A letter to this year's Oscar red carpet coverage

By Ann Hui

To the entertainment reporters covering last night's red carpet:

Look, maybe it's me. Maybe I've changed, grown up - my tastes are not the same. But you've changed too.

The Academy Awards. The Red Carpet. It all used to be so glamorous. It used to be classy affair.

But last night, watching your correspondents all done up and trying so hard to impress, it was, well, frankly a little embarrassing.

It wasn't just your predictable, insipid questions ("Who are you wearing?", "How does it feel to be nominated?"). After all, correspondents only have about a minute with each interviewee, and hundreds of potential celebrities that they have to prepare for.

But the sucking up. Was that really necessary? Did you really have to literally beg - in front of the cameras - for those interviews? Just to suck up some more once the celebrity agreed to stop for those 10 seconds?

Judging by people's tweets through the night, others weren't too impressed either.

But what else can be done? The way the show is set up - with hundreds of celebrities flooding the carpet all at once - is there any way to get to them all and have conversations of any kind of significance? Probably not.

So maybe you just get to a few - the biggest celebrities - or the less in-demand ones. You have an actual conversation.

Or there's always the Barbara Walters route. Ask them what kind of vegetable they'd like to be. Or their favourite cereal as a child.

Anything to break up the monotony.

Please, Oscars. Most of us are already just watching for the fashion - flipping channels once the main event starts. Don't make us have to watch the show on mute next year.

Sincerely,

Ann

Ann Hui is a Radio Room reporter at the Star. She's also completing her final year of the master of journalism program at Ryerson University. ahui@thestar.ca