The Oscars Will Go On! Somehow! (Exact Plans For Killing Four Hours Still TBD)

Anyone who endured as much as two minutes of NBC’s Access Hollywood-branded Repetition Of The Winners’ Names Recited Moments Ago At The First Annual Crippled Golden Globes Press Conference Spectacular probably didn’t find it hard to envision a similar nightmare scenario unfolding at a strike-hampered Academy Awards, wherein planned host Jon Stewart is replaced by a dream celebrity-newsmagazine-mannequin team of Mark McGrath and Maria Menounos, whose only function will be to smile and point to headshots of Oscar victors projected onto the 100-foot screen looming behind them on the Kodak Theatre stage. (And to respond with glee to reaction shots of a cardboard cut-out of Jack Nicholson, complete with omnipresent sunglasses and shit-eating grin, propped up in the actor’s customary front-row seat.)

But take heart, awards show fans, for the Academy pledges that the show will go on, either in a “normal” or “We’re fucked, but still doing something!” format. Though producer Gil Cates hasn’t disclosed any details of his plans for the “alternative” telecast that would be necessitated by a WGA picket-line and the coordinated SAG cutoff of the event’s pretty-people supply, he will do everything in his power to honor the tradition of Hollywood’s Biggest Night, promising that whatever montage/pre-taped-segment/interpretive-dance-heavy abomination makes it to air will fill every last minute of Oscar’s sacred four-and-a-half-hour running time.

• Oscars on, one way or another [Variety]