ShareThisMemo: To the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesSubject: How to Make a Better OscarcastDear Academy,We moan and kvetch each year about the tedium of the Oscars ceremony. We've done our penance. We've watched you muck it up in countless ways. Now it's time for you to listen to us.Herewith the new rules:Keynote. Forget about dignity. Do you really expect us to take seriously an industry that created "Meet the Spartans"? What we Oscar watchers really hope for is something distasteful or incendiary.Michael Moore, Vanessa Redgrave, Marlon Brando -- those are Oscar's true heroes. They got people angry and shouting. So what if emcee Jon Stewart rips on Hollywood, Shrub and the surge in Iraq. Who cares if Chuck Norris goes apoplectic, rushes the stages and chop-sockies him? That's show business!Guest list. Surprise us. Don't stick that old satyr Jack Nicholson in the front row again with his stoner's grin and "Men in Black" shades. You wouldn't give the same Christmas gift to your children every year, would you?Fashion. Wake up! It's boring when all the women wear predictable, tasteful sheaths and walk the red carpet looking starved, shellacked and frightened. How great would it be if every actress went "Bjork" with wiggy, unpredictable outfits.Calvin Klein, get lost. Vera Wang and Harry Winston, you've hijacked your last Oscars ceremony. I say put a moratorium on designer gowns and make every woman do her own shopping, her own makeup and her own hair. Better yet, make everyone cross-dress.Johnny Depp, Tilda Swinton -- you're both experts at androgyny, so do a flip-flop and come as each other's drag date.Red carpet. This is an election year, so no more "What are you wearing?" questions. Let's get Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour on the runway, grilling the stars on superdelegates and Barack Obama's universal-health-care platform.Best song. The category from hell won't go away, so let's mess around with it. Instead of Beyonce singing a medley of the nominees in butchered French, let's have live video feeds from the rehab cells of Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears. They can slur and sizzle to a taped playback.Presenters. Politics are far more fascinating than movies these days, so why not mix it up with the presenters as well? Failed presidential candidate Fred Thompson has an image to rescue, so let him present the best-supporting-actress award.Loser John Kerry knows about grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory, so bring him on as a presenter (it doesn't matter which category), and have him open the envelope and find it empty.French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the bomb, geopolitically and charismatically speaking, so let's recruit him and his sexy new bride to hand out the best-foreign-language-film prize.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is good at making things up, so let's have her present best original screenplay.Dick Cheney is the ne plus ultra in warm and fuzzy vibes, so he's a natural to present the Jean Hersholt humanitarian award.Arnold Schwarzenegger -- best makeup.Rudolph Giuliani -- best costume design.Dennis Kucinich -- best short subject.Keepin' it real. And finally, the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers has been relieved of its duties as official tabulator of Oscar voting. Because we trust them implicitly, Katherine Harris, the former secretary of state of Florida, and Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio elections official, will oversee this year's balloting.Kidding!(E-mail Edward Guthmann at eguthmann(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Note to the Academy: It's time for change
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