The 'Thank You' Scroll Is the Best Thing to Happen to the Oscars Since Color TV

This year's Academy Awards had an exciting new flourish: a scroll that would run underneath the winners, allowing the acceptance speeches to be freer, less bound to strictly thanking your stylist, management, and publicist, and, most important, allows the speeches to be shorter. (This Oscar ceremony, so far, has been remarkably swift, with few of the winners actually having to be "played off," thanks largely to the scroll.)

At an Oscar lunch, producers Reginald Hudlin and David Hill unveiled the scroll. "Words are written on the winds, a screen crab of your scroll can be kept forever," they said. Hill later said: "That started us thinking, how can we ensure that the winners have an opportunity to say what's in their hearts and thank the most important people at the same time?"

And there is a precedent: Hilary Swank forgot to thank her then-husband Chad Lowe, and recently the Hollywood Reporter tallied up the relationship sustainability for winners who acknowledged their significant others versus those that did not. So, at the very least, this technological embroidery should save a few marriages.

Thanks to the scroll, the speeches tonight were looser and more liberated. Winners were able to be more personal (instead of having to thank Harvey Weinstein, you can say hello to your son watching at home) and eccentric. In previous years, the music would have overwhelmed the wacky costume designer from "Mad Max: Fury Road" long before she was able to wax philosophical about the impending apocalypse. It's also funny to see the grammar some of the winners employed; "The Revenant" cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeszki is able to create painterly images in a peerless widescreen format. He is also a huge fan of exclamation points.

But what did you think of the scroll? Let us know in the comments!



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