The Press Box - The Oscars Win Worst Editing. Plus, the Final Four and “Who Wants to Be an F1 Analyst?”

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Bryan and David talk through the altercation between Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars and discuss how the Academy handled the broadcast (3:10). Later, they break down the NCAA tournament and highlight the commoditizing of buzzer-beaters and Cinderella stories (24:58). Then they introduce a new feature, Who Wants to Be an F1 Analyst?, in which they spotlight media types who share the newfound interest in analyzing the sport (29:36). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For as long as I've known the NBA, it's been a Stars League. But even among the Stars, there's an exclusive club. Russell and Dr. Jay, Jordan, Kobe. They're all part of a select group that paved the way for the NBA superstar of today. And some even shared secrets with each other along the way. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Jackie McMullen. And this is the icons club. David, there's no need to keep the people waiting.

Let's do the Will Smith Chris Rock puns right now. Okay, thank goodness. Let's get moving. All right. Last night, we're all waiting for the New York Post to weigh in. Because that's kind of the leading, that kind of sets the tone headline-wise for the whole country. And the post went with Best Smackter. Best smactor.

Oh my God, that's so bad, but I have a feeling that's going to be my favorite one. I had a few pals texting me. One suggested swing Richard. Swing Richard. All right. That's good. Twitter last night you saw he gets in one little fight. That was solid.

A little nod at last night's best picture winner with Keota. See, K.O. Oh, that's great. Some people went very simply with Will Smith's past work. Concussion. Okay. Don't exactly have that diagnosis, but I laughed. David, we can also level up to some wonderfully, wonderfully strained puns.

Listener Newman and Chill Mickelson suggest the pursuit of sloppiness. See, that works really well because it's a pun off one of his titles, but it's also the pun off of one of his just most like joke ready titles, right? Like, I've not seen the pursuit of happiness, but I've seen a lot of like, funny tweets about the pursuit of happiness. Same. It's part of the right vernacular. From Kyle Madsen.

He called Sunday night Oscars Delahoya. A little niche, but it works. Michael Wood says Will Smith leaves Fresh Prince on face of Chris Rock. Our listener, Dan Meyer, nodded toward the editing of the evening with Fresh Prince of Dead Air. I like that one.

And I believe Joseph Bean, a loyal listener and pal of this show wins. The most strained Will Smith Chris Rock headline for this one, David. Welcome to My Hand, comma, C. It's so bad. Welcome to my hand, see. We're going to talk about the NCAA tournament and unveil a new press box feature.

Who wants to be a Formula One analyst? But first, more Will Smith talk on the press box. a part of the ringer podcast network. Comedient Consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumacher, producer Erica Servantus here. David, we have spent hours as a society talking about reimagining the Oscars.

How do we get more people to watch? How do we get younger people to watch? Well, last night, the Academy had something it never game planned for. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock live on television. But here's the weird part.

If you were watching television, at least in the United States, you missed it. You had to go to Twitter and eventually use the telecasts from foreign countries to figure out what had just happened. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can speak as someone who was actually not watching the broadcast live. So I was only engaging at first on Twitter. So I was, but I was still confused, right? I had the sequence of events off, obviously, as one does when you're trying to judge by timeline.

And I was, the logistics were kind of perplexing. It took me a while to piece it all together. But thankfully, there was this Australian feed that people, that everybody on Twitter somehow got a hold of just immediately. And that's, and that's kind of how I, you know, just at least saw my first glimpse of the smack. God bless Timothy Burke because he was just immediately feeding us Timothy Burke of course late of old Deadspin just feeding us the foreign broadcasts of the Oscars

because there was this moment if you're watching television where Chris Rock makes the joke about Jada Pinkett Smith Will Smith stands up in the audience he approaches the stage and then gets on the stage and then we couldn't figure out what happened

one because ABC was using this way far back camera angle that made it impossible to tell whether he actually hit him or not. And two, because ABC cut the sound. Right. Because God knows we wouldn't want to have swear words on television. Well, cutting the sound too is also just like, you know, it's like in case of fire, break glass, right? There's no real, like cutting the sound just, they are aware that it's just ruins the broadcast, right? There's not, the only defense of it is, like we don't know what else to do. Something is happening that we don't understand.

