Pop Culture Happy Hour - Our 2025 Oscars Recap

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

This year's Oscars was a big night for Sean Baker's Anora, including wins for best picture and director. The film's star Mikey Madison scored one of the night's few upsets, winning best actress. Adrien Brody, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña also took home acting wins. We also recap the hilarious bits from host Conan O'Brien, the long and discursive speeches, and show stopping musical numbers.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This year's Oscars have all been handed out, and it was a big night for Anora. That film won five awards, including Best Picture, and star Mikey Madison scored one of the night's few upsets, winning best actress. It was also a special evening for Adrian Brody and for anyone who likes long and discursive Oscar speeches he had you covered. I'm Stephen Thompson. It is 1221 a.m., and we are recapping the highs and lows of this year's Oscars on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Joining me today are my co-hosts, Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Actually, Stephen, I'm Bill Scarsguard in disguise. Favorite presenter joke of the night. Linda Holmes, hey, Linda.

Hello, Stephen. And Glenn Weldon. Hey, Glenn. Hey, Glenn. Hey, I don't have a bit. I'm too tired. Hey, Stephen. I'm on the West Coast. It's not that late for me. I was going to introduce you all in the spirit of the five and be like, Aisha Harris, my wonderful, brilliant friend. Your insights make me laugh, make me cry and most important.

make me think. Glenn Weldon. Anyway. Well, we should kick off with kind of the big headline of the night. Massive night for Anora. Anora won Best Picture. Sean Baker won four Oscars.

Best director, best original screenplay, and best editing, as well as a producing Oscar as part of the Best Picture win. Mikey Madison also won Best Actress. What'd you all think about that? I'm happy for Anora. I mean, Anora is a small, independent film from a small,

kind of boutique distributor, neon. And also, not for nothing, it's about sex work. And, you know, Sean Baker, you know, he looks young. But this guy has been around. He's put in the work. His first film came out 25 years ago. He wears four hats, director, editor, writer, and producer. And as you mentioned, he won for them all tonight.

Good for him. Yeah, I'm happy. This was fun. And it was great to see him shout out the independent filmmaking aspect of this, I think. The independent spirit was able to sneak its way into this very glamorous ceremony. Yeah. I mean, this movie was not. for me, really, but I think he's really talented.

I think the people who are involved are really talented. This wasn't my favorite, but it doesn't matter. I'm happy for everybody. I was surprisingly, like, not that invested in who won what this year, because not that much of this was stuff that I was super passionate about. Well, the interesting thing about Madison's win is, you know, the rap against Chalamay winning this year was always too young. He hasn't earned it.

Salome is 29. Madison is 25. But, you know, at the end of the day, the work is the work, and the Academy really loves Anora, and that put them over to top. Yeah, once she won Best Actress, when it was already pretty clear by that point that Anora was going to take home Best Picture based on how the night was unfolding. But once Anora kind of pulled her over, when everybody was kind of expecting to me more to win for the substance, it was pretty clear that this was going Anora's way. Well, I kind of alluded to the best actress win for Mikey Madison. That had to be the biggest upset of the night, right?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I mean, it seemed as though Demi Moore was the frontrunner for so long. She was doing all of those interviews and all these profiles, and there was very much this force behind her of like, it's time, it's time. She's finally being accepted into the A list or like the A list in the top, top, top A list. And I was surprised, but again, I was hoping that Maggie Madison would win. I think Demi Moore gives a really great performance. But I was all in the camp for Nora. So I was happy.

Yeah, I was happy about this one as well. And the fact that she's 25, whatever, like you said, Glenn, a great performance is a great performance. Look, Anna Pac-win won an Oscar. Yes, she did. You give the award for the work. And Timothy Salome, he'll have many more bites at the Apple. A complete unknown, one of the few films, you know, kind of in this Oscar field that didn't win anything tonight. Yeah, that and Nickel Boys.

