This article was reported by Brooks Barnes, Michael Cieply and Melena Ryzik and written by Mr. Barnes.
LOS ANGELES — The morning after the Oscars in Hollywood feels a bit like a nightclub that abruptly flips on the lights at closing time. Remnants of fake fog dispersing through the air, exhausted revelers trying to gain their balance. What just happened?
This year the entertainment industry woke up to a clear if troubling realization: the Oscars telecast exposed an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in full-fledged identity crisis. Almost everything about the ceremony was big and commercial; almost everything about the winners was small and arty.
The Oscars show, ever since the decision last fall to expand the best-picture field to 10 movies, was overtly put together as a summer blockbuster. Camera crews milked George Clooney for all he was worth, repeatedly cutting to him sitting glumly in the audience, a comic bit that appeared to be planned in advance. “Avatar” was woven deeply into the script while smaller best-picture contenders like “An Education” were treated more like embarrassing relatives.
The Las Vegas-style opening number, the Pretty Young Thing roster of presenters (Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner) and the montage paying tribute to horror movies — not exactly a black-tie genre — were all designed to get eyeballs. Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic, the producers of the telecast, said afterward that changes and cuts had been made up until the last minute, as they looked for every possible way to boost ratings.
It worked. Over 41 million people watched the telecast on ABC, a 14 percent increase from the year before, according to preliminary ratings data from Nielsen Media Research. It was the largest Oscar audience since 2005, when 42 million people watched “Million Dollar Baby” win the top award.
But the trophy winners were largely in sharp contrast to the broadcast’s big-tent ambitions, revealing an Academy with a split personality. Given the impressive ratings bump, some agents and producers predicted that the split would remain: it was awards and a show — not an awards show.
Tom Sherak, the Academy’s president, said the Oscars had always had two faces, one pointed toward the industry and one toward the public. “Two different things have to happen on that night, and it isn’t easy to do,” Mr. Sherak said in a telephone interview on Monday.
“It isn’t the public who votes, it’s the public who cheers,” he continued, referring to the ceremony’s function as entertainment. As for the awards themselves, Mr. Sherak said: “I think the Academy voters did what they do. You and I might disagree with one thing or another. But they did what they needed to do.”
Missing for many industry insiders was the organic sense of drama that came with past shows in which a popular film like “Titanic” or “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” built to a climax by picking up prize after prize — or when “The Aviator” built momentum through the minor awards in 2005, only to see the major Oscars slip away as "Million Dollar Baby" claimed the top prize. In those shows the awards actually were the entertainment.
By contrast, Sunday’s entertainment value was in many ways grafted on in a process that could seem vaguely dishonest at times. If “Up in the Air” was so worthy of monologue attention, why was it snubbed in all six categories in which it was nominated?
Spotlighting the incongruence, “The Hurt Locker,” the big winner with six trophies including best picture, was also one of the least-watched films in its theatrical run to ever win the top prize. It sold about $14.7 million in tickets in North America and about $6.7 million overseas. On its opening weekend in two theaters in New York, its screenwriter, Mark Boal — now an Oscar winner — stood on street corners with his teenage nephew handing out free tickets to passersby with the idea that if they could stack the house, perhaps the theater owners would book it for another week.
Meanwhile, “Avatar,” the 20th Century Fox picture that has sold over $2.5 billion in tickets at the global box office, was shut out of the top categories, winning three awards in the more technical races. (It had nine nominations going in, a tie with the independently financed “Hurt Locker.”) “Inglourious Basterds,” a substantial hit from the Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures, had eight nominations, but left with one win, a supporting actor statuette for Christoph Waltz.
Some Academy Awards veterans said that with its awards spread around, the Oscars began to look more like the Golden Globes, the show whose organizers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, perennially disperse prizes among a wide range of celebrities, which helps assure their presence for the broadcast.
After last year’s Oscar show, executives from several major studios complained that their contenders had been run through a grueling awards campaign at great cost but with no real hope of winning. The independent “Slumdog Millionaire” had been a virtual lock from an early point.
That plaint is not likely to disappear after Sunday’s proceedings. The filmmakers and executives behind “Up in the Air,” from Paramount, had trooped through appearances since the Toronto International Film Festival in early September, lending Mr. Clooney’s star power and the writer-director Jason Reitman’s wit to event after event, only to finish with nothing.
Over the last decade the voting membership of the Academy has skewed increasingly toward indie- and foreign-based filmmakers. That is because revised admissions rules strongly favor Oscar nominees over the kind of Hollywood old hands who were once a shoo-in for admission. As smaller films got a footing in the awards over the last few years, those who made and appeared in them became voters, increasing the tilt toward little movies.
The decision to go with 10 nominees occurred nearly a year ago, following the customary debriefing with the producers of the last ceremony, Bill Condon and Laurence Mark. Mr. Condon and Mr. Mark had strongly suggested expanding the field somewhat, perhaps to eight contenders, to get more variety in the nominees, and, hence, in the broadcast.
The Academy’s governors decided to run with the idea, choosing 10 as the magic number mostly because that was the size of the field for what many consider Hollywood’s finest year, 1939, when “Gone With the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” were among the nominees.
Mr. Sherak called the experience with 10 nominees “a very good beginning.” Governors will decide in the coming weeks whether to continue with the wider field. For his own part, Mr. Sherak said he believed it would take more than one year to determine whether the new system should be continued.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 10, 2010
An article on Tuesday about the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night, in citing past ceremonies where there was a sense of drama leading up to the award for best picture, misidentified the film that won that award at the ceremony in 2005. It was
