Pictured left to right: Don Gardiner, Bonnie Quesenberry, Fay Jacobs, and Lee Wayne Mills at their 1985 Oscar party.

Forty Years of Oscar Snark

It’s an amazing insight when you realize you’ve been eating, drinking and suffering along with the Oscar telecast with the same people for almost 40 years. At first revelation you think “how is this even possible?” Then you go to “Damn, we’re old,” and finally you settle into “Isn’t this absolutely wonderful.”

So it was on the afternoon of Feb. 26 when I realized I’ve been ”doing the Oscars” since the mid-1970s with my pals Don Gardiner and Lee Mills. In a stunning example of “The more things change the more they stay the same,” our lives, hometowns and even my sexual orientation changed (okay, revealed itself!) in the interim, but we are still sitting through the Sunday night telecast laughing and making snarky comments.

Frankly, the tenor and quality of the comments has remained biting and hilarious (at least to us), even though the term snarky wasn’t even invented when we started bitching and moaning about the jokes and fashion faux pas. But, as it is now defined, — snark·i·ly\adverb, Rudely sarcastic or disrespectful; snide —we believe our prior performances were plenty snarcastic.

Our run started in 1974 when Cuckoo’s Nest was Best Picture. That was followed by host Bob Hope, (with Farrah Fawcett’s gorgeousness leaving a snark free zone), then Johnny Carson hosted through 1981. Bonnie joined Don, Lee and me in 1983, as our new quartet watched Meryl win her first for Sophie’s Choice.

We forged ahead, with Cher’s strategically placed sequins to discuss in ‘88 as she won for Moonstruck, then ‘89 with Demi Moore in a bustier and biker shorts. What was she thinking? When was it that Cher wore her black winged feathered dress? By the mid ‘90s we were starting to weekend in Rehoboth and sometimes the Oscar parties, hosted on TV by Billy Crystal, were here. Such was ’95 with Forrest Gump as host Whoopi tried to curb her raging snark and stay out of trouble. She did not.

It was in 2000 when Angelina showed up all Goth with her blood vial and the next year that singer Björk wore that ridiculous swan dress with the dead bird around her neck—the outfit parodied so brilliantly by Ellen D, at her Emmy host job the next year. I’m sure we were off the scale on the snarkometer that night.

And so it went, through lots of other hosts, more Billy Crystal, some gorgeous superstars—notably Hilary Swank, Julia Roberts, and Halle Berry looking hot, with George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes, and Colin Firth captivating the boys.

Through the years we have watched our food and beverage choices change —unrepentant carbs and comfort food when we were younger, healthier eating in the mid-years, and now we are back to comfort food again, but with guilt.

Every year since the beginning we’ve had ballots and quizzes compliments of Don, and every year we suffer over the same question: Do we select who we think will win, or who we want to win? For years we had prizes, too, but that seems to have stopped since we are all trying to winnow down our clutter.

So here we were again in 2012. Somebody said, “Nothing like a red carpet show to remind us that actors need writers.” And we were all thinking we were glad we weren’t hosting since Billy Crystal was looking very puffy.

“Don’t look in the mirror in the bathroom,“ somebody added.

Then we discovered we could augment our own snarkiness by logging on to Snark Food, a website for “freeing your inner snark.” Several people posted comments like “Handlers should run with these movie stars like at the Westminster Dog Show,” and “Billy may be late tonight, he’s coming all the way from the 80s.”

My favorite was “Billy Crystal has had so much work done he’s looking like Kim Jong Il.”
Funny, but nobody look in the mirror. OK?

Fay Jacobs is the author of As I Lay Frying—a Rehoboth Beach Memoir; Fried & True—Tales from Rehoboth Beach; and For Frying Out Loud—Rehoboth Beach Diaries. Email Fay Jacobs