Yeah. And we are literally hitting the red button right now. And the Oscars is a weird one because if this were a football game, the broadcast would have been showing replays of the incident over and over. We would have been bringing in Gene Sterator for an officiating call here. Are they going to kick Will Smith out of the auditorium? Is Will Smith still eligible to win best actor? but the Oscars telecast doesn't really have a mechanism like that.

Not in real time, no. No. And so everything just moved on. And you're left with this just amazing problem, which is the television show that you are putting on your air did not explain to people what happened. Yeah. And I heard Jimmy Kimmel say this on Bill's podcast this morning.

at the very least, somebody in the Oscar control room has to just say, we need to get one of our three hosts on stage immediately to make a joke, to acknowledge what happened in some way and help the audience here. Because as we know,

the whole audience is not on Twitter. Not everybody has access. And there are a lot of people that are just confused. We need to get somebody out there and just say something. But they just kept rolling along and it was 15 plus minutes until Amy Schumer gets out there and makes a joke. And really it was left to Will Smith's best actor acceptance speech to kind of clear things up.

And that was a doozy in and of itself. It didn't really clear anything up. Yeah. We don't even know if the dooziness of that one is worth talking about. But you're right. It didn't clear it up. I mean, they gave the, it was, it was P-Ditty who got the real, correct me if I'm wrong, basically was the first person out there who got the opportunity to address what had happened,

and that's just so bizarre. And he was introducing the Godfather reunion. Which is bizarre in its own right. But yeah, it was so confusing that you're right. I mean, as much as we would probably, if this were a football game or something where this happened, And we would probably be on here with a critique of the way that they had handled it with, you know, all the different talking heads and the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, we'd have a separate critique of that. But the complete inability to deal with it in real time on the Oscars, I think is just so, is, it, it, it's, it seems like that's a bigger deal than what happened on stage, right?

Not that maybe they should be expected to, but just in terms of the way that it was received, what do you, how is the audience going to make of this, right? They put out, by the way, I don't know if you saw us before, right as we were coming on, I saw somebody said, there was a tweet put out by the Academy that said, the Academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night's show. We've officially started a formal review around the incident

and will explore further action and consequences. and according to our bylaws, standards of conduct, and California laws. I mean, I kind of feel like if they, you know, revoked Will Smith's Oscar, which seems sort of like the biggest punishment that they could give him, I feel like if we had seen it in real time and if it had been sort of fairly adjudicated by the host or whoever else in real time, I think people would be understanding of Will Smith being stripped of his Oscar, But because there was so much confusion by the academy and by the, you know, production office, I think people would just be offended that they would, that they would, you know, wait,

come out here the next day and try to change the story, you know? Yeah. And I have sympathy for these people, right? Because as many people pointed out on Twitter last night, this was nowhere on the bingo card. You're producing the Oscars. Like, you're not thinking of, will someone stand up in the audience, a famous actor? go on to the stage and hit one of the presenters of the show. That's just not,

that's not anything. They have like security provisions, right? Like if some crazy person were to try to get on stage, you know, or do something to disrupt the show, like that's on the bingo card. But Will Smith is walking onto the stage is not something you're worried about.

But when it happens, there's no, there's no more basic thing about TV than people at home have to understand what's going on. They have to understand what's going on. They have to understand what. going on. And if they don't understand what's going on, you have to help them understand what's going on. And just as a piece of television, and again, I mostly find this funny, but as a piece of television, it was at once the most compelling thing imaginable and the most confusing and

indecipherable thing imaginable at the same time. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I mean, I think that it's it's so it's just so hard to process based on i mean right you said that they couldn't have prevent they couldn't have predicted this i mean i guess you're right i mean there's there's no security guard in the world that's going to see will smith walking on stage and not just assume this is part of the show right we've all it's a bit and even if it's not there's a there's a comedy version of this right he makes the joke and will smith comes on stage and playfully says don't you do that Chris Rock. Well, I'm going to make, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to come up here and comically upbraid you for making a joke about my wife, which is clearly what Chris Rock thought was going to happen until the moment he got hit in the face.

