In an interview with USA Today, new Oscar producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark outline some of the changes they’ll bring to next month’s Academy Awards ceremony. They promise fewer montages, less dumb banter between presenters, and no orchestral interruptions of emotional speeches (which means Kate Winslet’s might last for two hours). Most likely to be controversial, though, is their plan to cut the audio feed during the “In Memoriam†tribute, to avoid the traditional awkwardness when less popular dead stars receive the least applause (“We can’t control the applause, but we can control what you hear on TV,†says Condon). So how will viewers know which expired celebrities were most famous? We can only hope that the in-house audience provides visual cues, like the Wave.
Oscar show promises fun with new producers at the helm [USAT]