What the 2025 Oscars should look like amid LA wildfires: Suggestions

I began writing this column about the Oscars with the goal of explaining the power of awards shows to channel our collective emotions.

How, amid the unfathomable tragedies of the wildfires, could they heal our soul like Barbra Streisand at the Emmys after 9/11, or unify our disparities like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s posthumous Grammy win did in 1971, or we even channel our rage like Michael Moore at the Oscars at the start of the Iraq War in 2003.

A well-designed awards ceremony on March 2, with some tasteful tributes from the victims and an undoubtedly powerful acceptance speech or two, would be just what Los Angeles and the country need – the National Thanksgiving Dinner that, in the best case scenario, awards ceremonies can succeed in this.

Forget all that.

I now think that the Oscars should completely rethink their formula in 2025. They should do something more radical: put aside the entire awards part.

On Sunday, Rosanna Arquette suggested on Instagram that the Oscars should become “the biggest telethon in the world.” Not since Roberta hit Nolan in the head with a wine bottle. I’m desperately looking for Susan Did Arquette deliver such a powerful blow.

The Academy has just declared that the Oscars will go on as planned, but without the prerequisite pomp, like the nominees’ luncheon (and amid several Academy governors who lost their homes in the fires). It’s clear they’re still finding the shape and tone of this year’s show. But if they were to just continue with the usual slate of presenters and acceptances under dimmer lights and for some time set aside for a tribute, it would seem… not exactly tone-deaf, but certainly like a missed opportunity.

Instead, I think the show should be a gigantic, all-arts-based outreach program like the one best done in the 1980s, while attempting to restore the spectacle of every Oscar decade except the last. A TV show that will provide both the must-see qualities that we all lament the awards now lack, while also giving fundraisers the kind of shine they haven’t had in decades. Consider that Farm Aid meets the Titanic year.

Here’s one way it might look:

Each candidate comes with a plus one, but it must be someone affected by the wildfires. It could be a third-generation Altadena owner, or a filmmaker from the Palisades. As long as they lost something. Because it would be pointless to have this spectacle and ignore the loss.

Then, when the winner is announced, instead of thanking every manager, agent and publicist, the trophy holder would be encouraged to talk about the person affected by the wildfire – not what brought the winner to that moment but moments that made his guest one they are. Instead of being Hollywood automatons, the winners would humanize everyday Angelenos. If desired, the guest could accompany the winner on stage and speak himself.

For individual winners, it would create a powerful spectacle: a big celebrity taking the stage alongside an ordinary person. And let that person be the star.

For the group winners, it would take the freight train of people no one knows and turn it into an assemblage of what was lost.

Another element: the charitable part. This would work best not as a typical awards show side event, but rather as a direct incorporation into the winners’ reveals. Each candidate would nominate an organization they like – a victims’ fund, firefighting charity, environmental group or shelter. Each candidate’s charity would then be called out by the narrator when listing nominations. Then, when the winner took the stage, that charity would be displayed on the screen and they would have the opportunity to describe it in more detail, thereby encouraging people to donate.

Prime time fundraisers can be cheesy, or at least not the best television. But by doing it subtly, with a text or QR code (and maybe a little self-deprecation from host Conan O’Brien), they would not only pass but raise massive amounts of money for the people who need. (The Grammys have already announced that they will incorporate a charity component into their February 2 show, but have not yet specified how.)

Finally – and this is the tricky part – I think at least part of the Oscars should be filmed remotely from the scenes of devastation. Of course, you would still have the tuxedos and dresses in Dolby. But there is destruction, and the Oscars would be doing no one any favors by trying to sweep it under the rug. The camera is expected to film locations in Palisades, Altadena and elsewhere where people could tell their stories. One of the reasons the Oscars have lost their luster is that they feel forced and choreographed in an age where social media (at least in theory) offers the raw and unfiltered. This would exploit the latter spirit wonderfully. And the victims of the platform too.

I realize that this is an important pivot for the Academy and ABC, both logistically and spiritually.

I tell them two things. First, it would be a ratings boon. Who wouldn’t tune in to see their favorite stars made vulnerable, or some of the heartbreaking and/or inspiring stories we’ve been craving over the past week on social media? Who wouldn’t listen to pure humanity, achieved by some of the people we least expect to be human?

But that’s for the bean counters. For the rest of us, the argument is simple. A Farm Aid Oscars would be an opportunity to take one of the country’s biggest television platforms and use it both for good and for old-fashioned spectacle, the kind that is both tragic and uplifting, exciting and uplifting.

This would be an Oscar for the ages. And maybe it could help us, for a moment, to feel better about the state of the world.

It’s your turn, Academy.