David Wild Revisits the James Franco-Anne Hathaway Oscars Disaster
This week’s episode of Allison Hope Weiner’s Lip.tv interview program Media Mayhem is fantastically entertaining. The guest is David Wild, who got a job straight out of college with Esquire magazine, moved on from there to a staff position with Rolling Stone before winding up (with a little help from Steven Spielberg) as a go-to guy for the Emmys, Grammys and various other awards show/celebrity tributes.
One of Wild’s Oscar writing brushes was the year that James Franco and Anne Hathaway co-hosted. Weiner asks Wild for his thoughts on why it went so wrong:
“I cannot explain it other than I felt like it was the worst blind date in show business history. It was the homecoming queen or head of drama club trying hard in the sweetest possible to put on a show, and a guy who for whatever reason I don’t think wanted to host the show. In fact he went on Jimmy Kimmel [Live] and announced his intention to be the worst host in Oscar history. So on a certain level, the show was a tremendous success, because he achieved that goal.”
Among the many other topics covered by Weiner and Wild are the reasons for the decline of the magazine celebrity profile, his favorite people (Ringo Starr, LL Cool J) and the task of working out the words for a Whitney Houston Grammys show prayer.
