Oscar producers know they can’t please everyone
There were just two weeks before the Academy Awards, and the producers of this year’s show, Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic, were running out of time.
The pair were trying to talk while sitting on couches on a recent Friday afternoon at CenterStaging, the Burbank complex where rehearsals for the show were taking place, but they were continually interrupted by their cellphones.
“You know what it is?” Shankman said, picking up his BlackBerry. “We’re careening toward the show, so everybody needs something immediately. All the time. Never stopping.”
As the afternoon hours waned, both appeared overwhelmed. Mechanic, the former chairman and chief executive of 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment who now works as a film producer, said he hadn’t been getting much sleep. The animated Shankman, a director of such films as “Hairspray” who is known to many as a judge on Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” admitted he was often waking up in the middle of the night to e-mail his co-producer.
It wasn’t surprising that the twosome seemed stressed. Not only were the Oscars quickly approaching but the producers also were dealing with another sort of time crunch: trying to keep the notoriously lengthy telecast to less than three hours during a year when the best picture category has expanded from five to 10 nominees.
“I think about the time of the show every day,” Mechanic said. “Not only do we want the show to be the shortest possible length, but we want it to fall well emotionally.”
“Here’s the reality,” Shankman interjected. “There are specific categories that you can’t do anything about that the general public doesn’t care about. It’s not that they don’t care about them, actually, it’s just that they don’t understand them or know any of the players in them. And because you have to honor these categories as part of the academy, there are going to be parts of the show that turn off viewers.”
Last year, the show’s ratings flagged when only 36.3 million viewers tuned in, down from 39.9 million only two years before in 2007. This year, the expanded best picture category will perhaps bring wider viewer interest with its money-making hits, such as “The Blind Side,” “Up” and, especially, “Avatar,” which has become the highest box-office grossing movie ever.
The producers said they feel a certain momentum surrounding the movie industry this year and are keen to make the show as widely appealing as possible. This means doing things like bringing in teen sensations Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner to present. (The pair even wanted “ Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling and “Twilight” scribe Stephenie Meyer to present the adapted screenplay category, but Rowling was unavailable because of scheduling conflicts and Meyer, who is a Mormon, does not work on Sundays.)
“The younger side of the audience has been drifting for years, so we’re more conscious of trying to build a youth element into the show,” Mechanic said.
There is no definite theme to this year’s award show, though the pair say they want viewers to feel a connection to the understanding of why filmmakers and actors love their craft.
“There’s some ‘why we do what we do and what does this night and award mean to me,’ ” Shankman said. “We want people to be in the moment.”
Shankman, who is also the show’s choreographer, has cast about a dozen dancers (69 total will appear on the telecast) from “So You Think You Can Dance,” which he feels will broaden the program’s audience.
“They all had to audition, and they were the best dancers at the audition. I did not give them the job,” he said. “I am definitely not trying to promote the show. If anything, the Oscars are going to get the kick from the young girls who like the dance show.”
The effort to commercialize the Oscars hasn’t been entirely well received. While the idea of having the two popular comic actors Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin cohost this year’s show has largely gone over well, other aspects have been less well greeted. When it was announced last month that the producers were eliminating the traditional performances by original song nominees in favor of using the recorded music over clips of the movies that feature the songs, many in the industry voiced disappointment.
The producers know they won’t be able to please everyone -- even themselves. “After the show, I’m sure we’ll see an evening of missed opportunities and mistakes,” Shankman said.
“There’s no blueprint to actually getting something great here,” Mechanic agreed, sighing. “And if you want to do something great, you’re often disappointed.”
