The Oscars telecast stumbled this year because it keeps trying to reinvent itself

Variety

The Academy Awards have had seven different producing teams in the past 10 years. “If you try to reinvent the Oscars every single year, you create this narrative that is constantly a crisis in need of resolving,” says film historian Mark Harris, in an interview with Variety. “One of the reasons the Golden Globes rose so much in the last 20 to 25 years — before they self-immolated — was brand consistency. You knew what a Golden Globes telecast vibe was going to be. Whereas the Oscars have no brand consistency now.” Harris, who didn't attend Sunday's ceremony despite his husband Tony Kushner's nomination for West Side Story, says the Academy should hire a producer with extensive experience in live television events who could handle the telecast over multiple years. On Twitter, Harris pointed out that some of this year's most touching Academy Awards moments -- Elaine May, Samuel L. Jackson, Liv Ullmann and Danny Glover receiving honorary Oscars at the Governors Award -- were apparently "not interesting enough for the show," so they were captured via cell phone footage. Harris says the Academy should take advantage of its nearly century-old history. “I think if the show was a little less concerned with chasing relevance and a little more concerned with chasing importance and history and emotion, it might find those things a better fit for its natural assets," he says. "It’s never going to be the youngest or most populist of movie award shows, but what it can be is the most distinguished, the most prestigious. It is still more meaningful to people in the industry to win an Oscar than it is to win any other kind of award.”