“As a result, actors no longer have to worry about getting replaced by A.I.,” he said. “Thanks to this historic agreement, actors are now able to go back to worrying about being replaced by younger, more attractive people.”
Kimmel also cracked jokes about the “Anatomy of a Fall” dog Messi, the lengthy run time of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and the perceived snub of Greta Gerwig, who was not nominated for best director.
“I know you’re clapping but you’re the ones who didn’t vote for her,” he told the audience.
Thank you for that partial standing ovation and welcome to the 96th Oscars, everybody. Look at these beautiful human actors. What honor it is to be here. Thank you for having me back. And congratulations to each and every one of you for making it to the Academy Awards and for making it on time.
The show, as you know, is starting an hour early this year. But don’t worry it will still end very, very late. In fact, we’re already five minutes over. And I am not joking. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to be a long night after what was a long year. It was a hard year, but it was also a great year for movies. Despite the fact that everything stopped, the people in this room somehow managed to come up with so many excellent films and so many memorable performances.
This night is full of enormous talent and untold potential, but so was “Madame Web.” So who knows? Are we off to a bumpy start? OK, this is a meaningful occasion for most of you. I know that. And I know that winning an Oscar is something you dreamed about since you were a kid. And now here we are, all dressed up celebrating the best of the best, beginning with the biggest movie of the year, “Barbie.” “Barbie” was a monster hit. What a thing. What an achievement to take a plastic doll nobody even liked anymore. I mean, my wife — before this movie, you’d have had a better chance of getting my wife to buy our daughter a pack of Marlboro Reds than a Barbie doll.
Now Barbie’s a feminist icon, thanks to Greta Gerwig, who many believe deserved to be nominated for best director. I know you’re clapping, but you’re the ones who didn’t vote for her, by the way. Don’t act like you had nothing to do with this. And I don’t want to leave out Margot Robbie. Margot put this giant hit together. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are here tonight. Look kids, it’s Barbie and Ken sitting just near each other. Ryan and Margot, I want you to know that even if neither one of you wins an Oscar tonight, you both already won something much more important: the genetic lottery. Ryan, you are so hot. Let’s go camping together and not tell our wives.
And then we have the other major box office winner this year, “Oppenheimer,” directed by the great Christopher Nolan. Also a very attractive man. And this is a very fascinating person. Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a smartphone, doesn’t use his email and he writes on a computer with no internet connection, which is a way of, a powerful way of saying “I will not allow my porn addiction to get in the way of my work.”
Christopher is joined by his longtime collaborator, Cillian Murphy, who is just wonderful. Cillian, interesting fact about his name. It’s pronounced Cillian when he does drama. When he does comedy, it’s Silly Anne. And congratulations to Silly Anne’s co-star Robert Downey Jr. This is the highest point of Robert Downey Jr.’s long and illustrious career. Well, one of the highest points. But Robert has been — was that too on the nose or was that a drug motion you made? But look at him, I mean look at this guy. He’s so handsome, so talented. He’s won every award there is to win. Is that an acceptance speech in your pocket or do you just have a very rectangular penis?
Not even 20 years ago, things weren’t going that great for Robert. He played the villain and, correct me if I have this wrong, in a movie where Tim Allen turns into a dog. And if you ever decide to remake that film, I have just the guy to play Tim Allen. That is, where is he? Messi. Even though he’s a dog may have given the performance of the year in “Anatomy of a Fall.” Messi has an overdose scene. If you’ve seen it, you know it is incredible. Honestly, I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gérard Depardieu.
The second most nominated movie of the year is “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Not only is Yorgos nominated for best director, his editor, whose name is also Yorgos, Yorgos Mavropsaridis, is nominated too. We have two Yorgos’s in the house tonight. Will they both win? Yorgos is as good as mine.
All right, let’s get 20 seconds for room tone. Emma Stone is an Oscar nominee for a fifth time. Right? Fifth time. Emma, you are so unbelievably great in “Poor Things.” Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday, and you were just amazing.
There were so many great movies that held audiences captive this year. And I mean that literally — your movies were too long this year. The average length of the top 10 movies was 2 hours and 33 minutes. That’s up 30 minutes from three years ago. When I went to see “Killers of the Flower Moon,” I had my mail forwarded to the theater. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is so long in the time it takes you to watch it, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders yourself.
