Jon Stewart Back As Oscar Host, But We Have Better Ideas

According to the Times, the Academy will announce today that Jon Stewart will return as the host for next year’s Oscar ceremony. We’re sure that Stewart, along with his crack sausage-fest of a writing team and Carrie Fisher, will do a wonderful job writing jokes and jabs and japes and whatnot for the telecast, but doesn’t this announcement just make you sigh in anticipation of how long and boring the February ceremony will be, no matter how funny Stewart is?

A quick perusal of Wikipedia’s complete list of past Oscar hosts reveals that maybe it’s time for the Academy to go back to trends of yesteryear. The Oscar host role didn’t used to be reserved for a single slightly edgy comedian (or a single washed-up comedian, in the case of Billy Crystal). Oscar ceremonies have had legitimately huge movie stars, authors, directors, groups of four or more, or even no one as host. Using these examples, we’ve come up with a few contemporary analogues as a way of helping the Academy look to the future … by looking to the past. In handy chart form!