The best Oscar moment of the decade wasn't actually part of the show.
Mere hours after the March 4, 2018 Academy Awards ceremony, which ended with The Shape of Water taking best picture, The Lonely Island uploaded a YouTube demo for an Oscars song called “Why Not Me?” The four-minute track and storyboard celebrates the kind of movies the Academy usually overlooks, like superhero blockbusters, big-budget horror, and the critically panned. According to the video description, the song was deemed “financially and logistically impossible” to film, and therefore cut from the Oscars.
It's been four years since the video was uploaded, yet conversations continue around how to boost Oscar viewership and honor blockbuster movies that draw massive audiences. "Why Not Me?" shows that there are creative and entertaining ways to integrate popular movies into the awards without having to enter the Speed Force.
Mashable had the distinct joy of speaking to Lonely Island members Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer about creating this track, which they had not revisited in years.
"It was super fun because I forgot all the jokes and I got to see them fresh," Samberg said over the phone. "I was like, 'Hey, this is pretty good!' I was particularly taken with how beautiful the music was. Greg Chun, who we collaborated with on it, is just outstanding, and that was kind of the thing that I was like, 'Man, it really sounds good.'"
Schaffer said they're used to hearing a Lonely Island song much more between demos, mixing, filming, and editing, which is why this one was so fun to rediscover.
"By the time we're done making one of our things — especially me because I do the editing — I've heard it 10,000 times, like I know every single moment," he said. "But this thing, because we just did it over a couple of weeks, turned it in, and then it didn't become anything... All of a sudden it was a pleasant surprise to not know it so well."
Go big or (be sent) home
"Why Not Me" begins at the Academy Awards telecast, where the hosts lament how blockbusters rarely win awards. It then cuts away to one unlikely Oscar viewer, watching the show alone in his living room because he wasn't invited: Thor (Chris Hemsworth). His lament is joined by Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), who shares the sentiment, and together they list their accomplishments before singing “at least Lady Bird got into NYU.” Olney Atwell and Daniel Reitzenstein worked with The Lonely Island on graphics and editing.
"It was one of the first years where this conversation was starting, where it was like all the biggest movies are these movies, but none of them are represented at the Oscars," Samberg says. "We love those movies, and the movies that get nominated, and we were like, 'That's kind of a funny angle for a song.' Also just knowing that if it got made, everyone would get all of the references in a very silly way, that it would be a fun jumping-off point and a good way to incorporate all those people into the show."
"Also, everyone in it was popping off and big at that moment, but...can you imagine if that had actually gotten made, how huge all the people in it are at this point?" he adds. "It was like everything that was new and exciting or big that year… it would have been such a cool thing to look back on and be like, 'How did they get all these people?'"
"It would have been such a cool thing to look back on and be like, 'How did they get all these people?'"
The Lonely Island trio (Samberg, Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) was working at the time with producer Becky Sloviter, who was in touch with someone working for Oscar producers Jennifer Todd and Michael DeLuca. The Lonely Island had performed Best Original Song nominee "Everything Is Awesome" at the 2015 Oscars, so they were ideal candidates to create an original song for the 2018 telecast.
"We worked for two weeks on it and we were really happy with it," Schaffer says. "We were like 'Wow, this is gonna be a beast to put together,' because we assumed all these different movie stars will be in different parts of the world filming and we'll have to send camera crews. But we guessed that most people would be game without having reached out to anybody, so we were pretty excited."
"I feel like there was maybe even a moment where we heard back like 'They love it!'" Samberg adds. "And then we didn't hear anything and they were like, 'Actually we can't do it.'"
In their minds, the bulk of the creative budget would have gone to securing all those high-profile guest stars and filming them around the world. With 2022 hindsight, it doesn't seem that far-fetched, especially with options for people to record themselves or perform live and remote — but The Lonely Island doesn't do things by half.
"To be honest, our plan for it would have been very expensive, big music video-style where everyone's in their full costumes." Schaffer says. "When you cut to Thor, we wanted it to look like it was a scene from Thor. We wanted to do the big version of it, where it was fancy."
"We would have been open to any solutions," he adds. "I don't know if everybody is really proud of their singing voices and would be willing to commit — it's a much scarier thing to perform live, singing live at the Oscars… and then also getting those like 30 movie stars. But from our perspective, we would have been happy with it being produced any way possible."
"I will say if it had made it, I think it would have been the biggest video in the history of the Oscars," Samberg says. "Just budget-wise."
A clown, a comic, and a fish man
After Thor and Wonder Woman's duet, "Why Not Me?" switches style, tempo, and protagonist, highlighting none other than Pennywise the clown from It. He thinks he deserves a nomination for kidnapping hundreds of children, and was robbed because he's not "classically handsome."
"Oscars so white, but I guess not for me," he croaks — a Schaffer line, both are quick to recall.
"These were all very of the moment," he says, recalling the 2015 hashtag that remains prescient. "And he's arguably the only truly white person in the world. I mean, he's lily white."
Samberg: "Yeah, he definitely got the shaft."
