But this weekend is when the real production work takes place. The director fine tunes all the camera assignments. Dance numbers and song performances are rehearsed, and presenters try their luck reading the teleprompter. I should amend that to say the presenters who bother to show up read the teleprompter. Most do not.
Hopefully they’ll get all of the set malfunctions out of the way and no one will get trampled when the giant Lazy Susan stage spins the wrong way.
There will also be a dress rehearsal. Stand-ins will double for nominees. The director will run the show in its entirety. There are rehearsal envelopes, they are read, and the stand ins get up and give bullshit speeches. Sometimes these speeches are way more entertaining than the actual ones given by the winners.
They do this to get a sense of the timing. Ordinarily they have a host and one of his functions is to either move things along or fill if need be. But this year there is no host – one of the many things the Academy has bungled for this Oscarcast.
Rain is not expected so we won’t have the pleasure of seeing stars in their million dollar gowns and hoodies.
I wonder if they rehearse those Red Carpet shows. Does Jessica Holmes or Sam Rubin ask stand-ins whether they conferred with Freddie Mercury before playing him?
One year for the Emmy rehearsal the bogus envelope had David Isaacs and I winning. We lost during the actual ceremony. But they gave us the envelope. Gee thanks! So with that in mind, congratulations to all the rehearsal winners. What a moment.
See you on the podcast. By the way, the current podcast episode is filled with Oscar trivia like who never won – rehearsal or otherwise. Check it out.
from By Ken Levine
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