The Oscars that could have been if Sacha Baron Cohen was host

I would have liked this (Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife)

At least they got it right with Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director and The Hurt Locker for Best Picture.

As for the Academy’s choice in co-hosts. Sheesh.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin….the dueling monologue at the start of this evening’s Oscars, which they are hosting. Didn’t it make you want to wince?

There was something about all the Nazi jokes. Meryl Streep’s Nazi memorabilia collection? What? It’s been a few years since Sophie’s Choice, you know. And the Oscars being a great venue for Nazis chasing after Jews? I cringed. If the two guys who were up there telling them were Jewish, maybe they would have been ironic. Instead, it just seemed like a couple of Christian guys using the evilest regime in history as a leitmotif.

And then they trot out Ben Stiller dressed as the Na’vi from Avatar who notes how ‘Hitler heavy’ the show has been….this after it seems like Baldwin and Martin have been victims of an extraordinary rendition and spirited away to a ghost site by the CIA where they were subjected to enhanced interrogations until they promised to be funny. Proof yet again that torture doesn’t work! Way to go with your pick Oscar producers!

It didn’t have to be this way. Co-producer Adam Shankman told NPR’s Terry Gross on ‘Fresh Air’ that they had contemplated asking Sacha Baron Cohen to host the show. But the Academy said no because they feared Cohen would be too much of a ‘wild card’ who would upstage the films, direcotrs, and actors.

And it turns out that Cohen wasn’t just knocked off as a host – they wouldn’t even give him an award presentation because, the story goes according to New York magazine, he was planning to do a send-up of James Cameron. And Cameron didn’t like the self-deprecation, which fails to explain the unfunny blue-painted Ben Stiller.

Count me as one who believes that Cohen as host would have put more of a unique and powerful stamp on the show. After their clumsy duologue, it wasn’t clear what Martin and Baldwin brought to the show, especially because everything seemed to groove along without them there. When they did turn up, it was for their not so funny skits (hey, they got a bad night of sleep….oh look, they’re wearing snuggies!). When they popped back out in the monkey suits, it was usually for some self-referential joke about their own lengthy careers. “Hey, we have weird chemistry together! Oh, and we’ve been doing this for a long time….isn’t that crazy!?”

There were long moments where they were absent, and we hardly noticed. And let’s face it. For Baldwin and Martin, what will their memorable moments be? Nazis Nazis NAZIS!

Instead,what we had was an Academy that takes itself so seriously that after 5 great thespians come up and introduce their co-stars, they have to tell us again who the 5 nominees are – like we just didn’t hear it in the long speeches. We go from these sincere moments of stars speaking for stars to the insincere formality of going through the motions that we’d expect if this was a button-downed Academy Awards show in the 50s.

Yawn.

And then the insult to the injury – let’s thank the troops and have Baldwin and Martin wheedle their way back onto the stage and start glad-handing with the people who were just bestowed a terrific honor.

If Borat or Bruno or Ali G or whatever other alter ego wanders around in Cohen’s brain had turned up, it would have been fun, and punctuated the Academy’s endless self-seriousness with some moments of whimsy. He would have made the show fun. And that’s what it needs to hold the audience’s attention and keep coming back for more – not simply 10 short vignettes about each of the infinite number of ‘Best Pictures’ that were nominated this year.

Oh well…there’s always next year. Are you listening Academy?