Twenty-Two Observations From the Academy Awards Where Will Smith Smacked Chris Rock

Like, what?

1. The Oscars are live, but they never seem live. The whole night is over-produced, over-scripted, over-performed, and why wouldn’t it be? It’s all about, and for, performers. The Oscars never have those live wire moments like “Saturday Night Live” does, or live sports does. Crazy things could theoretically happen. But they never actually do.
2. Until, of course, this.
3. There were a whole bunch of things that happened at the Oscars on Sunday night, but no one is ever going to remember any of them. Not after this:

4. There are two ways to look at this:

a: This was an out-of-control moment by a great American actor who had been scheduled to have a definitive career-capping moment by winning a Best Actor actor Oscar that disgraced not just himself but the event itself.

b: Wow, what incredible television.

5. I’m not sure there’s really a wrong answer here.

6. More on Will Smith in a bit! But there was still an actual show before and after, even if it didn’t feel that way.

7. For the second consecutive year, an Oscar night that was widely criticized in the days and weeks preceding it got off to a downright terrific start. Last year it was Regina King walking through Los Angeles’ Union Station, shot in glorious Soderbergh-vision by Steven Soderbergh (sorry, “Peter Andrews”), and this year it was Beyonce, introduced by the Williams sisters, performing her nominated “Be Alive” song from King Richard on the very same Compton tennis courts the Williams began their career. It’s not Beyonce’s best song, to say the least, but it was undeniably moving to see the glitzy Oscars open in Compton, on the actual Williams court. It evoked similar feelings to the Super Bowl, almost a bum rush of Black royalty to a traditionally lily-white event. It almost made you optimistic.

8. Then we cut back to the actual stage … and there was DJ Khaled introducing our strained, actively nervous hosts of Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes. I’m not really sure why DJ Khaled was there, and he didn’t seem certain himself.

9. Amy Schumer ended up doing the monologue, and while she didn’t have much time for it, the Aaron Sorkin/Lucille Ball joke was worth the price of admission itself. It is truly shocking how not-funny that movie was. Schumer has her detractors, but it did make you wonder what she would have done with a full monologue of her own.

10. The set itself was impressive, but the best change may have been doing cinematic closeups on the winners themselves, giving an intimacy to their speeches that was evident from the first win, Ariana DeBose’s award for Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story. DeBose’s speech, noting that she was the first openly queer actress to win an Oscar for her acting, was an immediate highlight of the evening, and it was better for the way it was shot.

11. The hotly debated — and mostly despised decision — to award eight technical awards before the live show began infuriated movie fans (read this great Justin Chang essay for the best case) and made you wonder what, exactly, these Oscars were supposed to be for. The strangest thing about the decision is that the awards were shown on the telecast anyway, only in edited form (with most people already knowing who won regardless), saving the telecast maybe 30–45 seconds per award. Was the seven minutes or so they saved worth all the headache? It couldn’t possibly be.

12. This was particularly galling because the show was filled with so much listicle clickbait-like junk, like the Top Five Movie Moments as voted on my viewers, which featured a moment from Zack Snyder’s Justice League that almost no one who saw that movie even remembers. What was the point of slashing awards for the montage equivalent of a slideshow?

13. Seriously, though: Never forget where you were when The Flash entered the Speed Force.

14. It did make you wonder whether network television, with its tight broadcast windows, is really the right place for the Oscars. Everything is going streaming: Would anyone have a problem with, say, Amazon Prime or Apple TV just streaming the show and letting everyone go as long as they need to? That would be OK, right?

15. That’s to say, this:

16. I am no fashion expert, to say the very least, but it sure feels like Timothee Chalamet’s outfit is going to be an awfully popular Halloween costume for fat guys this October.

17. Another speech highlight: Not only Coda’s Troy Kotsur’s moving speech, but his translator actively getting choked up. A terrific touch? Youn Yuh-Jung signing his name as the winner.

18. Talking as a parent, here: It was downright cruel to wait to play “We don’t Talk About Bruno” until 9:49 p.m. ET. Maybe your kids were awake then, but mine sure weren’t. They’d have been confused by the Megan Thee Stallion rap anyway.

19. If you were looking for a reason to go to bed early, or at least shutting the show down an hour early, when Sian Heder won for Best Adapted Screenplay, Coda’s victory for Best Picture was ensured. Unless you were just hoping Amy Schumer would perhaps be repelled down from the ceiling again.

20. It’s pretty hilarious that the show, despite all the attempts to cut it down, went flying past the 11 p.m. deadline anyway. It was in fact longer than last year’s show, which gave out every award live and didn’t cut away from any speeches.

21. Oh, and Coda won. Again: Not like anyone cared by then.

22. So, about Will Smith. Everyone is going to have their own takes on what happened tonight. I’m not going to contribute to them: You can certainly find just about any angle you want. I will only say this: Fame — extreme, global, transcendent, immortal — will rip the skin and meat off your bones. It will strip you of everything human. It make you feel like you are the only person in the world. It will break you. You see stuff like what happened tonight … and you wonder how anyone makes it through. I don’t mean to imply sympathy, or support, or anything like that at all. But fame will eat your brain. I think we saw that tonight.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.