After all the various issues this year with the Oscars, it is interesting to look back a decade ago and see them nail it.
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-history-of-hugh-jackmans-oscars-opening-number.html
There's some more fun and interesting anecdotes inside.
I really love this opening number. It is infinitely entertaining, and for me, harkens back to when I was way more into the Oscars than I am now.
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-history-of-hugh-jackmans-oscars-opening-number.html
In 2009, in the midst of a financial meltdown and with a slate of Best Picture nominees that included nary a blockbuster, the Academy Awards seemed certain to be a mess. Plus, instead of a well-known comedian for a host, they'd chosen Hugh Jackman, a superhero, sure, and a song-and-dance man who'd hosted the Tonys three times before, but not necessarily someone you'd expect to triumph in the face of the ceremony's notoriously tough audience. But then came Jackman's opening number, a silly yet charming celebration and roast of the Best Picture nominees, which managed to include an all-time great joke about The Reader revealed to anyone who wasn't already aware that Anne Hathaway could really sing. It was a dang good time and arguably, at least according to the show's producers, the inflection point in movie history that led to Les Misérables and The Greatest Showman.
Ten years out, Jackman's performance hasn't been topped, and in honor of its anniversary, we went back and talked to the key players that made it happened, including producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark and the musical number's trio of alt-comedy writers: Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, and Ben Schwartz. The three of them went on to win an Emmy for their work at the Oscars, but their hiring was a relative gamble at the time, and they made the sequence work with little rehearsal time, the heroic enthusiasm of Jackman, and cardboard sets that Schrab built himself.
Harmon: We were in the middle of this weird economic collapse. There was this tremendous fear of appearing elitist [at the Oscars]. Those were all things that were going on. Schrab called me over to his apartment, and had been watching the Tonys that Hugh had hosted [in 2004, 2005, and 2006], and Schrab's like, "Have you seen this?" We hadn't met Ben yet, but Schrab took this idea of the economic depression and said, "Why don't we have Hugh be this Boy Scout song-and-dance man, and in order to save money, he'd build it all himself, put it all together with cardboard and hot glue?"
The next thing I remember is that Schrab and I are in the elevator in New York, very nervous. We're so in love with this idea, but it's just an idea. We haven't pitched it to anybody. Then, Hugh Jackman gets in the elevator with me and Schrab.
Schrab: That's how we met. Then we pressed up, and we were in there, and Dan did the elevator pitch.
Harmon: By the time we got off on the top floor, I swear, literally, Hugh physically bounded out of the elevator, leaping with enthusiasm about this idea. Thank God, because we ended up getting a little bit of resistance to it, but we had this weapon on our side. Hugh would describe the idea and leap up onto chairs in the room. No one can say no to him when he's that enthusiastic.
Schrab: The final lyric of Hugh Jackman getting up and saying, "I'm Wolverine!"There were a lot of people going, "I don't think we should do that; it makes him look stupid. This is not a comic-book thing." I think Dan was the one to put his foot down and go, "You guys are crazy. The Wolverine bit is gold. Trust me." I can't imagine us getting a standing ovation if it wasn't for him, standing up and singing a note that only Wolverine could sing.
Harmon: It's not because it's clever or meta. It was the opposite. It was important, because there needed to be the emotional through line of that piece, which was Hugh's innocence, because that was the way we were going to sidestep this whole economic thing, and not come off as snarky, satirical. It was a big concern for people when we were pitching the cardboard thing, they were like, "Yeah, but isn't this making fun of poverty?" For him to hit that operatic tone while referencing his comic-book movie, he validates Hollywood even in times of terrible, bitter reality in the checkbook. It's like, "Oh, yeah, this is why I like movies, because they're childish, and they're silly, but they're passionate, and that has nothing to do with class or money."
There's some more fun and interesting anecdotes inside.
I really love this opening number. It is infinitely entertaining, and for me, harkens back to when I was way more into the Oscars than I am now.