So, of course, like Chris Rock wasn't worried about it. But then that happened. And at that point, you got to do something. It's true. I mean, I guess the only counter narrative, the counterfactual here is that, you know, what if it was staged, right? I mean, we're all, I mean, everyone's been back and forth on this on Twitter forever, and I don't want to presume anything because if it's not staged, the gravity of it sort of makes any discussion of the alternatives in poor taste. But we're at Andy Kaufman levels here if that was staged. Sure.

Like the LAPD is involved? I don't know, but I thought Jimmy Kimmel on Bill's show had an undercurrent of some real wisdom there. He didn't come out and say this. I don't believe, but, you know, like, in retrospect, it's easy to read all this meaning into it at the time. Like, I didn't really get the joke, right? Like, like, I get the joke, like, I mean, I get it, like, when it's explained, but I don't get the purpose of the joke.

Like, why of all the people, like, Chris Rock, it's, you know, an opportunity to go up on the Oscar stage and crack some jokes and he's just like, jaded Pinkett Smith's haircut? I mean, that would be, is what you go for? It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, like, pulling an old, like, Borschbel comic up on the stage and he's just talking about, like, his wife, you know, it's like, but there's no meaning. What does it have to do with what's happening right now? Yeah, and such an obscure reference.

It's like it almost only, I mean, I, listen, my head's full of professional wrestling, so I think everything's staged. And by the way, wrestling Twitter had a ball with this last night. Huge night on wrestling Twitter because they knew a work when they saw one. And then they were like, oh, wait, it's real? Because they're used to the, look, they're used to the axiom that if it's on television, it's not real. Yeah. And by the way, that was-

If you're seeing it on television, you're supposed to be seeing it. And that was the opinion, again, of just about everybody on Twitter in that crazy three or four minutes after it happened. Because if you didn't hear Chris Rock from the stage saying, Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me, and then didn't hear Will Smith what he was saying from the audience to Chris Rock, you could think anything, right? I don't know what just happened. It's really weird. You know, I think that weirdly the best corollary here is a fan going on to the field

during a professional sporting event or a streaker or something like that. Because even though all of the networks have chosen to not ever put that on the air, the announcers have sort of developed a vernacular for letting the fans know that something's going on that they're not seeing, right? So, I mean, obviously there's not, Kevin Harlan making a bit out of it, you know? Yeah. And there's not, I mean, clearly there's not a, like a, you know, a play-by-play commentator at the Oscars, although maybe that's something I'll look into for the future. But there, you know, if, I mean, the, the, one of the hosts would be the closest thing to it. And I think that's obviously what a lot of

people were getting at when they're saying someone should have been out there talking. But you have to be able to, you have to be able to, to work in a world of of expectations. Of the audience's expectations. You have to explain to them what happened based on what they could have predicted what would have happened, right? So this one takes a lot of explanation because we don't have, you know, 20 years of streakers going on the field to sort of joke around about.

It's a really bizarre situation. There has never been a more important night reporting wise and figuring out what the hell happened wise to actually be in the theater. And it was really interesting because in that five or so crazy minutes when everybody's like, what just happened, what just happened. There were a few tweets from reporters that were actually in the auditorium. I saw Eric Deegan's of NPR tweet, wow, Will Smith just told Chris Rock, keep my wife's name out of your effing mouth on the Oscars live.

And that was the moment, that got passed around a lot. And everybody's like, oh, wait, this is a real thing. Scott Feinberger, the Hollywood reporter who did the town with Matt Bellany last night, Ringer podcast right after the show was taking video of Will Smith being comforted by Dinsel Washington later in the show and Tyler Perry and talking to all these people, which was really interesting, right? And like normally you'd say, there's very, very little for a reporter or observer to learn from being in the auditorium that's not just on TV. Wasn't the case last night. And I'll do you one more. Did you see

the still photography from the outside? Oscars last night. That was another thing was amazing because that went out over Twitter again in an uncertain period. There was one from Reuters, the photographer here, Brian Snyder, I stuck some of his work into

the Google Doc, got some fantastic shots. And that, when I saw that, again, before seeing all the video from different countries and stuff like that, I was like, oh, that's real. That's a real shot. And by the way, some really compelling.

