The MTV Movie Awards marks 20 irreverent years

From its inception, the MTV Movie Awards sounded like a strange hybrid.

Honoring long-form movies on the music video channel? This sounded like a one-time special doomed to tank. Yet on Sunday, June 5, the 2011 edition marks the honors’ 20th annual live show.

Scheduled performers include Lupe Fiasco and Trey Songz. Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Steve Carell, Josh Duhamel, Cameron Diaz, Jesse Eisenberg, Nicki Minaj and Leighton Meester are among the presenters.

Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live” hosts. Though a veteran improv performer, he initially says he’s jittery about hosting a live show with a potential audience of 1.2 billion. Then he reflects for a moment and realizes this isn’t officially his first time.

“Why am I so nervous?” he says. “I have already done this.”

At Shawnee Mission West High School in Overland Park, Kan., Sudeikis hosted the spring 1994 drill team extravaganza.

“They made the stage look like a television set, ironically, and the whole thing was different dances for different channels,” Sudeikis says.

Sudeikis was later summoned to the principal’s office for a slightly off-color joke he made. Should anyone go beyond slightly off-color during the awards, there will be a five-second tape delay, says Stephen Friedman, MTV’s new president, who reflects on how this differs from more staid awards shows.

“The Oscars and other shows tend to be very serious,” Friedman says. “You never see nominations for ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Twilight.’ Our audience loves those shows as much as they love ‘Inception’ or ‘Social Network.’

“One of my favorite categories is best fight,” Friedman continues. “Amy Adams versus the sisters (in ‘The Fighter’), that was a great fight. What other show will celebrate that fight?”

The MTV Movie Awards features some standard categories -- best movie, best performances -- but it also has some that are just so MTV: best kiss, best line from a movie, best jaw-dropping moment, best scared-as-s... performance and biggest bada... star.

To vote visit www.mtv.com/ontv/movieawards/2011/.”I should exercise my right to vote,” Sudeikis says. “I will do that. I hadn’t thought about that, but I will now. It would be really funny if ‘Black Swan’ or ‘Social Network’ won the MTV awards -- if they awarded such a movie. Also being embraced by the MTV generation, that would be kind of cool to see if for no other reason let’s not assume all teenagers don’t watch (these films).”

Among the fun categories is one for best villain, for which Tom Felton, the nasty Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, is a contender. Felton says he isn’t positive what qualities make for a perfectly evil villain.

“I have had to spend time with Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes, I learn from them definitely,” he says of the actors playing Snape, an apparently heartless teacher, and Voldemort, the essence of evil.

As Malfoy, Felton sports an imperious sneer, and he recalls how he developed it.

“My grandpa chaperoned me to the very first film, and he taught me how to look into a mirror and give a good sneer,” he says.

Felton is incredibly excited to be nominated.

“I got an email, and I originally thought they were joking,” he says. “To get back-to-back nominations -- I was flabbergasted to find my name with the amazing talent in the category. I am blown away by the fans’ dedication.”

Felton plans to attend. “Try and stop me,” he says. “It would be criminal of me to not make it.”

At this writing, Sudeikis was working on “SNL” and had not yet figured out what characters he might do at the awards. He planned to write for the live show two weeks before the event.

“You never know what will show up,” he says. “Oh, please, something will show up.

“Hoping someone just plants something. Maybe we’ll find out Bieber has a toupee, or that he has to shave four times a day, his beard is that fierce.”

For now, Sudeikis plans to prepare by watching “all the nominated movies, at least as much as I have time for,” he says. “Some I haven’t seen prior to this. I will immerse myself in ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Twilight.’ ”

“ ‘Twilight’ is a massive thing,” he says of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” which leads the MTV nominations. “I have met some of the stars through ‘SNL,’ and I only know them as these nice kids.”

Usually with awards shows, hosts have an inkling of what they will wear. Deadpan, Sudeikis says he’s considering “something handmade by my parents. They have never made a bit of clothing in their life. My dad is one of the worst seamstresses you have ever seen.”

Considering that people can continue to vote for best movie during the show, it’s not surprising that so much is spontaneous.

“When you’ve got Natalie Portman in best jaw-dropping moment against Steve-O from ‘Jackass,’ you know there will be some combustion,” Friedman says. “I think combining the biggest stars of young Hollywood with an irreverent moment of fun, you just can’t choreograph in advance. We try to tee it up and make sure great people are there.”