Academy Awards show host Chris Rock stands on the stage of the Kodak Theater poses with a larger-than-life Oscar statue on Jan. 20, 2005. The 77th Annual Academy Awards Presentation will be broadcast live from the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 27. ABC

Academy hopes Rock will stir up controversial buzz

The producers of this year's Academy Awards have cynically tried to make up for the buzz lost to the nominating snubs of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ - the two most-talked-about movies of 2004 - by instead choosing an edgy and profane comedian, Chris Rock, as the host of Sunday night's ceremony.

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Visit our special section for the latest Academy Awards news, profiles of actors and reviews of nominated movies. Go to the Oscars® section. Academy Awards show host Chris Rock poses with a larger-than-life Oscar statue on Jan. 20, 2005. The 77th Annual Academy Awards Presentation will be broadcast live from the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 27. ABC

Mr. Rock has done his part by creating a stir when he remarked that "only gays watch the Oscars" and that the black actor Jamie Foxx "had better win" the awards for best actor (in Ray) and best supporting actor (in Collateral).

After an initial start on Saturday Night Live, the comedian became a superstar, primarily through his HBO solo-comedy performances Never Scared and Bigger and Blacker, performed before mostly black audiences in black theaters. All along, however, perhaps the audience that really mattered (television and its money) was white.

In these performances, Mr. Rock is quite profane and bigoted. The talented comedian can say many degrading things about black culture that white comics cannot. He might eventually provoke so much outrage that he will set back the development of other black TV and movie performers for years.

This might be the moment. For all of his success, Mr. Rock has come of age on small stages and niche television channels, late at night. He is still not a mainstream performer, and there is considerable trepidation in Hollywood over exactly what he will say at the Academy Awards. Yet he will soon be a U.S. ambassador to the world; the Oscars ceremony is the most watched television program, with a global audience of 1.5 billion.

At the very least, if he makes a fool of himself he will kill two birds with one cynical producers' stone, by creating buzz and then absorbing the criticism.

Chip Benson is a TV documentary producer.

--From the Friday, February 25, 2005 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle