This year’s Oscar telecast won’t be your typical Oscar ceremony.
The trick of a successful show, producer Gil Cates says, is balance–no one portion should stick out, and nothing should overshadow the winners.
Choosing host Chris Rock–a never-still performer who takes up a lot of room physically and comically–put the show’s center of gravity on a different plane from that of other hosts.
“This set would not work for Billy Crystal or Whoopi Goldberg,” says Cates, declining to go into more specifics. “But we think the audience will realize it is a very good fit with Chris.”
The style shake-up is also an effort to make the television audience feel like an even bigger part of the show and to spark greater audience interest (re: ratings), which have been stagnant in recent years.
To accommodate Rock’s hip-hop-direct brand of comedy, Cates is breaking open the show. Not only will some awards be announced with the nominees present on stage, but others also will be presented to winners still seated in the audience. Cates said his goal is to get all nominees on television.
“The concept this year is to minimize the line between people on stage and in the audience,” Cates says. Rock also will be “recognizing” certain members of the audience. “Chris is an up-front, right-at-you kind of guy, so we needed to format the show to accommodate that.”
The set itself will blur the line between on-stage and off, giving the show a more interactive feel. Louis J. Horvitz, the director of this year’s show, said the set will jut into the audience from center stage and lead “like the yellow brick road” to the gondola that hangs from the center of the ceiling at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, home to Sunday’s Oscar telecast.
