Academy tyrants now forcing people to wear pants to the Oscars
We’re all cave trolls now, right? It’s not just us? Sure, we can put together a semblance of humanity when it’s time for a particularly pressing Zoom call—tossing a sheet over the dirty laundry, straightening the pizza boxes, running a comb through what’s left of our hair—but the cave troll is still going to leak through. That’s going to become a problem, obviously, as more and more people start to get vaccinated, and it’s especially going to turn out to be a problem, we’re guessing, for the Hollywood celebrities who are expected to look, not just human, but superhuman, for this year’s Oscars. (Meanwhile, we’ll be covering the event from our apartments, and will be steadily cruising toward “megatroll.”)
None of which has been made easier by the new guidelines that the Academy issued earlier today, informing the assembled slobs of Hollywood that if they want to come get their Oscars, they’d better do it in person, and no damn hoodies this time, Sudeikis. “We are going to great lengths to provide a safe and ENJOYABLE evening for all of you in person, as well as for all the millions of film fans around the world,” the show’s producers, Steven Soderbergh, Stacey Sher, and Jesse Collins wrote in a letter to potential attendees. “And we feel the virtual thing will diminish those efforts.” (Translation: “We’re worried you won’t wear pants.”)
As to dress code: “We’re aiming for a fusion of Inspirational and Aspirational, which in actual words means formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not.” (The aspiration, presumably, being to own a piece of clothing that has not been just foundationally ruined by nacho cheese stains at this point.) There’s also a lot of emphasis on “TELLING STORIES”—if we’re being honest, there’s a LOT of EXTRANEOUS CAPITALIZATION in this thing—because god knows the one element we’ve all missed about awards shows is the part where people talk in long-winded anecdotes about themselves. (Now, if we could do riddles instead of stories, that’d be some serious cave troll shit.)
You can read the full letter here. The Oscars ARRIVE this YEAR on April 25.