Upholding the integrity of the 2023 Oscars through celebration

Film students share how they plan to celebrate the Oscars and why they find it important to commemorate Hollywood’s biggest night. Photo by TAYLOR BAZELLA, features & entertainment staff writer

On Oscars night, 2017, junior television writing and production major Luke D’Agnese and his family huddled on the couch as they watched Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt and Fred Berger, producers of “La La Land,” accept the award for best picture. Suddenly, a man with a walkie talkie headset walked on stage. After an intense conversation with the cast and crew behind the mic, Berger stopped mid speech. 

“We lost by the way,” Berger told the Dolby Theater audience. “There’s a mistake, “Moonlight,” you guys won best picture,” Horowitz said. 

It was at this moment that D’Agnese was hooked. Since seeing a history-making moment in real time, D’Agnese has thrown an annual Oscars viewing party so he and his friends can take part in these monumental instances that occur on the biggest night in Hollywood.  

“I love being super formal about informal things because I think it's fun,” D’Agnese said. “Obviously, it's a big deal for the film industry, but we're just a bunch of film kids. Why not have fun with it? Let's make it a big deal. I like having the Oscars be a hyper-analytical lens into the film industry and plus, people do crazy things and there's always a weird thing that happens.”

There are many ways and reasons to celebrate the Super Bowl of Hollywood. Film students at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts shared how they choose to spend their Oscars Sundays and why it’s such an important event to them. 

Since freshman year, D’Agnese and his friends have tried to get as close to the glamorous occasion as they can.  

“Every year, me and my friends always get dressed up nice to watch the Oscars,” D’Agnese said. “I do a Google Form ballot that we all fill out.”

This year, D’Agnese said he is making his Oscars party more formal because he is a bit older and lives off campus, where he now has more than a dorm room to host guests and cook themed food.  

“I saw on TikTok that someone was doing chicken fingers but like the severed fingers from “The Banshees of Inisherin,” D’Agnese said. “There's also gonna be some Avatar blue drink.”

When it comes to formal Oscars parties, no one knows a party — decked to the nines — like senior creative producing major Max Ptasznik. Growing up, Ptasznik said he went to award show parties at a family friend’s house, where the hosts would roll out the red carpet for guests, literally.

“It was kind of like a big event, they rented out a red carpet that went up the stairs to their house,” Ptasznik said. “Everything was decked out with decorations. There was candy, popcorn and ballots. They played the Oscars on all the TVs they had in different rooms. People would get pretty rowdy about who was winning.”

A more relaxed route some students take is simply sitting on the couch with friends and playing Oscars bingo like senior screenwriting major Isabella Miller and her roommates. 

“(My roommate) puts together a bunch of guesses of things that are going to happen, whether it's somebody winning or a particular actor wearing something really weird or a topic coming up in an acceptance speech that's cringy,” Miller said. “Everyone gets an individual paper and we all cross off (boxes) as we watch. Last year, with the Will Smith slap, I think somebody actually had somebody punching somebody on it as a joke, and they got to cross it off.”

For senior creative producing major Tess Fortenberry, a simple charcuterie board and gathering of friends around a TV for a little watch and nosh night is the ideal evening after already spending hours trying to watch the best picture nominees. 

“I love some prosciutto and cheese,” Fortenberry said. ”I try to always watch at least the films in the best picture category. I do almost every year, which is good but I’m behind this year. I need to catch up.”

Some Oscars traditions are not intentionally created but rather formed by chance and carried on as special family traditions. This is the case for junior creative producing major Troy Lankard who told The Panther he utilizes his parent’s cable TV to watch the Oscars with them. 

“A long time ago I wanted to watch the Oscars and (my parents) had never been to Panda Express,” Lankard said. “So my dad took me to Panda Express and I think for a couple years after that, Oscars night was Panda Express night.”

Lankard said he enjoys celebrating the Oscars so he and his family can pay respects to the underappreciated crew members that play a big role in making well-known films. 

“Ever since I started going to Dodge, I feel like I've kind of had a better understanding and respect for everyone who works in the film industry,” Lankard said. “Last year, there was a lot of talk about how certain categories were not going to be shown live. I was trying to explain to (my parents) how important it is that some of these categories get their time to shine on television for all these well-known movies that were nominated.”

Lankard said it’s also important to celebrate the Oscars because of the larger variety of content that is now nominated for awards. 

“I feel like we're entering a better era of film — a more inclusive era ever since the Academy has been getting held accountable for stuff that they've not been doing,” Lankard said. “I think it's important that we celebrate those (inclusive) films today because they're the ones getting all the attention.”

D'Agnese said this year is an especially important year to pay attention to the TV at Oscars parties because of how much of an impact this year’s award show will have on the future of film. 

“I think that right now we're at that point where there's so many different things that are competing with each other and whatever ends up winning will shift the minds of the producers and film studios,” D’Agnese said. “(The producers and studios) will be like ‘This is the thing that people like, so we're gonna make that stuff.'"

Not only is celebrating this year important because of how the Oscars will affect the future, but D'Agnese said it’s also important to remember how much the industry has already changed,

“I think celebrating this year is really celebrating how far the industry has shifted because of everything that's happened in the last three to five years in terms of the academy shifting its membership, in terms of the pandemic, in terms of streaming services being more prevalent and movie theaters kind of dying out,” D’Agnese said. “I think, right now, we're at a point where it is a true weird melting pot of a bunch of (different) movies.”

No matter which of the different films wins an Oscar on Sunday, it is sure to rally up the eager and well-dressed Oscars guests at home who wait all year for this captivating and trend-setting event in order to celebrate the films and people that entertained last year.