BEHIND THE SCREENS

Talk isn't cheap

Want to thank your agent? Your studio? Spielberg? Please make your check payable to the academy…

James Bates

Behind the Screens

January 23, 2006

The bad news for the Oscars coming off last Monday's Golden Globes is that efforts to cure Hollywood's deadly 310 Syndrome have utterly failed.

Syndrome, as in what happens when someone gets an award, then hogs the podium thanking an endless string of executives, producers and agents unknown outside Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Bel-Air, Santa Monica and other places in the 310 area code.

Deadly, as in killing any reason a viewer has to stick with the show.

Short of cutting to a commercial immediately after an award is announced, which will never happen, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should face reality that it can never stop the water torture-like thank-a-thons, which can turn a good Oscar show into tedium.

So the Academy should at least ease the pain by at least making some cash off the speeches. More on that later.

Ratings for last week's Globes further cemented that viewers don't want to sit through award shows to hear a roll call of Hollywood power player names. The NBC telecast averaged 18.7 million viewers, compared to nearly 27 million in 2004.

Don't buy into the spin about how ratings rebounded from a year ago, when ABC's "Desperate Housewives" scored a first-round TKO. Mediocre is only a shade better than stinks.

Or the excuse that Fox's "24" was equally as devastating for the "Globes" ratings as "Housewives" was in 2005 because the numbers were nowhere near comparable. It's the cliched awards format, not Kiefer Sutherland, that is killing the show and needs an overhaul.

The award show thanking plague isn't lost on Oscar's producers.

To their credit, they have long recognized that viewers in St. Louis are as familiar with studio executives Stacey Snider, Tom Rothman and Brad Grey as we are with the guy who runs that city's Monsanto Corp. (for the answer, see below.)

Virtually every year the academy lowers the boom on tedious speeches. Unfortunately, Oscar producers do so with the same effectiveness as colleges cracking down on fraternity drinking. The 45-second limit is like the 65 mile-per-hour speed limit: some abide by it, but a lot of people could care less.

Cueing the orchestra 46 seconds into a speech doesn't help a viewer who is ready to reach for the remote after 20 seconds.

The academy once suggested with a straight face that winners post their thanks on the Oscar website. Let's see: stroke in front of a worldwide audience the fragile ego of a producer I need to do business with, or post his name in some obscure corner of the Internet? Tough call.

So here's a proposal:

Start with the fact that a 30-second ad on the Oscars costs $1.7 million. That means anyone taking up their 45-second allotment is burning up $2.55 million worth of time that could be used to plug Hyundais.

Give winners 15 free seconds to thank their families. After that, the meter starts running for studios, agencies and producers who are mentioned at a rate of $56,667 a second.

A 30-second speech would then cost $850,000, a 45-second one $1.7 million.

To offset the expense, studios could use product placement. According to some experts I talked to, it's conceivable someone might pay $1 million to have their product thanked during a best picture acceptance speech, but only $250,000 for sound editing.

So if "Crash" were to win, the producers could thank Ford Explorer or Honda Accord along with actors Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock. Ortho could be "Official Thank You" for "The Constant Gardener."

Add-on costs would include a "gush and pretentiousness premium." Chalk up an extra $100,000 each time a winner calls a person, studio or script "amazing." One "creative genius" sets you back another $250,000. Anyone who refers to Steven Spielberg only by his first name gets hit with a $300,000 bill.

Any speech taking more than 45 seconds has to pay overtime costs for the orchestra.

Figure on $200,000, minus 10%, for every agent mentioned. That should kill off the clichéd, "I want to thank everyone at CAA."

Charge $100,000 for thanking crews who worked on the film on location in Canada, discounted by the latest exchange rate. Add the price of an additional ticket when thanking someone looking down on the ceremony from heaven.

All told, the academy could reap a few million to put up with the ego strokes. And what now is a worthless exercise that chases viewers away would at least have some value.

Last week's column told how an elite club of documentary makers has already aced director Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" out of the Oscar competition because they didn't feel it was one of the year's 15 best, even though it is by far the best reviewed documentary of the year.

On Wednesday, the oversight became even more absurd when Herzog was announced as one of five finalists for the Directors Guild of America award for best documentary. Herzog isn't even a member of the guild.

Not nominated were the directors of such notable documentaries as "March of the Penguins," "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," "Murderball" and "Mad Hot Ballroom" — all docs that are still in the running for an Oscar.

The chief executive of Monsanto's name is Hugh Grant (seriously).