A Host to Remember

Ellens+Notorious+Selfie

Ellen’s Notorious Selfie

On a night when all of Hollywood’s biggest stars came together, one shined through last Sunday. Ellen DeGeneres, stand-up comic and talk-show extraordinaire, displayed some of the finest hosting any awards show has ever seen. The Oscars are generally tense; all of the stuffiest and biggest names in movies battle it out for bragging rights for one year. Ellen pacified this stress by putting on a fantastic hosting performance. She was cunning, witty, kind, well-spoken, and elegant.

Three aspects of Ellen’s show made it stand-out among the rest of this award season’s hosts (LL Cool J did not put up much of a fight, but the fact that she put on a better show than Neil Patrick Harris’s usual pageantry is impressive): the monologue, the selfies, and the pizza.

 

Dressed in a dapper suit, Ellen strolled her way through the dazzling lights of the stage to be greeted by hundreds of eager actors, waiting to see if she would live up to her expectations: she did. It took her only twenty words (a joke made about how rough times have been in LA since it had been raining) or so to get three solid laughs from the audience. She continued by saying all the right things and thanking all the right people. After the normal pleasantries, the jokes kept on rolling. She joked about the recurring nominees (Meryl Streep and Martin Scorsese), the old age of one nominee (June Squibb), and the fall Jennifer Lawrence took last year on her way to receive her award for Best Actress. Ellen alleviated the tension beautifully and set up the rest of the evening for more hilarity and spontaneity.

 

Ellen, with smartphone in hand, acknowledged how fantastic everyone looked. To capture the moment, she took a selfie of her expression in reaction to how fantastic everyone looked and posted it to Twitter. Twitter’s response? 174,000 retweets. Throughout the evening, she took photos with random stars such as Jared Leto, Channing Tatum, and Liza Minnelli. However, there was one selfie which will forever be marked down in the record books. Ellen took a selfie in the front row including stars such as Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, and many others. Twitter’s response? 3,200,000 retweets- a new record. This tweet temporarily shutdown Twitter, an accomplishment perhaps much greater than winning an Oscar.

 

The most spontaneous moment of the evening was took place after Ellen seemingly joked that she would order pizza for the audience. A little while later, a shocked delivery man followed Ellen onto the stage and helped hand out pizza to some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Many stars dug in, such as Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, and Harrison Ford. The day after the Oscars, Ellen had the delivery man on her show. Edgar Martirosyan, co-owner of Big Mama’s & Papa’s Pizzeria Hollywood, received a generous (What other way does Ellen know?) tip on the show. Ellen claimed that she “passed around Pharell’s hat” and was able to collect about $600 to tip Edgar. She contributed another $400 to round off the $1000 tip- much more than the suggested 18%.

Ellen made the night entertaining, fun, and kept the audience at home and at the theater on its toes. She has raised the bar for all awards show hosts; let’s see if anyone can one-up her next year.