It was more. compelling than the shot we got on television. Yeah. It's amazing. And again, that's just being in the auditorium that sounds so old fashion for a television show, a produced television show, but being in the auditorium with a camera and taking those amazing pictures of what's happening on stage. It's just unbelievable. I mean, and listen, this goes without saying.

You alluded to it at the top. But how wild is it that a show that has been desperately trying to figure. out how to get people to pay attention to it for the past five or ten years, finally has like the most significant, the most viral moment it could possibly have engineered and they did everything they could to not put it on the screen. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it's the wrong decision. It's just there's, there's, right?

You know, I mean, if it, like, if it had been staged, if it had, I mean, if it had been, I mean, if it, if it was staged, it was obviously the only state, it was only decided between the two actors, right? But if it was, if it, if it had been staged and they had gone to the producers, and we're going to do this thing, and it's going to look real and everyone's going to be talking about it, one presumes the Academy would have been like, heck yeah, or somebody, a producer would have, a rogue producer would have been like, I'm not saying no to that, you know, like, let's, and it would have been on TV and everything would have been exactly the same, except it would have aired. Um, it's just unbelievable. It's unbelievable that the biggest thing that could have possibly happened in the Oscars not only happened

off-screen, it happened. They were doing everything they could to keep you from watching it. It happened on TV, but not on TV. I want to hit you with this one. Let's say the exact same incidents happens in 1992, or maybe 2002, even. It's edited, muted, exactly the same way on television. How long does it take us to find out what actually happened in the theater? Oh, without Twitter. And without instant access to broadcast from Japan and Australia. Well, and without instant reactions on podcasts and stuff like that for people who might have been in the building. I don't know. Would it have been a total cover-up?

I don't think you could have gotten the total cover-up because there still would have been journalists in there. I think there would have been a weird debate about or would have taken longer to figure out whether you actually hit him or not. Whether it was real. Mm-hmm. Because I just think everything would have moved much more slowly. I mean, that's obvious. But just even the just basic facts of the matter might have taken, don't you think like hours or days to come out?

Yeah, for sure. Because again, if you're watching on television back then and you'd just be like, what the hell just happened? Oh, wait, my local news is starting after this. This isn't going to help me. I just think it's interesting. We did have a few people tweet at us about breaking of silence. As we record this, I believe neither Will Smith nor Chris Rock has broken their silence.

But that's an interesting calculation at this point. How fast do you get in front of a camera or maybe your phone and address what happened? And is there, you know, a value to being the first one of the two to address what happened? I also heard Kim will say this on Bill's show from the standpoint of PR people. Can you imagine being Will Smith's PR person, who I believe was in one of those videos taken from the balcony last night? And you are set to be like, okay, we've got 900 invitations here. When Will Smith wins Best Actor, which is pretty much guaranteed, we're going to pick one or two lucky shows to get Will Smith. Oh, oh my God.

look at my inbox now. Like, just your entire mission changed in the course of about a minute. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do? I mean, that's, it's a really good question. I mean, what, it's funny.

I mean, like, it's not just that there's an expectation to go back to what you're saying before that, that Smith or, you know, the either of them will, will come out and say something. But it's the fact that everybody is asking the question, right? It's not, they're not, there's no moral obligation to get out there. I guess there probably is some calculus about should I get out there first? Do I need to do something, do something for the betterment of my career moving forward, whatever. But just that there's a million people on podcast saying, it's, why hasn't Will Smith said anything yet? I wonder when Will Smith's going to say something. You know, it's, it's a very different world than, obviously

than 10 years ago would have been. Yeah. And why hasn't he apologized to Chris Rock? there was that kind of generalized apology to the academy it was not like I'm sorry to the person I hit on stage at the Oscars who knows that that's forthcoming or not so one of the craziest things David about last night was that Chris Rock then had to give out the best documentary Oscar after that