Kind of disappointing, but it is what it is. Great film should have been nominated for cinematography. So speaking of cinematography, Lull Crowley did win best cinematography. He worked on The Brutalist. It rightly won best score. Daniel Bloomberg's gorgeous score ended up winning. And Adrian Brody won best lead actor and gave the world's longest speech. Yes, he did.

I'm wrapping up. I will wrap up. Please turn the music off. I've done this before. Thank you. It's not my first rodeo, but I will be brief. I will not be egregious, I promise. It's one thing if your speech is very long and you're talking about a lot of important and sort of other things. if he was talking about the themes of the film most of the time.

This was a very long speech that was mostly about himself and how it feels to win an Oscar and how it feels to win two Oscars. And I got to the point where it was like, all right, my dude, I'm ready for this to be over. I really enjoyed this telecast in a lot of ways. And this was sort of my low point. This was kind of the point where I was like, other than that, I was in a pretty good mood, you know.

So he kind of brought me down a little bit. But, you know, I still think he's a good point. good actor, but, you know. The whole time I kept waiting and waiting, I was like, okay, you keep talking about yourself, but are you going to mention, you know, anti-Semitism that is on the rise in the present day, like the themes of this movie, like, what are we doing? And then when he does finally get to that part, it was like so shambling and didn't really cohere. All the wind was sucked out of whatever power you might get from those words. I'm here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of anti-Semitism and racism and of othering.

I think as a viewer, when you go that Long and Rambly, you want Long and Rambly to come from somebody who's legit surprised, maybe a first-timer. We're a veteran and you have this much time to prepare because you were the front-ruder. You've sort of been a favorite, yeah. It's the end of award season. had months. And you spend your speech talking about yourself. Well, somebody who gave a significantly more polished speech, Zoe Saldanya won Best Supporting Actress for her work in Amelia Pettis. She is the first Dominican American to win an Oscar. Amelia Pettis nominated for 13 Academy Awards. It ended up winning two Zoe Saldania and El Malle for Best Original Song. What did you all think of Zoe Saldaneas win?

Good for her. I didn't like the movie, but I think my theory about this is that, Because her history in Hollywood includes the Star Trek universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Crossroads with Britney Spears. And Center Stage. And center stage. She's been around so long and worked with so many people that she had more of an ability to kind of weather the publicity from this and win anyway, as opposed to some of the other nominations that the film got. My theory is that the Academy was looking around for anything they could award this film. They just wanted to save face because 13's a lot of nominations for a very bad film. And so they were like, well, everybody likes Zoe, right?

What about Zoe? Let's give it to Zoe. And to be fair, she is terrific in this movie. It is not a good movie. She is not the reason it is not a good movie. I think she's fine in it. Yeah, the whisper singing. Sure.

She brings a physicality to her musical performance. Sure. On the subject of long speeches, Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for his work in Real Pain. And boy, talk about somebody who's had a lot of experience giving speeches this award season gave us another rambler. About a year ago, I was on a stage like this, and I very stupidly publicly said that I want a third kid from her because she said if I won the award, she would give me the kid. And it turns out she said that because she didn't think I was going to win. I mean, I don't think it's rambling in the sense that, like, he knows exactly what he's doing. He gets up there and he tells the story about how when he won the Emmy last year, he made a comment in his speech about how his wife promised if he won the Emmy, they could have a third kid.

And he talked about how I actually want four kids. And when he told his wife that after the Emmy, she said we can have four if you get an Oscar, which to me is legitimately funny. I would mention it also. because obviously the joke was she said that because she didn't think I would ever win an Oscar. So frankly, it's not something I would want someone I was married to to say, but clearly she likes him. And I think if you're married to that guy, this has to be okay with you or you would run out of the house with your hair on fire in three days. That's the perfect way to put it. Yeah.

