OSCARS 2024

Oscars: The Rainmaker and The African Queen. Clint Eastwood won the most director Oscars with four trophies: two for best director and two for best picture for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Only three films have ever won all five spots at the Oscars: Best Film, Actor, Actress, Director, and Writing. It Happened One Night (1935), One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest (1976), and The Silence of the Lambs (1992). The shortest performance to win an acting award in 5 minutes and 40 seconds was Beatrice Straight in Network. The Red Carpet, according to People Magazine, is 3,000 feet long in the costume hue of red and takes six hundred man hours to install and remove. Perhaps AI can help out now that we have robots, why waste our time and energy? The carpet is cleaned on the morning of the show. More than 5,000 production staffers are needed: broadcast technicians, stagehands, associate directors, stage managers, hair-and-makeup staff, costumers, performers, singers, dancers, musicians, stand-ins, ushers, pages, catering staff, security, building staff, Motions Picture Academy staff, valets, seat fillers, and vendors. More than 200 countries air the Oscars 55 cameras are used across the Oscars pre-show, digital, and international feeds. Additionally, 12 broadcast mobile units, 20 technical support, and office trailers are used in the production, and 14 miles of fiber optic cable support the broadcast infrastructure. Overseen by a 70-person COVID-19 team 1400 PCR COVID-19 tests were administered to cast and crew members ahead of the show. The biggest memory the Oscars will be known for is the slap that was felt around the world when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock after he made a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. The Academy issued a statement warning perpetrators that, in the future, violence of any kind will not be tolerated. Let us hope that it sticks and sticks hard. Although this was a recorded historical event, the negative impression that it left on an event that seemingly holds to a higher standard took the quality way down. We are hopeful that in the future, something devastatingly positive can happen to pump it back up.