One of the joys of watching the Oscars is complaining about it. For me, this usually involves either screaming at the television or calling up random friends to scream at them over the winners. The Academy Awards is the Super Bowl of awards show and perhaps the best part about the end of the broadcast is that it marks the finale of award season.

Having never missed a broadcast since the original Star Wars lost to Annie Hall back in 1977, I can tell you that many of the problems with the Oscars haven’t changed since way back then.


In order to improve the Oscars, it may be painful… it might even require torture.

So what would improve the Oscars and make the Academy Awards a better show? I could continue to complain, but this year I am humbly submitting the following solutions to some of the problems that have plagued the event since the 1970s when bell-bottomed tuxedoes were in vogue.

Lose the Musical Numbers
For some reason, the Oscar show itself is still firmly rooted in the '70s. One of the most popular types of television programs in the 1970s was the “variety show” which featured a wealth of overproduced musical numbers and uncomfortably unfunny shtick. For me, the musical numbers make a perfect bathroom break, but do those performances have to be so damn long? Does every nominated song need to be sung in its entirety? Must each song require dancers to prance around on stage in some choreographed Broadway number? I mean, this is a show honoring achievements in "film," not the "stage." Frankly, I’d rather see more clips from the shorts than be forced to listen to someone like Phil Collins. And let’s face it, do we really even need the award for Original Song anyway? In 1999 Phil Collins received the Oscar for “You’ll Be in My Heart” from Disney’s Tarzan winning out over Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” from Magnolia proving that when it comes to music, the Academy, at the very least, lacks taste.

Genre Awards
They could rename the Oscars, the "Drama Movie Awards." It's really an organization dedicated to awarding only one genre of film. Recently the Academy added the category of Best Animated Feature, so why not genre films? Nine of the top 10 movies listed in the all-time at the box office are either science fiction, fantasy or horror films. A "Genre" movie category would have allowed movies like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars to compete on a level playing field rather than trying to win against dramas where their chances are almost non-existent.

Give Producers Recognition
There's much controversy within the industry regarding the recognition of producers. These are the folks who receive the Best Picture Oscar and are the ones who get movies made. Filmmaking is a team sport requiring producers in many capacities to see a movie through the filmmaking process and onto the screen. The Academy has a rule which states that only three producers are eligible to receive the award, even though many features have multiple producers which means that someone always gets left out. There's talk of expanding the number of producers eligible for recognition, but perhaps they need to go further and create a Producer award given to the best producing team. Considering the number of awards for technical achievements in categories that the public hardly understands, this would be one welcome solution.

Let them speak...
Longtime Academy Awards show producer Gil Cates gives away a big screen TV each year to the person with the shortest Oscar speech. The person who often wins the prize is usually someone from one of the technical categories. The unscripted speeches tend to be the most memorable moments from the show. If the speech goes longer than the allotted 45-seconds, consider laying off the music and allow the winners to have their say.

And, it would also help to...

Coach the nominees to "Stop random thankings!"
It would improve the show to coach nominees to not thank so many people. Rather than reading a prepared list of people in quick succession, frankly, names that mean nothing to the one billion people watching the show, wouldn't that time be better spent saying something meaningful? Perhaps the best Oscar speech ever delivered was by Steven Soderbergh when he won Best Director for Traffic. He began by saying that he would thank everyone privately later and then he went on to deliver a heartfelt speech about those who dedicate their lives to doing something creative every day. It was moving and short and stood out from the rest. And, better yet, it was more entertaining than hearing a list of names, which constitutes 90% of the speeches delivered during the show.

Give shorts their due...
I personally love short films. I also see a lot of shorts online and at film festivals, so it always surprises me that I've seen so few of the Oscar-nominated shorts. The Academy should feature these movies on their web site so that the public can actually see the films we're talking about. If not online, at least allow them to be shown on cable or pay per view or as some Oscar Shorts special, but I'd love the chance to see what the Academy is calling the Best in shorts.

The Best Ensemble Cast Award
For years now, the Sundance Film Festival has given an award for the best ensemble cast. It makes a lot of sense as the highlight of a great film can be that combination of a number of standout performances. Other groups such as SAG have a similar award to acknowledge a stellar cast. The entire cast of The Departed performed beautifully together, so why should only Mark Wahlberg get a chance at gold?

Rather than singling out one performance in a movie, the Academy should create an award for the Best Ensemble Cast. I'm not the only one who would love to see the Oscar madness that would ensue from Jack, Leo, Alec, Martin, Matt and Marky Mark taking the stage to hoist a trophy created for their ensemble cast performance.

Lose some of the awards...
I've suggested things which actually requiring adding some new categories, which would only make the broadcast even longer and nobody wants that. So, we're going to have to kill some babies and lose some categories. I'd suggest these awards simply be moved from the main broadcast to the technical awards which are given away before the main event. No one is going to miss the following categories and the show will benefit by adding new and exciting awards which are long overdue. So, consider moving the following out of the show:
Art Direction
Sound Mixing
Sound Editing
Makeup
Costume
Film Editing
Visual Effects (The Best Genre Film award would actually give recognition to films with visual effects and replace this in a sense.)
Original Song (Sure, this one's not technical, but it would save so much time as well as suffering.)


Martin Scorsese has been nominated six times for Best Director and never won. Will he lose a seventh time for The Departed? If he walks away Oscarless this weekend, Marty may lose it altogether.

And finally, to the Academy voters... for film history's sake, get it right.
A "Best" in any category should be a creative achievement that will stand the test of time. However, the Academy has a habit of awarding films which appeal to those pesky emotions of the moment. Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull lost to Ordinary People in 1980. Then a decade later, Scorsese's film Goodfellas lost out to Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. Which films stood the test of time? It was obvious to me that Scorsese's work should have won Best Picture in both of those instances. So my message to Academy voters is to choose movies that are not just great for the period in which they were made, but ones that transform the medium and could be true movie milestones. That way we can avoid winners like Shakespeare in Love. Wait, Shakespeare in Love actually won Best Picture?!

Oh, and as if that’s not enough Oscar madness, you can continue to complain about my Oscar picks from last week. Some of my choices caused quite a bit of debate including my prediction that Abigail Breslin will take home the award for Best Supporting Actress, though the LA Times agrees that she could win in an upset. Also, all bets are off about the Best Picture winner. Based on recent polling of Academy members, it seems to be a three-way race that is too close to call between The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine and Babel. So that means that your guess is as good as mine. My only hope is that it's not boring, but I know that's a bet I would lose.

Gore gone... for now

Chris_Gore is an author, a filmmaker, the creator of Film Threat, and, like everyone else, will probably watch the Oscars Sunday evening and then forget who won by Monday morning.