And just as you know that Kieran Culkin is going to deliver a kind of vibe in a performance, you don't, I'm not saying he always plays the same. guy. I'm saying he delivered something very specific. You kind of knew what the speech was going to be like, and he delivered exactly the speech he thought he was going to give. Yeah. He sure did. Glenn, I know you were very excited about the category best animated

feature, and particularly the fact that the winner was Flo. Yep. The first time Latvia has ever won an Oscar. Go Lafia. They were so happy. This is what you want to see. Like, they were so happy. They were so surprised. They were so just, I mean, like, this is what, and the film is

so fun and so beautiful and it gets dogs right. So everything's good about this win. Nice. Flo was also nominated, didn't win, but was nominated in Best International Feature. That went to the Brazilian film I'm Still Here, which is set in the 1970s when the country was under a military dictatorship, tells the true story of a mother dealing with the disappearance of her politician husband. It is the first Brazilian film to win in this category. And I think most importantly, it beat Amelia Pettus. True. True.

Go Brazil. Good for them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, enjoy it is not exactly the right word. It's a bleak film, but it's very good. Yes. I was moved by it.

And, you know, like a lot of the things that were nominated this year, it felt very relevant to the current times. So, yeah, I just really appreciated it. And I'm glad it won. Yeah, me too. Co-sign all that. Best document. feature went to no other land. It's made by a team of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers and follows the displacement of rural Palestinian communities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Aisha, you really like this film. Yeah, I had been hearing about it all throughout last year from critics and hearing how it was one of the best movies of the year. Strangely enough, this movie still does not have U.S. distribution. It's playing like sort of independently at some local theaters, and that's being sort of put out by the filmmakers themselves. Because of the hot-button issue around this subject, a lot of people are not able to see it. But I think it's such a powerful film. And I also feel like their speeches. To me, they were the most directly political speeches of the night. Sure. There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am

here, the foreign policy in this country, is helping to block this path. So, yeah, I'm just really happy to see that it won, and I hope that it winning means more people are able to see it. Yeah. So Linda alluded to enjoying the overall telecast, and I enjoyed it as well, and I think one of the big reasons that it added up to a pretty fun night was Conan O'Brien's work as the host. This was his first time hosting the Oscars. And among other things, he got off one of, frankly, the most political jokes.

of the night. You know, Anora is having a good night. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great news. Two wins already. I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian. Well, he, I thought got off to a little bit of a slow start. I think they opened with this spectacular, we'll talk about it a little more later, but they opened with this spectacular number that drew from Wicked. And I think following that would have been hard for anybody. And he came in and he sort of was doing the sort of, well, this movie and then punchline and then this movie and then punchline.

I thought most of those jokes were not that great. But then I do think he got his feet under him. And once he was doing his very odd little quick production number called I Won't Waste Time, which is, of course, sarcastic. I won't waste time. I won't waste time. There's 23 awards to give it all time to protection. To waste time on some idiocy would be a dereliction.

I won't waste time. I thought he was starting to get the feel of Conan. And by the time he had the sandworm from Dune that was playing various musical instruments, I was like, okay, this is the sort of like almost like higher budget public access feel that Conan O'Brien has at his best. And I think by then he was on solid ground. He has what Carson used to have. I was going to say that's what people

going back to Johnny Carson do. He loves basking in the audience's abject rejection of a joke and that's great. I will say that musical number, Linda, we disagree. I think I won't waste time. I get it to goof. The goof is that he, Conan O'Brien, would do a musical number because obviously he's not a song and dance man.

But the joke works better when it's well executed. If he could at least find the beat or the rhythm or the rhyme, I think it would have worked better. But again, it's hard to hold anything against Conan because he's out of here. He's being Conan. Yeah, we didn't need that Adam Sandler bit, though. I don't know what was going on there.

I was very confused. Were they referencing a movie? I haven't seen all of his movies. So maybe they were referencing something that I wasn't aware of. But like... What are you doing right now? I'm asking you what you're wearing. Nobody even thought about what I was wearing until you brought it up.

The vibe of that was very much the weakest moments of the Jimmy Kimmel. Sure. Oscars were like he would do bits kind of from his show. Yeah. It felt like a bit from another show kind of being ported into the Oscars. Yeah, and Letterman used to do that too. Letterman, when he hosted that one time, he would bring in bits from his show. This was a really mostly very straight ahead Oscars.

