Oscars Give In To Viewers, Tell Winners To Save "Thank You" Lists For Backstage

The stores you go to might not be listening to your complaints and suggestions, but someone is — the producers of this year’s Academy Awards broadcast. In a move sure to please the viewing audience and outrage the celebrity publicist community, the folks behind the Oscars have asked winners to prep two speeches: One for their on-air acceptance and one for a separate backstage webcam.

Calling the seemingly endless list of “thank you”s that every winner rattles off, “the single most-hated thing on the show,” co-producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman revealed their revolutionary plan to this year’s slate of potential winners at the annual Oscar nominees luncheon in Beverly Hills yesterday.

“Share your passion on what the Oscar means to you,” Shankman told the nominees, explaining that the audience wants to hear about the art of film making, not hearing you flub the name of your business manager’s assistant.

To placate the army of PR reps, attorneys and “executive producers” who actually run Hollywood, winners will be able to ramble on to their hearts’ content backstage. The footage on those cams will be available on the Oscars site, where the winners’ personal assistants can then e-mail the video to those who would usually be thanked on air.

Since there’s nothing the producers can really do if a winner violates this request, who do you think is most likely to disregard it and pull out the big list of names?

Nominees told to prep two speeches for Oscar night [Reuters]

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