Deadline Hollywood: Shameful Oscar Overspending

Jackman’s selection is the motion-picture industry’s recognition that, now more than ever, the success of a movie depends as much, if not more, on its international box office as on its North American grosses. But Jackman also brilliantly emceed the televised ceremony for the Tony Awards in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and won an Emmy for the latter. And he did win Broadway’s 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. Mark and Condon intend to make the most of Jackman’s multitalents.

But are they enough to bring audiences back?

I also have learned that protests are coming into the academy about its Board of Governors’ choice of Jerry Lewis to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The controversy is over his recent repeated and public antigay slurs. The Hollywood gay community, joined by much of the show-biz straight community, is already fuming because Proposition 8 passed last month, outlawing same-sex unions in California. So the vote by the AMPAS board selecting Lewis seems like “salt poured into an open wound,” according to one of my sources.

I’m told the AMPAS response has been, “He’s apologized.” My insiders say Tom Sherak, the former 20th Century Fox and Revolution Studios exec who raises money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and has a family member with MS, was primarily responsible for lobbying the board to choose Lewis.

But as recently as October, Lewis made an antigay slur on Australian television similar to one he made on his annual Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon a year ago. The 82-year-old was asked by a Network Ten TV reporter about the national sport of cricket. “Oh, cricket? It’s a fag game. What are you, nuts?” Lewis replied. In September 2007, he used a similar antigay slur — calling someone an “illiterate fag” on air during his annual Labor Day fund-raiser in Las Vegas. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation immediately sought an apology. “Jerry Lewis’ on-air use of this kind of antigay slur is simply unacceptable,” GLAAD President Neil G. Giuliano said in a statement. “It also feeds a climate of hatred and intolerance that contributes to putting our community in harm’s way.”

Lewis said he was sorry, claiming he’d made “a poor choice of words” and he “holds no prejudices in this regard.” Yet there he was in Australia, doing it again, and apologizing again. I say this is a terrible choice by the academy. AMPAS isn’t bestowing on Lewis an honor for his long career. The Hersholt is an award given to an individual in the motion-picture industry “whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.” Despite Lewis’ laudatory 42 years of raising money for MDA, his publicly demonstrated debasement of gays doesn’t make him a humanitarian in my eyes.