You may have missed it yesterday when you were busy stuffing your fat faces with hot dogs, but I reported that Brett Ratner, who’s producing this year’s Oscars, had only one host in mind, and that host was Eddie Murphy (with whom he no doubt bonded over their mutual love of trannies). Well now it’s official, and no one said anything about Murphy having a co-host, so it seems my idea for Yao Ming or a hyrax with a propeller beanie fell by the wayside. Shame. Though perhaps it’s a good thing. You get Eddie Murphy and a hyrax onstage together, who plays the straight man? It’d be madness.
Brett Ratner and Don Mischer, who are producing the annual awards show, presented their choice on Tuesday to officials at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, who signed off on Murphy hosting.
It will be the first time that Murphy, who shot to fame in the 1980s, first on Saturday Night Live, and then in movies like 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop, has hosted the show. He has appeared as a presenter on several broadcasts, most recently in 2009 when he presented the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Jerry Lewis. He also received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor for his performance in the 2006 musical Dreamgirls. [THR]
As I’ve said, Ratner will be a great producer, because while he’s a rumpled, crotch-fondling schmuck behind the camera, he’s nothing if not a brilliant kiss ass, and that’s kind of what the Oscars are all about. As for Eddie Murphy, he’s been putting out that whole Will Smith/Tom Cruise, it’s-possible-some-producers-skinned-me-and-replaced-my-insides-with-a-robot-for-ease-of-commercialism vibe for going on ten years now. It will be interesting to see if we get dead-eyed schmoozebot Eddie, or if he’s able to be candid in a way that reminds us why we liked him in the first place, like Sandler in Funny People. I’ll say this though, if there’s not a bit where he does his old Jewish guy voice and argues with Billy Crystal about boxers, I’ll eat Ratner’s belly button lint. (Yes, that’s oddly specific and there’s a high probability of me losing, but I always figured Ratner’s belly button was full of nacho crumbs, which I love.)