somehow maintained at least 60% of his composure and did the job the Oscar went to Quest Love for the documentary Summer of Soul. All right. So then the winners of that award go backstage with the media. And there's a press minder back there who's giving journalists some instructions about what questions they may ask the winners of the best documentary Oscar immediately after the

craziest thing they've ever seen. I want you to listen to those instructions. Thank you. I caution you to not ask questions referring to anything else in the show other than the current winners on the stage. Yes, please do not address the white men can't jump reunion that happened earlier tonight. Sticking to questions about the documentary word, do you think that was followed? If you're journalists, they're like, yeah, I've got a question.

Did you see that? This isn't a great time to be like, what attracted you to this project? I don't know about you, but I just saw the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. Any comment? What else you're going to talk about? It does seem. It all seems totally immaterial after that, doesn't it? Yeah.

We do have some viewership numbers in. Last year, remember it was the lowest rated Oscars of all time. Around 10-ish million viewers. This year's was not the lowest rated of all time, but it's probably going to be the second lowest rated Oscars of all time. according to Anthony Crupi at Sportico, around 15 million viewers. So it's interesting.

Remember last night everybody's like, oh, man, there's going to be a thousand think pieces about this. Will Smith, Chris Rock, the Oscars, violence, everything. You're just going to be inundated by all these pieces. I actually think now we can just go back to the think piece everybody was going to write before the show. Reimagining the Oscars. Are the Oscars dead? reinventing the Oscar. We just can go back to that.

I think Will Smith and Chris Rock can just be like the third paragraph. Maybe the lead. No need to change your plans. Oscar's still very, very unwashed. David, let us do the overword Twitter joke of the week

where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. We got some news from the NCAA

tournament and New Jersey. Your adopted home state, David. All right. St. Peters. Oh, yeah. Jersey City, a plucky 15th seed in March Madness, beat three higher ranked teams on their run to the elite eight. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write.

You know, the NCAA tournament is not the worst place to be denied by St. Peter. Good. Columnist Mike Finger, I believe, was the first. with that one. If you leave your replay reviews to a higher power, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David, let us talk about the NCAA tournament, which now seems somewhat anti-climatic after the Oscars.

What's so funny, and I watched a ton of basketball this weekend, is CBS is essentially selling viewers to commodities. Number one, buzzer beaters. right we don't know the players playing in the nca tournament most viewers don't anyway but they know a close game an exciting game sure so we're selling a buzzer beater the second thing we're selling is speaking of st peter's cinderella's the most essential sports story underdog beats favorite and st peters was one of the best examples of that story in nca tournament history Yeah.

Did you know St. Peters existed before this NCAA tournament? Let's be honest here. Absolutely not. That's a no for me as well. I did not know. But now, I mean, this, I mean, it's, you know, this is, St. Peters is going to move on to a lot of, like, you know, like college sophomores big boards now, right? Just like people from the new, from where at my neck of the woods, like what?

If you're going to pick a random private university to attend and that's not too far from home, like why not the one with the Cinderella basketball program? With the Peacock's mascot? Do you see Roger Sherman did a ringer piece about St. Peters? He shot a photograph of the court for the ringer, the run, baby run arena, and pointed out as St. Peters was getting farther and farther

in the tournament, file photos from the wire services of their court that people were just running Rogers picture as like the file photo for St. Peters. Like Roger could literally create that. There were so little out there. Wow. That was funny.

Their coach Shaheen Holloway also had the sound bite of the tournament. Here that is. With Murray State's physicality, you all kind of kept your cool. When they kept trying to muscle in, what was the thing that you told him? and really try to stay calm when it seemed like they were trying to push you all around. No, I'm going to say this.

It's going to come off a little crazy. I got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we're scared of anything? Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. A couple of people tweeted this at us, David. The NCAA has produced one of the great old guy has still got it storylines in recent vintage. Mike Shishowski, aka Coach K.

