing Mark said when I got him on the phone told me all I needed to hear. “We’re trying to make it very much like a party,” Mark said, and he believes Jackman has the perfect party-host persona. “The Oscars are a celebration of movies, so who better to host than a movie star. Hugh can not only hold the screen, but he can hold the stage too, which is no small feat these days. He’s done major theater work, from ‘Oklahoma!’ to ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ and he’s not only hosted the Tony Awards, he actually won an Emmy for hosting them.”

Mark laughed. “That’s not to suggest that the Tonys were an audition, but in a way they were. The fact that he was brilliant doing the Tonys certainly spoke well for his abilities.”

As it turns out, before Mark had seriously thought about a host, he saw Jackman perform at a benefit for the Motion Picture and Television Fund (which Mark produced with “Milk” producer Dan Jinks). “Hugh was a hoot,” Mark recalled. “He did a duet with Kristin Chenoweth on ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,’ completely off the cuff, with all sorts of improvised humor and, well, he was great. So when his name come up recently, we all thought, ‘Wow, remember that night he did “Anything” and how he killed?’

“Our whole idea for the show is that we want you to feel like you’re not at a late-night TV show, but at a nightclub, where the host is saying, ‘Welcome to the party -- let’s have a good time.’ . . . If this were the old days, we’d be asking Cary Grant or Clark Gable to be the host. I think Hugh has a lot of those same qualities. He’s one of the few actors who has a real sense of occasion, who can say, ‘Let’s have a ball.’ ”

So he wants someone who looks good in a tux? “Exactly,” said Mark. “Not just that Hugh would look good in a tux, but that he looks comfortable in a tux.” Would Jackman do a musical number? Mark hedged: “Let’s just say that with Hugh, there’d be a good reason to do it. It’s certainly extremely appealing. He’s definitely not going to be doing a 10-minute comedy monologue.”

So how much does the Oscar host really matter? Can Jackman actually reverse the show’s steady ratings decline? “I don’t believe, in general, that people tune in to see the host,” Mark said. They tune in to see the Oscars. If the host gets to excel, that’s an extra. So, really, a big part of our assignment is to get people to watch the show itself. It’s not all on the host’s shoulders. He’s really there to set the tone and make everyone feel comfortable.”

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patrick.goldstein@latimes.com