It felt very familiar, an old school. There was no reinvention of the wheel here. And while in any other year, I would say that's boring and boring and, or if you want to be generous and say familiar, is kind of comforting. I mean, everything from the winters being very predicted to a hilariously on the nose in Memorium where they used the lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, Mass, and D minor, sure. I mean, it's a straight ball down the middle, but it hit. You know, it landed with me. I actually didn't think it was boring. I actually thought it was sort of fun, partly because I think the presenter banter was a click better than usual.

Oh, I agree that. Yeah. June Squibb in everything. Give me June Squib and everything. So presenting makeup and hairstyling, June Squib comes out with Scarlet Johansson and says this very unexpected thing. I got a little makeup done too. And I've actually being played by Bill Scarsguard right now.

I just thought that was so funny and weird. Her comic timing was so sharp. And may she be our next Betty White? If you didn't actually see Thelma, which she was in. In 2024, seek out that movie because it is really a fun and also very sweet and touching movie. So in addition to the fact that she's adorable on award shows, yes, yes. She's also really good in that movie. She's a hell of an actor.

She's great in Nebraska. She's terrific. Yeah. I would not have been mad if she had gotten nominated for Thelma. I'm just saying. Yep. Agree. One question I had for you guys because I think there is definitely a range of opinions about this and there's certainly a range of opinions about this on this panel.

what did you all think about the quote unquote fab five approach of giving out some of these awards? In some cases you would have a presenter and instead of showing clips of the supporting performances, the presenter would kind of talk about each actor or actress and kind of move through and kind of giving them a bunch of praise and then announcing the award. And in some cases with like costuming that you would have like five presenters each, you know, kind of representing each. nominee talking about their virtues. What did y'all think about that? I was very worried about this, because I was worried it was going to come off like, I'd like to thank the little people, right? Very condescending. But they did something very smart, which is they had the actors talk about the nominee that they worked with in the film that they were nominated for. So they did this both

for cinematography and for costume design. I thought the actors praising the cinematographers was sincere, I feel little rote, but the actors praising their costume designer, that felt very It was interesting. And I think that's because that's a very immediate and intimate, real relationship that develops over time. And so all of a sudden it felt like these stars had a rooting interest, like they were each rooting for their person. If I have to say the words, sumptuous fabrics, one more time in an interview, I'm going to defy gravity off the side of this stage. Paul, how very dear are you for being such a one-of-a-kind talent? I love you so much.

And the ultimate winner was Paul Tazwell for Wicked, the first black man to win this category. And you could just tell how happy Bowen Yang was formed. It was great. I mean, this felt like the best case scenario of this format, but I still think it just kind of adds on more time. And when it came down to this happening with the supporting actor and actress categories, it came up a little bit more stilted, I think, or it just felt a little, like when it's just Robert Downey Jr. talking about each person, I'm just like, I don't know. Why? Just show me a clip instead. Sometimes it can, at its worst, it can kind of just feel like celebrities, fluffing celebrities. Oh, it can. I just think it didn't.

And I just always find it cheesy and cringe, but except for the custom designer this year. But I'm here for choosing cringe. I'm here for, that's the Oscars, baby. No cheesy, no cringe. Well, never cheesy nor cringe are the musical number. May I refer you to Roblo and Snow White at Oscars of Your. Never, never, never have the Oscars ever been cheesy or cringe in terms of musical numbers. But I did want to talk about the way the Oscars staged music this evening because it was unusual, right? Like the five nominees for Best Original Song were literally relevant.

delegated to scan the QR code. You literally, if you wanted to hear the original song nominees, you would scan a QR code. And as somebody who every year ranks the best original song nominees, I think that was probably the right call. But then you had a whole bunch of musical numbers. The telecast opened with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Arrivo, performing several songs from the Wizard of Oz cinematic universe. Ana Grande performed somewhere over the rainbow. Cynthia Arrivo performed home. And together they sang Defying Grat.

