Why we hope something will go wrong at the Oscars

This Sunday, the annual orgy of back-slapping, expensive frocks, frenzied behind-the-scenes campaigning and self-promotion will finally climax with the 96th Academy Awards, taking place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The ceremony itself is perhaps the most predictable and consequently least exciting for years. Barring an upset of unimaginable proportions, Oppenheimer will win Best Film and Best Director, and its co-star Robert Downey Jr. will win Best Supporting Actor — a popular award for a popular figure — and Da’Vine Joy Randolph will win Best Supporting Actress for The Holdovers. There is some modest uncertainty as to who will win Best Actor out of Cillian Murphy or Paul Giamatti (I’d say Murphy now, after wins at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes) and Best Actress (Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone are neck-and-neck, and there is the faintest chance that Sandra Hüller will win for Anatomy of a Fall), but by and large, the gongs themselves are more or less pre-ordained.

What makes the Academy Awards remotely interesting to watch are not the acceptance speeches (although Downey Jr.’s might be fun) or Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting, especially if it involves references to his bewilderingly unfunny fake feud with Matt Damon. Instead, let’s be honest, the reason why anyone would tune into the Oscars this year, or any other year, is the chance of something going horribly wrong. You would have thought that one of the planet’s most closely watched awards ceremonies might have every single detail planned with military precision, and you would be right. Yet, thrillingly, what even the most minutely organized event cannot allow for is the presence of actors — especially actors who have been drinking — and their unpredictable, all-bets-are-off behavior.

It is unlikely that any event will come close to the sheer jaw-dropping chaos of 2022, when Will Smith strode on stage to slap Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, before telling him — on live television, no less! — to “take my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.” Or the hilarious, Curb Your Enthusiasm-worthy conclusion of the 89th Oscars from 2017, again hosted by Kimmel, in which Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway incorrectly announced that La La Land had won Best Picture over Moonlight. The whole shebang ended in utter farce; to this day, many people (myself included) find it difficult to remember which film actually triumphed, given that there was a unique outcome in which both pictures saw their producers make vainglorious victory speeches.

Still, if it proved anything, it gives the lie to the persistent rumor that Vanessa Redgrave, not Marisa Tomei, had won the Oscar in 1993, and that Jack Palance had confusedly read out the wrong name. Back then, it was suggested that the Oscars organizers would rather stay quiet than face international humiliation, but as 2017 showed, the prospect of metaphorical egg on face did not deter those in charge of the ceremony from announcing their mistake, live on television. It still makes me laugh, even today, if only for the look on Beatty’s face; he always was a hugely talented comic actor, and, even unintentionally, he stole the show.

There are other snafus and fuck-ups, too, which are richly celebrated. Think of David Niven suavely dealing with a streaker in 1973 (“Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?”), or John Travolta inexplicably mangling Idina Menzel’s name into “Adele Dazeem.” There are the things that could have gone wrong for anyone, such as Jennifer Lawrence tripping up on stage en route to collect her award for Silver Linings Playbook, and the more specific problems that occur with these high-profile events, such as Vanessa Redgrave denouncing “Zionist hoodlums” in 1978 during her acceptance speech, or Marlon Brando refusing to collect his Oscar for The Godfather, instead sending the actress Sacheen Littlefeather to make a poorly received plea for better treatment of American Indians by the film industry.

In any case, the chance that something could go wrong remains thrillingly possible every year. In all likelihood, this year’s ceremony will reflect the character of Nolan, the man who will probably be the biggest winner of the night: consummately professional to a T and grateful and pleased for his long-overdue recognition. Yet if something does go awry — and in a week, we’ll know what it would have been — then we could have yet another gloriously unexpected moment that will live far longer in the annals of the ceremony than the speeches from any number of award-winning celebrities. Fingers crossed, anyway.