Yahoo News Jimmy Kimmel Slaps Back At The Slap In 2023 Oscars Monologue
UPDATE, with video: Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel went there: With everyone wondering whether he’d use last year’s big moment – the Slap of Chris Rock by Will Smith – for monologue source material, the host wasted little time providing an answer.
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“If anyone in this theater commits an act of violence at any point during the show,” Kimmel snarked, “you will be awarded the Oscar for Best Actor, and permitted to give a 19-minute long speech.”
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Kimmel also took aim at the audience response to The Slap: “If anything happens,” he told this year’s crowd, “just do what you did last year – nothing. Just sit there and do absolutely nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug.”
The host then warned that if anyone wants to jump on stage “and get jiggy with it” – another not so subtle jibe at Smith – they’d first have to get through security: An audience filled with superheroes and toughies from The Mandalorian, Creed, Everything Everywhere All at Once as well as Spider-man and “Fable-man.” Steven Spielberg. Also on security duty: Guillermo (no, not del Toro, but Guillermo Rodriguez, Kimmel’s late-night sidekick).
Kimmel took the stage after a brief video opening showing behind the scenes footage of various nominated films, as well as clips from those films, ending with a joke bit in which Kimmel was seated behind Tom Cruise in a Top Gun jet. He parachuted out of the plane, then appeared on stage with the crumpled parachute at his feet.
Poking fun at both Cruise and James Cameron – both outspoken proponents of seeing movies in theaters rather than on TV – Kimmel pointed out that both men were no-shows at the Dolby Theater tonight. Kimmel also made reference to Cruise’s longtime history with Scientology, describing the actor’s shirtless scene in Top Gun: Maverick with the words “L. Ron Hubba-Hubba.”
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Kimmel also managed to tie together the issue of diversity with The Slap by noting this year’s diversity of nominees “from every corner of Dublin – the odds of another fight on stage just went way up.”
in one of the better jokes of the monologue, Kimmel noted that both Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser – both nominated this year – appeared in 1992’s mostly forgotten Encino Man. “Two actors from Encino Man are nominated for Oscars. What an incredible night this must be for the two of you, and what a very difficult night for Pauly Shore.”
Kimmel got in a joke about the latest Hollywood fad – the use of a diabetes drug for weight loss – by saying, “As I look around this room I can’t help wondering, is Ozempic right for me?”
On Hollywood’s lack of new ideas: “Poor Steven Spielberg had to make a movie about Steven Spielberg.”
On composer John Williams, the oldest-ever Oscar nominee: “John turned 91 last month and he’s still scoring.”
On the difference between movies and TV: “A TV show can’t lose $100 million….Anyone from Babylon here?”
On Avatar director James Cameron: “Some cynics are saying Jim Cameron is not here tonight because he didn’t get a Best Director nomination, and while I find that ver hard to believe about a man of such deep humility, he does have a point. I mean, how does the Academy not nominate the man who directed Avatar? What do they think he is, a woman?”
Joking that Rihanna’s nine-month-old baby “pooped” backstage, Kimmel said the last person who did that was “the accountant who mixed up the envelopes.” (For those with short memories, that’s a La La Land-Moonlight joke).
On the Elvis movie ritual between Tom Hanks and Austin Butler, in which the two actors typed letters to one another as their characters Col. Tom Parker and Elvis Presley: “Just goes to show you how incredibly…silly…this all is.”
Kimmel ended his monologue by warning winners not to go over their allotted time: This year, he said as the band began to play him off, producers will not only strike up the band but will send out the dancers from RRR to escort the long-winded from the stage. The dancers did just that with Kimmel.
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