Academy Invites Nominees To Annual Luncheon Threat About Overlong Speeches
Yesterday, the Academy continued its annual tradition of inviting its awards nominees to the Beverly Hilton for a casual lunch, an opportunity to have their picture taken in front of a giant version of the statuette they likely won't be taking home following the ceremony (we're looking at you, Will Smith! ), and a chance to receive an official warning about the dire consequences that await the willfully verbose should they violate their allotted ten seconds of acceptance speech time. While last year's too-gentle admonition about overlong speeches contained an ineffectual warning of a premature orchestra swell, Oscar producer Laura Ziskin now threatens overly grateful windbags with bodily harm:
They may seem calm now, but Oscar telecast producer Laura Ziskin made a threat. Setting a piece of paper on fire, she paraphrased humorist Will Rogers, who said it takes three weeks to write a good off-the-cuff speech, adding, "If you bring paper onstage at the Oscars, you'll be playing with fire."
Ziskin continued to read from the flaming paper, further demonstrating how each additional name thanked from a winner's already burning list would result in a seat-filler being dragged onto the stage and publicly set aflame. But after the charred bodies of a handful of cater waiters standing in for the awards night victims began to clutter the dais and emit an appetite-hampering odor, the producer knew that her point about the Academy's commitment to keeping this year's speeches brief had been effectively delivered.
