Box-Office Blues Make for an Oscar Washout

By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

An Academy Awards show dominated by films no one's seen, actors no one's heard of, the most irritating songs since "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" and, ironically, some of the worst writing since "Cavemen" clocked the trophy show's smallest audience on record -- about 32 million viewers.

That beats the previous low in 2003 by 1 million viewers. That year, industry navel-gazers blamed the lousy Oscar ratings on the fact that the trophy show aired shortly after the United States invaded Iraq and viewers just weren't in the mood. That, and the fact that a musical, "Chicago," had been named Best Picture.

This year, of course, they can't use that argument, owing to the war being in its sixth year and the best-pic winner, "No Country for Old Men," is a grisly Coen brothers flick about a psycho killer with bad hair.

This year's audience is the smallest for the Oscarcast since 1974, when Nielsen began reporting the actual number of viewers watching a program. The show's household ratings -- just 18.7 percent of the country's TV homes were tuned to the Oscars -- makes it the lowest-rated Academy Awards since the show was first televised nationally in 1953, with Bob Hope hosting.

Casting about for an explanation, some navel-gazers speculate the trophy show's low numbers may be further evidence of the "hangover effect" of the prolonged writers' strike. It does appear viewers aren't rushing back to broadcast TV, even though the strike ended more than a week before the Oscarcast, giving the all-clear signal for A-list celebs to attend and allowing writers to participate in the show.

And, what writing it was.

Host Jon Stewart: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the program. Our next presenter is either an internationally acclaimed movie star or an auto dealership. Ladies and gentlemen, Harrison Ford.

Harrison Ford: Movies are made of ideas. And pictures. And words. Before anyone gets in front of a camera, somebody sits in a room, armed only with a computer and their imagination. Writing the words that bring those ideas to life. The nominees for original screenplay are --

But, getting back to the Oscars' relatively lousy ratings -- ignominiously whomped by last month's season debut of "American Idol" (33.5 million viewers) -- it's more likely Sunday's show got clobbered by the collective Best Picture nominees.

Historically, the Oscarcast pulls in a bigger haul when box-office hits are favored to win the Best Picture trophy. More than 55 million viewers tuned in in 1998, the year of "Titanic," which did close to $500 million at the box office pre-Oscars. The 2004 ceremony in which "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (pre-Oscar box office of $364 million) took Best Picture and 10 other trophies drew nearly 44 million viewers.

By Sunday, hardly anyone had seen this year's Best Picture nominees -- "Juno," "No Country for Old Men," "Atonement," "Michael Clayton" and "There Will Be Blood." By "hardly anyone" we mean this year's Best Picture winner, "No Country for Old Men," had done $64 million at the box office walking up to the trophy show -- puny in comparison to "Titanic." And "Juno," the most successful of this year's crop of best-pic noms, has clocked $130 million at the box office but is only the 18th most successful movie of last year.

Meanwhile, "Spider-Man 3," "Shrek the Third," "Transformers" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" were all members of last year's $300 million club but were nowhere to be found in the glam derby's Oscar night.

"Juno" is the only movie in this year's batch of Best Picture nominees to even cross the $65 million threshold; as of today, "There Will Be Blood" had grossed only $35 million. But "Juno" took home just one trophy Sunday night, for Best Original Screenplay.

In fairness, that "Juno" win was responsible for the best Oscar moment in ages: stripper-turned-screenwriter Brook "call me Diablo Cody" Busey-Hunt using her Oscar-win certificate to cover her crotch as she walked offstage after picking up her trophy -- yes, her diaphanous floor-length animal print muumuu was slit up to there.

"No Country for Old Men," which snagged Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor, is hovering at around $64 million, according to the Web site Box Office Mojo. With an average ticket price nationally of just under 7 bucks a pop, that means fewer than 10 million people have seen the movie. You can see ABC's problem.

But that's still a lot better than the mere $35 million box office for "There Will Be Blood," which produced the night's Best Actor winner, Daniel Day-Lewis.

Some argue the trophy show might have done better ratings had it included, as in seasons past, extended clips of the Best Picture nominees, to help the millions of viewers who had not seen these flicks.

But, what with that homage to binoculars in film and another homage to thespians feigning having a nightmare by sitting bolt upright in bed, there simply wasn't enough time.

Any time that might have been eked out for longer clips of the best-pic nominees was gobbled up by the performance of the five Best Original Song nominees. Starting with a little Alan Menken-Stephen Schwartz tune, "Happy Working Song," which, no doubt with the best of intentions, included the lyrics:

We'll keep singing without fail/Otherwise we'd spoil it/Hosing down the garbage pail/And scrubbing up the toilet.

It was one of three nominated songs from the Disney flick "Enchanted" (box office $126.5 million). Surprisingly -- or maybe not, once we actually heard them -- all three lost out to "Falling Slowly," from "Once" (domestic box office $9.4 million).

Also affecting the ratings: For the first time since 1964, the four glam acting categories went to European thespians who are far from household names in this country.

Best known of the bunch is Brit Day-Lewis. France's Marion Cotillard was named Best Actress for her role as Edith Piaf in the biopic "La Vie en Rose." Spain's Javier Bardem won the Best Supporting Actor for "Old Men." And Brit Tilda Swinton was a surprise win for Best Supporting Actress, for "Michael Clayton."