Much of the pre-show discussion for this year's Oscars revolved around co-hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco. Sure, they're popular young movie stars who have been successful hosting "Saturday Night Live," but asking them to host the highest-profile live event in entertainment was a considerable risk. Ninety minutes into the show, you have to wonder whether it was a risk worth taking.
Melissa Leo's bleeped-out F-bomb during her acceptance of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar -- the first in Oscars history, the Academy confirmed to Variety -- nearly made up for the rambling nature of the rest of her speech. "I'm just shaking in my boots here," Leo said when she received her trophy. "I am kind of speechless. When I watched Kate [Winslet] two years ago it looked so much [expletive] easier." Backstage, Leo apologized for her language, saying: "I really don't mean to offend, and it's probably a very inappropriate place to use that particular word."
Kirk Douglas, looking healthier after his stroke than he did when he appeared on the show a few years ago, wringed some chuckles out of his protracted announcement of the award he eventually handed to Leo. Franco's joke about the technical award winners being "nerds" was a nice touch too, but the biggest laugh of the night might have been a cameo appearance by Franco's grandmother, pointing out that she just saw "Marky Mark."
The inevitable Franco-in-a-dress moment came via his homage to Marilyn Monroe's slinky, hot-pink getup from "Gentleman Prefer Blondes." (Franco raised a few eyebrows back in October when he went full-on cross-dresser for Candy magazine.) As Franco emerged in his skintight, satin dress and blonde wig, he told Anne Hathaway -- who had donned a tuxedo and sparkly heels for a Tonys-esque riff Les Miserables song "On My Own" -- that if she got to wear a suit that it was only fair that he get to wear a dress.
Funnily enough, some of the most interesting moments came by way of James Franco's Twitter posts, including a video Franco himself shot from his phone as the curtain lifted on the Oscars broadcast.
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