“He's funny, respectful, and his edges aren't too sharp” 39;: Host Jimmy Kimmel prepares for the 2024 Oscars . Photo: Reuters
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For the first time in life, Jimmy Kimmel was speechless. It was 2017, and under his leadership, the Oscars were falling apart.
«Guys… it's very unfortunate what happened,» muttered the stunned host as it became clear that «La La Land» had been mistakenly named best picture instead of actual winner «Moonlight.» With a blank face of shock and dismay, Kimmel turned and looked at the Oscar statuette glowing ominously in the hand of one of La La Land's producers. «Why can't we just give away a whole bunch of them?»
The La La Land/Moonlight incident damaged many people's reputations. Academy of Film Arts. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a consulting company whose sole mission was to ensure that the right envelopes ended up in the hands of the right people. Warren Beatty, a Hollywood icon, was humiliated in front of the world when he handed over an envelope with Emma Stone's name for best actress instead of Moonlight's for best film.
Kimmel was as speechless as any of them—almost as shocked as Chris Rock was when Will Smith walked up and slapped him in the face at the 2022 Oscars. Or as stunned as comedian Jo Koy was when his Taylor Swift joke fell flat on arrival at this year's Golden Globes. And yet, while everything around was crumbling and burning, the army went into the sunset without diminishing its good name. He returned as host of the 2018 Oscars: and now, in 2024, he's preparing to win his fourth Oscar.
“I didn't think I'd ever do this again,” he recently told the LA Times. “I did two of them and they went well — something crazy happened on one of them, the story of which will stay with me for the rest of my life. I know how much work goes into them, so I thought, «Yeah, I really don't want to do that ever again.» » />
One of the reasons he returned is because movies have become entertainment again, he told the LA Times. In 2023, he agreed to return after enjoying Top Gun: Maverick. This year he'll be heading to the Oscars with Margot Robbie's Barbie still fresh in his mind. The fact that there are big hits he can beat is a plus: he remembers giving a powerful speech about Moonlight at the 2017 Oscars, only to realize that few people in attendance had seen it.
«I knew [Top Gun] was a movie that people had seen, and it just makes the job easier,» he said. «Then this year I'm sitting in the theater watching Barbie and thinking, 'Well, maybe I'll do it again, because at least I have a point of view with everyone.'
He is also open to criticism, a rarity in the upper echelons of the American entertainment industry. “Last year I said something about the Irish drinking,” he admitted to the LA Times. “My father is Irish, I didn’t think it would seem racist, but some people (including Liam Neeson) did. I've tried this joke 40 times with 40 different people and no one ever raised that red flag.»
If Kimmel loves Oscar, then the Oscars love him back. «It's important to have a host who knows how to handle a live broadcast and a live audience,» Academy executive director Bill Cramer said last year, explaining why the gig went to Kimmel, 56, whose day job is hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC. “He's funny, respectful, his edges aren't too sharp.”
Scene on stage during La Festival 2017 La Confusion Land» and «Moonlight» Photo: Getty
Kramer's key observation was that Kimmel's edges were «not too sharp.» Kimmel, the son of an IBM executive who grew up in Las Vegas, was thrust into the gonzo world of morning radio, where the rough edges were as rough as they come: Early in his radio career, he was fired twice for being excessive and abrasive.
This was followed by a role as an assistant in the comedy quiz show Win Ben Stein's Money. Ben Stein somehow led to Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003, where chaos continued. Early in his late-night career, Kimmel offered to serve free alcohol to audiences to create a rowdy atmosphere. This strategy backfired on the first evening, when the woman vomited loudly and continuously.Jimmy Kimmel Live! was parachuted into the seat formerly occupied by Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect party when Maher was fired for saying that the 9/11 terrorists, although terrible people, «were not cowards.» An advertiser boycott led to ABC giving it a push. The schedule gap was originally supposed to be filled with a topical comedy hosted by future Daily Show star Jon Stewart: Instead, ABC decided to return to a talk show format for the first time since The Dick Cavett Show in the Seventies.