The multitalented Brad, Bradley Cooper is here with us tonight with us. He’s got another best picture nominee, “Maestro.” Bradley, brought your mom to the show tonight. Hi, Mrs. Cooper. How are you? You’re doing good. Great. Bradley brings his mother to every award show. She was his date last year at the Oscars. She was not? OK, but the Tonys and the Soul Train Awards. It’s very sweet. But I guess the question is how many times can one bring his mom as his date before he is actually dating his mom? Are you working on a movie about Freud right now and not telling us?
Here’s some fun Oscar trivia: 48 years ago, Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster were nominated for “Taxi Driver” and they are both nominated again tonight, 1976 was the year and that’s pretty crazy. In 1976, Jodie Foster is young enough to be Robert De Niro’s daughter. Now, she’s 20 years too old to be his girlfriend. I also want to congratulate Robert’s co-star Lily Gladstone, who is the first Native American ever to be nominated for best actress and for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” And if you saw, you know that she was riveting. And did you know that before she got this movie, Lily was ready to quit acting and take a job at the Department of Agriculture tracking murder hornets, right? And now she’s nominated for an Oscar, which is so great for her, but also makes me worry that no one’s tracking these murder hornets.
Lily is in excellent company. We have many first time acting nominees tonight, including Emily Blunt, Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, America Ferrera, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Sandra Hüller. For the first time ever, three foreign language films are up for best picture, and two of them star Sandra Hüller. Sandra, two movies. Sandra plays a woman on trial for murdering her husband in “Anatomy of a Fall” and a Nazi housewife living next to Auschwitz in “The Zone of Interest.” And while these are very heavy subjects for American moviegoers, in Sandra’s native Germany, they’re called rom-coms.
For the first time in more than two decades, we’re adding a new category to the Oscars. Not tonight, don’t worry. In the future, they will be adding an Oscar for achievement in casting, which, yeah, you better you better applaud for that. And that is great news for actors because now not only will you be able to watch someone else win an Oscar for a part you didn’t get, you’ll also be able to watch the person who didn’t think you were right for it win one, too. What a year, we’ve had. It was a tough year. Remember that kid from “The Fabelmans”? This is what he looks like now. Very good to have you here, Steven. Steven, are you nominated tonight or are you here because you have season tickets?
Steven and his wife, Kate Capshaw, donated a lot of money to help actors and writers who were out of work over the summer. We were on strike for a long time, 148 days. For five months, this group of writers, actors, directors, the people who actually make the films said, “We will not accept a deal.” Well, not the directors. You guys folded immediately. But the rest of us said we will not accept the deal without protections against artificial intelligence. And as a result, actors no longer have to worry about getting replaced by A.I. Thanks to this historic agreement, actors are now able to go back to worrying about being replaced by younger, more attractive people. And I think that’s great. And writers, could A.I. have written “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”? Yes, the answer is yes.
We learned a lot while we were out on those picket lines. This strike raised existential questions about our industry, like if a movie premieres at the Grove and there are no actors there to promote it, does Mario Lopez make a sound?
And now that the strike is over, now that Fran Drescher has returned to her volunteer work reading loudly to the hearing-impaired, we can be proud of the fact that this long and difficult work stoppage taught us that this very strange town of ours, as pretentious and superficial as it can be, at its heart, is a union town. It’s not a bunch of heavily Botoxed, Hailey Bieber-smoothie drinking, diabetes-prescription abusing, gluten-sensitive nepo babies with perpetually shivering Chihuahuas. This is a coalition of strong, hard working, mentally tough American laborers, women and men who would 100 percent, for sure die if we even had to touch the handle of a shovel.
The reason we were able to make a deal is because of the people who rallied beside us. So before we celebrate ourselves, let’s have a very well-deserved round of applause for people who work behind the scenes: the Teamsters, the truck drivers, the lighting crews, sound guys, all the people who refused to cross the picket lines. All the people who refused to cross the picket lines. There they are. If you’re wearing Sketchers to the Oscars, take a bow. Come on, guys. Take a bow, you deserve it. Thank you for standing with us. And also, we want you to know that in your upcoming negotiation, we will stand you, too. And also, I’m going to make sure this show goes really long tonight, so you get a ton of overtime. It’s golden time everybody, should we give out some Oscars?
