The producers for this year’s Academy Awards have a new idea on how to keep the ceremony shorter and keep the audience interested in what the winners have to say during their acceptance speeches, according to Reuters. They suggested at this year’s annual Oscar nominees luncheon in Beverly Hills that the winners give two speeches to cut out the long thank you-filled speeches during the televised ceremony.
To keep the televised speeches down to their 45-second allotted time slots, Oscar co-producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman suggested that onstage, the winners tell what the award means to them. The second speech, given backstage, will allow the winners to say thank you to whomever they want. The backstage speeches would be posted on-line, and the winners could use them however they want, including e-mailing them to their friends and family or posting them on their Facebook pages.
The producers also hope to keep the stars at the Governor’s Ball after the ceremony longer by engraving the nameplates that appear on the statues during the gala. Typically, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has the nameplates engraved and fixed to the winners’ statuettes weeks after the ceremony. (They aren’t attached before the ceremony, so that no one finds out who the winners are before the show.) Doing the engraving during the gala will guarantee that many of the stars will stay there longer before going to one of the many post-Oscar parties in Hollywood.
Written by: Karen Benardello
