Fixing the Academy Awards

Surprise! The Academy Awards are again really really boring.

And again, the Academy (and all the critics) seem to miss the obvious problem.
The problem is the speeches: they’re boring and repetitive.

Does anybody really want to listen to thirty people in a row race through 45 seconds
thanking the Academy, their mom, their husband, their collaborators, their hair dresser,
their plastic surgeon, their kids, and their plastic surgeon? Actually, it would be fun if
they would be that candid but instead they are uniformly professional thanking their
family and collaborators. No, nobody takes anything away from all those thank you,
thank you, and thank yous.

It’s meaningless drivel.

How does the Academy not know this?

How to fix it? All acknowledgements get written in advance and are scrolled across the
screen when the winner jumps up to give a speech.

The speech can be about anything but they are NOT allowed to acknowledge or thank
people. Now that would be interesting! They could talk about their artistic vision. Or their
challenges. They could talk about their dreams or what they want to do next. They could
talk about how this culminates years of efforts which didn’t get acknowledged.

It would be so much more fun if the speeches, which are the emotional highpoint of the night,
forced the speakers to say something of interest and not fall back on the endless repetitive
thank you, thank you, and thank you.

They’re entertainers. Lets see them do thar thing! Many will bomb. That’ll be fun too!