In one small sense, the telecast of the 54th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards may have performed a public service. It probably helped discourage people from going into television. Watching those so-called professionals get up there and spew sanctimonious gush on one another, and especially on themselves, was not just an off-putting but a stomach-churning experience. The Emmys give me the creeps.
Oh the hubris, the gall, the self-importance, the self-adoration! Some of the winners made Kathie Lee Gifford look like a shrinking violet. What do they think they’re doing, finding a cure for cancer? They’re putting on television shows and in many cases being disgracefully overpaid for it. By fluke as much as for their own talent, they can be made famous and rich, and they get like three months off a year besides.
Of course the taker of the cake, the height of chutzpah, the preposterous pinnacle, was the presentation and acceptance of the “Bob Hope Humanitarian Award” to Oprah Winfrey. Whoa. Hey now. Here was Hollywood hype at its most overreachingly obscene, the kind of thing to give bad taste a bad name, an unwitting exercise in self-parody worthy of SCTV at its most accurately derisive.
Ordered to attend
First off, why is a humanitarian award named after Bob Hope? Because he has lived past 90? He had a long and mostly happy career and was amply and frequently rewarded not just with the public’s adoration but with medals, trophies, testimonial dinners, testimonial brunches, presidential citations and what-not. Yes he tirelessly entertained the troops-and then made TV specials out of the trips. When he went to Vietnam, it was reported at the time, some of “our boys” had to be ordered to attend his shows when it appeared the turnout was going to be embarrassingly minuscule.
But bless him, he’s an institution, even if one who probably did his best work in the films he made in the ’30s and ’40s and on radio. Less outrageous than naming the award after him was giving it to Oprah. How do they measure humanitarianism in Hollywood anyway-by the square footage of someone’s penthouse? She gives money to charity, yes. This was made clear during the pregame show. Co-host Matt Lauer noted that much of Oprah’s philanthropy was done without fanfare and Oprah concurred, saying that through “my own private foundations” she was able to “do a lot of things privately.”
Of course there’s no better way to keep something private than by announcing it on prime-time television.
Tom Hanks seemed about to burst into laughter as he read the flowery tribute to Oprah written by the Emmy writers. Then came the parade of stars on tape praising Oprah’s mighty name. It was indeed impressive to see Coretta Scott King, and if she says Oprah has done good works, well then, she probably has. But a great humanitarian? How far are we stretching that term?
In her acceptance speech, Oprah said she would “continue to strive” on behalf of the human race so she might become “even more worthy” of the honor than she already was. There’s a modest little darling for you. Other than the interview with Oprah-preceded by Lauer gamely grabbing her from out of the passing crowd on the red carpet-the best parts of the pregame show were when Lauer and Katie Couric asked celebrities to name their favorite TV programs and several of them cited shows on competing networks, most notably HBO.
Jill Hennessy, the star of NBC’s “Crossing Jordan,” said, “I love Bernie Mac,” a reference to a hit on Fox. Alec Baldwin, one of the genuinely intelligent political activists in show business, told Lauer, “When I watch TV now, I’m just amazed at how much HBO has really changed TV.” He said all the other networks had to scramble to try to keep up. Oops! End of interview!
Before the night was over (if indeed it is over), the imbecilic hyperbole of the Emmy show reached new cuckoo heights. You couldn’t count the number of people who were hailed as amazing, astonishing, magnificent, incredible, brilliant and incredibly brilliant. Overcooked ham John Spencer, an unworthy winner for an acting prize on the over-lauded “West Wing” (most laboriously “noble” of all prime-time dramas) hailed Aaron Sorkin as “one of the great writers of all time.” Those West Wingers really think they’re on a mission. They’re more self-important than the people who work in the real West Wing, I’ll betcha.
Bafflingly, the producers padded out a show destined to be overlong with tedious featurettes describing nominated shows. That was presumably for viewers in Kabul not already familiar with the programs. Louis J. Horvitz was called a great director during a funny routine by host Conan O’Brien, but later, when a truly noble Old Soldier-an actual member of “Easy Company” portrayed in HBO’s “Band of Brothers”-was making a moving speech on behalf of the brothers themselves, memorializing those who died in battle or in the intervening years, Horvitz didn’t have the sense to stay on that dignified, tearful face. Instead he cut all around for standard and mostly meaningless reaction shots.
An oasis of genuine emotion
A really great director would recognize a moment like that and stay with it. But it’s hard to spot something genuine amidst so much that is phony. And the goal with all these televised awards shows seems to be to make less and less of them live and unpredictable and rely more and more on pretaped crummy fluff.
To add to the overpopulation of tributes, somebody decided it would be nice to honor Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television-a man who in his time was victimized and ripped off by the then-mighty Radio Corporation of America (RCA), original owner of NBC. Farnsworth’s widow stood up in the audience. OK, fine, but then came a sop to David Sarnoff and RCA, the very parties who had tried to squash Farnsworth and keep his name out of the history books. Blech.
O’Brien may or may not be a great humanitarian, but his contribution to the show was on the heroic side. He found just the right tone to counterbalance the oppressive pomposity. Even presenter Garry Shandling, one of the brightest minds in American comedy, called Conan “hilarious” and said he was doing “a fantastic job.”
And yet it was Shandling himself who probably uttered the best line of the evening, a pithy little comment on the essential absurdity of the whole ordeal. He said that while the Oscarcast had indeed won Emmy awards in years past, the Emmys had never won and in fact are ineligible. He said he consulted the Emmy guidelines and discovered the reason: “It is technically impossible to put your head up your own ass.”
Bravo, amen and hooray.