Next to chime in is Tiffany Haddish — not as her Girls Trip alter ego Dina, but as herself, belting with the voice of Chun's collaborator Baraka May: "I peed while hanging from a zip line / Meryl Streep has never done that!"
'If you’re gonna bone a fish man, why not bone a fish like this man?”
Once again, the musical structure shifts. "Why Not Me?" might be about megahit movies, but it's catnip for a musical theater nerd. The structure recalls West Side Story's "Tonight Quintet," and "One Day More" from Les Miserables — one of Samberg's favorites.
"I love Les Mis and every time I work with Greg I go, 'Make it sound like Les Mis!'" he laughs. "At this point he's always like, 'You don't have to say it. I know you want it to sound like Les Mis.'"
Lyrically, the song is classic Lonely Island, full of brilliant wordplay and multi-syllabic rhymes. "With anything we do there are always lines where you're like, 'Ooh, I like that,' like the flow of it or something," Samberg says.
"The Aquaman one, I can't remember where it came from, but I remember feeling proud in a way that really speaks to our amateur songwriting status," Schaffer says. He's referring to the DC hero's solo that deserves its own award: “In the Shape of Water I heard that a lady boned a fish man / If you’re gonna bone a fish man, why not bone a fish like this man?”
"Whatever the word play was there, which is really obvious, I remember feeling like 'Hey, that's pretty good,'" he says.
But before that, we have to talk about The Snowman.
A neat idea
"Why Not Me?" is almost entirely a tribute to Oscar nominees and popular but snubbed movies, except for one. The Snowman might be better known for its highly meme-able ad campaign, featuring a crudely drawn snowman with the tagline "I gave you all the clues." It famously underperformed with both critics and audiences.
"I had completely forgotten about the Snowman joke, and it caught me really off guard when I was watching it," Schaffer admits. "And delightfully so. I was very happy with that moment."
"Especially because we did think it was a neat idea," adds Samberg.
As Snowman star Michael Fassbender's fake vocals fade away, Aquaman chimes in with his mournful, sincere query about boning a fish man — a joke that lives on in a way with Peacemaker on HBO Max.
"I mean, it probably is out there 'cause he probably really does, you know?" says Schaffer. "That's why we would come to that idea and then they would come to it. It's probably just one of those kind of truths that everyone can feel."
The magnificent line barely sets in before Samberg's voice cuts in doing his best Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel):
"And what even is art? How do you define its importance?
If popcorn movies are bad, how come popcorn's so delicious?
And when I blow up six cars, how is that worse than 'Schindler's List' is?"
"I was pleasantly surprised," Schaffer says, once again describing how it felt to watch with fresh eyes. "Vin Diesel coming in with real points about art — how do we judge art? How do we define its importance — kind of him philosophically breaking down what is the meaning of the awards shows."
"That one really made me happy," Samberg says. "And by the way, if popcorn movies are bad, why is popcorn so delicious? It's a great question."
"He's got you there," says Schaffer.
Samberg: "And by he, I mean us!"
"I want to point out that we were so excited if Vin Diesel would ever have been willing to do it because we're fans of the videos of him singing karaoke online," Schaffer adds. "He's got a wonderful voice that's very distinct. If you haven't watched any of him singing karaoke, I recommend it."
In the final section, every actor or character returns to reprise their verse with overlapping vocals (the technical term is quodlibet). The finale includes Hollywood's preeminent Chrises (including Rock) petitioning for a new category and new lines from Pennywise and Diesel: "I am Toretto" ("I mean, he is. There's no doubt about that," says Samberg). Before the song closes out with wordless Star Wars characters, we get a mic drop from charming baby plant.
"I will say, and you can quote me on this," Samberg says. "'I am Groot.'"
Why not next year?
The 2022 Oscars aimed to solve the "Why Not Me?" problem with a Twitter poll for audience favorite that was announced during the telecast.
"Our legacy is living on through that award," Samberg says with mock pride.
"I was gonna say, they definitely watched this video and are making some pretty major changes because of us," Schaffer adds. "We were definitely the first people to ever have ever noticed that the popular movies didn't seem to be the Oscar movies. It was just an observation we made and since then, everyone else copied us."
There's arguably no better time to create this video or a similar concept in earnest, and The Lonely Island is (mostly) willing to try again.
"I mean, spend two weeks making something that gets thrown in the garbage? I'm not sure that I'd do that again," Schaffer jokes. "Of course [I would]. I mean, I'd have to."
"With the pandemic and things not being in theaters, it's harder to know what the big movies were," he adds "I mean, you know what the huge hits were, but it's harder to know what the Snowmans are now because it's not like [we] went into a theater and had billboards everywhere."
"I definitely think Tom Holland would be in this one, this year's," Samberg says. Holland has a strong musical background, and 2022's nominees included multiple movie musicals and actors who rose to the occasion.
"But knowing us we would make it much more difficult and choose all the people that can't sing," Schaffer adds.
Since the project never made it past the storyboard stage, it's unclear if any of the stars have watched "Why Not Me?"
"One Chris probably has," says Schaffer. "If I had to guess a Chris, I would guess Evans. I just think he's the most plugged in."
via Zero Tech Blog