Jimmy Kimmel on stage at the 2023 Oscars. Photo: Reuters
Kimmel grabbed the opportunity with both hands. He insisted that his new car be unveiled live (talk shows in the US are usually pre-recorded). However, as with the free booze, it quickly went south when Boogie Nights actor Thomas Jane said «damn it» on air in 2004. Neither the vomiting nor the bombing was Kimmel's fault. But they matched the anarchic energy of his early years, late at night, when he attacked his guests with performative harshness.
This went well with those people who don't go to bed until 12:30 at night. watching TV. But this didn’t sit well with the Hollywood establishment, which quietly blacklisted him for several years. There was also feuding — with Kanye West, who objected to ridicule in Kimmel's sketches, and with the city of Detroit, where his show was pulled from the schedule after he joked that rioters would burn it down if they lost a big basketball game . .
“I didn’t realize you had to be polite to guests,” Kimmel told Vulture. “I would have mowed them down, and then their publicists would not have brought anyone back.”
Twenty-one years later, Kimmel counts Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney as friends and is now the establishment figure he once pitted against. For example, he once said that he would “kill himself” if he was forced to “give interviews to A-list celebrities.” Then, a few years later, he approached ABC about including advertisers' products in its comedy programming. The comedian who didn't want to sell out is now an endorser for home brands.
“It was my stupid idea,” he admitted. “Then it turned into a big source of income for them. Now I'm stuck with it.»
Yet this pragmatism was coupled with a gonzo energy that set him apart from other US talk show hosts, most notably giggling celebrity tickler James Corden (who has since made his way back across the Atlantic). For example, near the end of one particularly disappointing episode, Kimmel immediately stated, “With apologies to Matt Damon, we're out of time.”
Damon wasn't supposed to be on the show. Kimmel said this simply to breathe life into a dull 60 Minutes of banter. Damon later continued the story: “He [Kimmel] came backstage and I asked him what it was about. And he was like, “You want to know what happened?” I did a particularly lame show; I think my guests were a ventriloquist and a guy in a monkey suit. We finished the performance, and applause rang out in the hall. I was having a bit of a tough moment and I just said, “My apologies to Matt Damon; We're running out of time.» My producer was right off camera and doubled over laughing. It was just gallows humor.”
Sharp-eyed humor and a knack for generating headlines are part of Kimmel's appeal. Plus, as Alan Partridge would say, he comes across as surprisingly down-to-earth. By talk show host standards (those two words again: James Corden), he doesn't seem particularly smug. And he's stayed true to the people who created it: His cousin Sal writes for the show, his brother Jonathan directs the sketches, and another cousin, Mickey, is his booker. He also commissioned a nude painting of his agent Jim Dixon, which now hangs in his office (Kimmel, not Dixon).
He may have suffered the biggest Oscar flop this side of The Slap. But there were other mistakes. Kimmel, as the internet would say, was «called out» last year when he went too far at the 2022 Emmys (he previously hosted the first «pandemic Emmys» in 2020).
Jimmy Kimmel Live! lost to John Oliver's «Last Week Tonight» in the Outstanding Variety Series category. Kimmel responded by pretending to get drunk and pass out on stage. He was still lying there when his friend Will Arnett announced that Abbot Elementary creator Quinta Brunson had won the race for best comedy writing.
As Kimmel lay on the ground, Brunson was forced to step over him and make her speech. “Jimmy, wake up, I won,” she said. She later complained that he had overshadowed her big moment. He brought her on his show to apologize.
Kimmel won't pretend to be drunk at the Oscars (for which he previously claimed he was paid «only» $15,000). After the confusion with Will Smith's «La La La» and «Moonlight» and «The Slap» in 2022, he and everyone else involved will be praying for an uneventful night. But if someone does step up as Will Smith and jump up with murder in their eyes, Kimmel says he's ready.
«If someone gets on stage and slaps me?» he said in response to a question. from The Hollywood Reporter. “Well, I size them up, and if I'm bigger than them, I beat the crap out of them on TV. And if it's The Rock, I run.
ITV Oscars coverage will begin at 22:30 GMT. US viewers will be able to watch the series on ABC starting at 4:00 pm PT.
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