Rooney: Advice For Oscar
The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney.
You may not have watched me last week because the Oscars were about to start, and you were tuning in to see them.
Hollywood movies are one of the best things we make in this country. I watched the Oscars pre-game show and didn't get to watch myself.
The motion picture academy picked the comedian Chris Rock as the master of ceremonies. They were afraid he was going to be dirty. Well, he wasn't dirty, and he had some funny lines, but if Chris Rock isn't dirty, he has a harder time being funny.
Most of them at the microphone weren't very good reading their lines, either. Very wooden.
Al Pacino: Isn't quality the measure, the measure of an artist?
John Travolta: Every emotion is heightened with music.
Scarlett Johansson: Here are some of the awards that I was delighted to present.
Dustin Hoffman: …also adds to the luster of the entire film community.
Most of them looked better than they sounded.
Even Robin Williams had a hard time out there: "…and more dresses than J. Edgar Hoover at Mardi Gras. Hello!"
There are a couple of categories they might add to the Oscars. Lowest cut dress might be a category. We studied some pictures for a long time trying to pick a winner. It was a tie between Natalie Portman and Salma Hayek. I never heard of either of them, but they probably never heard of me, either.
The award for the lowest cut dress in back would have gone to Hilary Swank. Looks good on her, but awfully draughty. (Clint Eastwood tried to warm Hilary's back.)
Annette Bening got my vote for best-looking.
The biggest thing wrong with the Oscars is they last too long, and I have a suggestion to make the show shorter: winners would be limited to thanking just two people. If they thanked the producer and the director, who as they always say "believed in me," they wouldn't get to thank their mother-in-law, their mailman, their lawyer, Warner Brothers, their manager or their agent. They couldn't thank anyone they have to pay.
A lot of them thanked "the Academy."
"Thank you Academy … We thank the Academy … I want to thank the Academy of Motion Pictures … I'd like to thank the Academy … Thank you to the Academy ...Thanks to the Academy."
You can't thank "an academy."
Some of them thanked "everybody."
"Thank you everybody. Thank you everyone."
Thanking "everybody" isn't thanking anybody.
Next year, I'd suggest they cut the Oscars from three-and-a-half hours to 60 minutes. It's a good length for a television show.
Written By Andy Rooney