Martin's Opening Leaves Laugh Gap

Academy Awards Gets Off To Slow Start

Michelle Solomon, Staff Writer
March 25, 2001, 10:16 p.m. EST

LOS ANGELES -- Sure, comedian Steve Martin had big shoes to fill. Billy Crystal had positioned himself as everyone’s darling of Oscar hosts, using big theatrical productions to pep up his opening monologues.

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What did we expect, the wild-and-crazy guy who danced up a storm as King Tut during the late '70s on "Saturday Night Live" and put fake arrows through his head on that same show?

Maybe it's just that Martin's a little too L.A. And why did his hair look so blue under the lamps of the Oscar stage?

Sorry, Steve, but you just weren’t that funny as you ushered in the first five minutes of the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.

You relied on the old tried-and-true, basically resorting to Henny Youngman-style one liners and Hollywood inside jokes that folks in Peoria probably wouldn't understand.

After having the international space station Alpha drop Martin through the stratosphere and into the Shrine Auditorium, we thought there was hope, but the monologue went south quickly.

It’s the oldest comedy trick in the book, picking out members of the audience and using them as whipping posts for bad jokes.

Russell Crowe was less than amused when Martin suggested that he hit on Ellen Burstyn. Julia Roberts thought it was cryingly funny when Martin said that movie box-office tickets had gone up because of Julia’s salary demands. The audience chuckled, but there were few belly laughs.

In between jabs, Martin resorted to the tried-and-trues:

He joked about the government: "We live in a great country. If this statue were in Afghanistan, it would’ve been destroyed by now," he said, standing beneath a giant Oscar.

"The opening cost the U.S. government $1 trillion. There goes your tax cut."

He cracked gay jokes: "There are eight billion people around the world watching this show. And they’re all thinking that every one of us is gay."

"When I first heard the title 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' I thought it was what Siegfried and Roy did on vacation."

Old-age jokes: Charlton Heston: "Be careful what you say to him because he thinks he was in 'Gladiator.' "

Old-age and sex jokes combined: "If Anna Nicole Smith were here, she’d call 81-year-old director Dino DeLaurentis fresh meat."

"Hosting the Oscars is like making love to a beautiful woman. I only get to do it when Billy Crystal is out of town."

Martin’s opening speech was disposable at best. While surely not as painful as David Letterman’s 1995 Uma-Oprah disaster, we can’t say that Martin set the tone for a night that wanted to be noble, saluting endeavors such as "Gladiator" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

So when will Oscar realize that comedy isn’t always pretty?

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