75 has made the final four. He could win a national championship in his final year at Duke. Surely, again, Duke lost to UNC in Coach Case final home game. It looked like it was going to be an old guy, hasn't still got it. But we have a chance for a big one here. You know, this is Anthony Hopkins winning the Oscar last year and he's not even at the ceremony. right this this would be an absolute old guy still got a moment if he can pull that off also wanted to bring this to your attention gregg gumble is handling a lot of the studio for cbs and turner he had

miami coach jim lauren yaga on to give an update because miami made an unexpected run to the elite eight kevin clark's alma mater the interview was slightly boring i want you to hear this slightly awkward ending to the interview from Greg Gubble. Chuck, you're a golfer. Have you ever heard of Bob Rottella? Oh, he's one the greatest psychologists ever. Yes, he is. Coach, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate you being with it. Second half is coming up. We can continue to talk after this. Good luck to you. Maybe we'll see you in New Orleans. Second half of Houston, Villanova coming right up. And now let's go to Lilly.

Let me tell you this site. day this story about a sports psychologist. And I was like, yeah, you know what? Almost sounded like a sports radio host, didn't it? Mm-hmm. We're up against the break. Let me just cut you off right there. Thanks for the call.

I absolutely love that. The couple more things for you, Dave, before we get out of here. We joked last week. We were talking about CNN Plus. And we were saying that some people had pointed out it's kind of like an ESPN2 of cable news. Like this is the place everybody goes to let their hair down a little bit. And I joked who is going to be wearing a leather jacket, much like Keith

Olberman famously wore a leather jacket on the first day of ESPN2. Well, CNN Plus has released a photo of their talent. Anderson Cooper, in fact, is wearing a leather jacket in a picture. And it's so fantastic. by the way, because all the CNN people, it's all very casual Friday. You know, Don Lemon has a sports coat on, but no tie. And the only person wearing a tie is Chris Wallace. That's it.

Like Chris Wallace, there was no casual Friday for Chris Wallace, but everybody else. I love it. That's so great. All right, David, new feature here. We talked about the Formula One boom among American media types. And I would love a new feature. inaugurated right here on this podcast that really illustrates the line that everybody's walking right now. Because as we talked about last week, there are so many people who have learned about Formula One through the Drive to Survive show last couple of seasons.

And they're right on the line between tweeting stuff like, hey, I'm new here. What do I know? And then tweeting actual Formula One analysis. They can't quite decide where they belong. am I still new here or I'm actually a Formula One analyst now? So we have a new feature where we were going to spotlight sports media types navigating this interesting period. Let's call it who wants to be a Formula One analyst. I invited listeners to send in, you see anybody who is navigating this period.

But I've got a winner, David, from the ringer. It's Steve Serruti. Oh. He tweeted this week. Lewis Hamilton was having some trouble in qualifying. had a very bad result and Sir Rudy tweeted this Mercedes in shambles

hashtag F1 analysis See that's how you do it right? It's amazing good stuff Good stuff Looking for more examples Please send them our way It's time for David Shoemaker

Guesses the strained pun headline Yeah Thursday's headline About the disappearance of termites in Great Britain Was Resident Weevil We had a vote from listener John Bender, Weevil

Overcome, which is really, really good. Today's headline, David, comes from James Sutherland. It's from the Spokane Spokesman Review up there in Washington State. On Thursday, there was a huge upset in the NCAA tournament. The number one seed, Gonzaga,

lost to Arkansas. I'm going to spot you two things. Arkansas, and this headline is rendered as Arc, ARK, arc. And Gonzaga's mascot is the bulldogs. What was the Spokane spokesman reviews strained

upon headline? Lost arc. Lost arc. Don't, don't. Don't neglect that mascot. I know. Ark over Bulldog. Gosh, a bull.

What do the bulldog do to you? It might. Bite. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fight, arc, bite. All. All bulldogs go to heaven?

All arc. All arc and no bite. There we go. All arc, no bite. Wow. Great work from the Spokane Spokesman Review. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Coming Wednesday, David. The W.W.E's Michael Cole. Yeah. With a hard-hitting interview about how to announce a wrestling match. Shoemaker and I'm back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.