You also had the less thematically relevant James Bond tribute, where you had Lisa from Black Pink singing Live and Let Die. You had Doja Cat singing Diamonds Are Forever. And the wonderful never pitchy Ray singing Skyfall. Then you had, you know, the in-memorium. incorporated music, and then you had Queen Latifah singing EZON Down the Road from The Wiz as a tribute to Quincy Jones. Come on and ease on down, ease on down the road.

Down the road. What did you guys think of the music on this telecast? I'm seeing a lot of folks online complaining about the dance numbers. I'm going to rush to the barricades to defend the old school dance numbers, not just because I'm a gay man, although that is a factor. But also, there's so much more preferable to those interminable Oscar montages which are just clips from various movies united by some theme

like a salute to the car chase. Who cares? You can get that on YouTube. Well, we did get a salute to L.A. For obvious reasons. We also got a bunch of clips from Bonn movies, but like this is an award ceremony, right? An award ceremony is a live event.

It is people together in a room. It is theater. It's often a very boring theater. But whenever you can get some actual theater to the mix, I say do it. Yeah. I mean... That was an exact example.

I know it's like 1 o'clock in the morning. Okay, no, here's the thing. I enjoyed the opening number of Summer of the Rainbow and Cynthia Arevo singing Home from The Whiz, even though that's not in Wicked, obviously. And then they brought it in with Define Gravity. And they sounded great. They also looked great. Loved it. Queen Latifah singing EZon Down the Road as a tribute to Quincy Jones.

A song he did not write. Yeah. Yes, he composed the music and he arranged the music for the movie version. of the Wiz, but he didn't write that song. I would have loved to see, you know, someone perform the theme song from In the Heat of the Night, which he did compose. In the movie, it was sung by Ray Charles. I know it's not

necessarily celebratory in the way that E's on down the road is, but I don't know. Sometimes maybe we just need to be a little bit real. Eason down the road at least had some verve. I did sort of get the sense that they were trying to broaden out your idea of like, yes,

it's wicked, and it's the Wizard of Oz, and it's The Whiz, I felt like they were trying to create this sort of whole vision of that story and the different ways that that story has been inflected in film over time, which makes some sense to me. And I think that because when Ariana Grande came out, she sang somewhere over the rainbow. So the only song that was from Wicked in that opening number is defying gravity. Right.

It's a wizard of Oz number and a whiz number and a Wicked number. but I agree with Aisha that I wanted them to do like either more with that number or less. It felt very, and I guess this is what Glenn is saying is it's a very standard award show number. And maybe there was something cooler that you could have done for Quincy Jones. The James Bond thing to me is like, it's fine. I mean, I liked the fact that they showed off some good singers. Oh, and I did want to say about the. the in-memorian thing. The one thing, I agree with Glenn, that the in-memorium music was pretty

on the nose. But I did think the other thing I liked about this telecast was that they foregrounded the orchestra quite a bit in this telecast. So I liked the fact that you saw quite a bit of the orchestra. They were very present and they were very visible. And I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the orchestra. Yeah, I like the orchestra being above the stage, above and behind the stage. It was a cool visual. I hadn't seen that before. All right. Well, I think it's fair to say, we are satisfied. I mean, we're here. This puts a wrap on another award season. We want to know what you think about this year's Oscars.

Find us at Facebook.com slash PCH. And one last thing before we go. You've heard us talk about Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus many times on the podcast. And starting this weekend, we're going to be releasing monthly bonus episodes. These are going to be mailbag style. Linda, what are you and I talking about in our first episode? Well, Stephen, somehow you and I have found a way to have a discursive conversation with each other. What?

We are answering listener Elizabeth R's question. Thank you, Elizabeth R. for your question. What's more fun to discuss something you love or something you hate? And do you like it when your feelings conflict with one of the other hosts? As you may have been able to tell from this very episode, sometimes our feelings do conflict. So we will get into it and talk about what they're. that's like. Yeah, so if you want to get these monthly bonus mailbag episodes, subscribe now to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org slash happy. We'll also have a link in our episode description

that brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Mike Katzif, Liz Metzker, and Hufsafathema, and edited by Jessica Reedy. The whole team worked on this one. And Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.