Oscar’s best moments weren’t in the script

Presenting the award for best costume at the Academy Awards, “The Devil Wears Prada” stars Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt slipped back into their characters from the film, noting that Meryl Streep, who played their demanding boss in the film, didn’t have her cappuccino.

“Look how she’s smiling, as if it doesn’t bother her,” Anne Hathaway said. “Such a good actress,” Emily Blunt replied. Cut to Streep, who was definitely not smiling. For a second, she actually seemed irritated by the joke coming at her expense, or perhaps she felt ambushed by the show’s writers.

But Streep was acting. Instead of smiling, she fell back into her character, projecting disbelief and contempt, committing so intensely that she kept that expression until the director finally cut away.

Perhaps this moment, including Streep’s reaction, was entirely scripted, but judging by both Hathaway and Blunt’s scripted lines and laughter, they were surprised and amused by their co-star’s ability to improvise and upstage their bit.

Slide show   Red-carpet glamour One-shoulder gowns and light colors dominated the Oscar-night fashion choices.

The same was true when host Ellen DeGeneres wandered into the audience and gave a script she’d written to Martin Scorsese. Her shtick was amusing, but not as amusing as Scorsese’s reply: “I’ll just take a look during the show,” Scorsese said.

Later, before Ellen asked Steven Spielberg to take a digital picture of her with Clint Eastwood for her MySpace page, Eastwood interrupted and said, “Do you have a script for me? I’m getting jealous because I saw you give Marty a script.”

Diverging from the script worked
On stage, a few celebrities dared to diverge from their scripted lines. For instance, George Clooney said, “I was just backstage with Jack Nicholson and Vice President Gore, drinking; I don’t think he’s running for president.”

Whether scripted or spontaneous, these were the highlight of the long, drawn-out, ridiculously padded ceremony. While these moments don’t qualify as edgy humor by any means, they at least they were funnier than most of the pre-planned segments.

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Ellen DeGeneres, whose humor is largely self-deprecating and otherwise warm and congenial, seemed to give the audience permission to laugh at itself, if only on a gentle level. Tom Cruise didn’t make any Katie-Holmes-as-hostage jokes, for example, and not just because he presented the humanitarian award.

But some celebrities did push the envelope, starting with Ellen’s remark that “somebody dropped their rolling papers” on the floor of the auditorium.

Jerry Seinfeld ranted about movie theatres asking patrons to clean up their own trash, and revealed a little bit of contempt for the corporations that act as gatekeepers to actually seeing films on the big screen. “There is an agreed-upon deal between us and the movie theatre people that is understood by every single person in this room,” he said. “The deal is: You rip us off on overpriced, oversized crap that we shouldn’t be eating to begin with. In exchange for that, when I am done with something, I open my hand.”

Appearing to present the award for best director with Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas told his fellow Oscar-winning directors, “Hey, guys, I’ve never won an Academy Award.” Spielberg replied, “So why are you here?” Not quite as funny as if Lucas had mocked his inability to write convincing dialogue, but still amusing.

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There was some indication that at least some stars are able to really ridicule themselves. Robert Downey, Jr., for example, presented the award for visual effects by saying, “Visual effects: they enable us to see aliens, experience other universes, move in slow motion, or watch spiders climbing high above the city landscape. For me, just a typical weeknight in the mid-’90s.”

The show wasn’t wall-to-wall self-mockery. In fact, because the Academy Awards are required to take themselves seriously, the show began with a ridiculously self-congratulatory and self-aggrandizing opening.

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