This column, I feel it my duty to inform you, has not been certified by the accounting firm of Pricewaterhouse.
Jack Valenti will not take it over midway through in order to explain about the Academy and provide succor to insomniacs.
And I will not be disturbing the layers of dust on my tuxedo in order to write the column in appropriately formal garb. Nor will I sing each of the nominated tunes with Celine Dion, stepdance with a man in a Godzilla costume in musical homage to movie creatures, or prattle on about how helpful my agent has been to that blessed thing, my career.
The usual “one billion” people the world over may be making plans to watch Hollywood share with the rest of us the depths of its self-love Sunday night, just as the usual “one million” are starting to plan to fill the lakefront for Chicago’s Air and Water Show and the usual “one hundred thousand” are busily penning notes to Tribune editors to tell them how splendid they find it that writing as deft as this can be purchased for only 50 cents.
But I am here to predict, for the fourth year in a row and with an accuracy rate that is at least as high as Garth Brooks’ batting average would be against major-league pitching, the course of the Oscar telecast. Not the awards themselves, which I leave to movie critics and contest entrants, but the TV show presenting those awards.
This is important work. Billed as the “Super Bowl for Women” — and also, somewhat less succinctly, the “March Event in Which Women Have a Chance of Winning the Office Pool” — the Academy Awards (7:30 p.m. Sunday, WLS-Ch. 7) is traditionally television’s second most popular broadcast after, of course, the special “Touched by an Angel”-“Walker, Texas Ranger” crossover episode.
Remember, prognostication is not an exact science, but instead the result of acute sensitivity to vibrations happening on the psychic plane and, in case anybody should happen to be watching, intensive brow furrowing. No flatware was bent in the making of these predictions.
The envelopes, please:
– Whoopi Goldberg, host for the third time this decade for reasons unfathomable outside of Southern California, will make exactly one “ad-lib,” and it will be about her principal role these days, as center square in the new “Hollywood Squares.”
– In a touching moment, the Academy will pay tribute to the career, on film and in game shows, of Goldberg’s predecessor, Paul Lynde.
– The new pre-show broadcast on ABC (7 p.m., WLS) will see host Geena Davis ignoring her mandate to interview actors outside the theater about their borrowed dresses and jewelry and such to instead concentrate on giving publicity to people who can put her in a decent movie again.
– The ongoing saga that is Gwyneth Paltrow’s love life will acquire a new wrinkle when Paltrow asks the audience to confirm her judgment that she and on-again, off-again beau Ben Affleck would “make more beautiful babies” than Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.
– In her annual pre-Oscar exercise in celebrity puffery (6 p.m., WLS), moved up half an hour this year to accommodate the Davis show, Barbara Walters, recognizing a ratings-attracting topic when it flashes a strap at her, will use her time with Celine Dion, Elizabeth Taylor and Susan Sarandon to ask them about their own experiences with thong underwear.
– Later, in what she will term a “subtle flirtatious gesture toward my fans,” Dion will make her inevitable awards-show singing appearance in the nude. Watch for other inevitable appearances, now that George Burns is dead, from (clothed) Christopher Reeve and Kirk Douglas.
– Oscar producer Gil Cates will attempt to defuse the Elia Kazan controversy with that awards-show answer to everything, the massive production number. “The Academy Salutes the Hollywood Ten — And the Namers of Names” will be criticized by dance experts, however, for excessive pussyfooting and by true believers for representing Communism as a woman in skintight red Lycra.
– Another somber turn will come when the crowd shares a heartfelt moment of silence over Billy Crystal’s decision not to host this year, an opportunity he says he was offered midway through last year’s show. This year, he will be offered the chance even earlier in the show.
– In a move seen as a backlash against political correctness, presenter Chris Rock (who should have been made host in Crystal’s absence) will scrap the phrase “And the Oscar goes to” — not for the old “And the winner is,” but for the even more caustic (and suspenseful) “And the four fake-smiling losers are . . .”
– The E! cable channel’s Joan Rivers, her annual dish on what the stars are wearing threatened by the Davis show and its exclusive tarmac access, will retaliate by labeling Davis’ dress a “Loehmann’s special.” Daughter Melissa Rivers, perhaps the culture’s purest example of nepotism, will insist she saw the same garment on the clearance rack at T.J. Maxx.
– “Politically Incorrect’s” live post-Oscar show, an hourlong special Sunday edition starting after the late local news, will dwell on the night’s principal controversy: whether Roberto Benigni thanked the macadamia nut or the academy in one of his trademark charmingly incoherent effusions.
– Benigni will borrow a theme from his movie to make us think we are watching not a bloated exercise in entertainment annihilation but rather a magical night dedicated to celebrating the making of art. The spell will be broken, however, when dancers take the stage to begin the “Academy Salute to Cosmetic Surgery.”
