hosted the 72nd Academy Awards.|alt=Billy Crystal in 2012. In view of the new millennium, the academy sought to both shorten the telecast and give the ceremony a new look. Husbandandwife producers
Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck were recruited to oversee the production of the 2000 ceremony. Despite Richard and Lili's promises to make changes to the ceremony, they hired actor and veteran Oscar host
Billy Crystal to host the ceremony for the seventh time. Art director Bob Keene designed an ambitiously technological stage design for the telecast that used a floor adorned with flashing lights and several 35 foot columns consisting of
high-definition video monitors stacked atop each other. Because of serious technical challenges concerning movement, lighting, and overheating, Keene and his production design team tested the stage at
ABC Prospect Studios before installing it at the
Shrine Auditorium. Several other people were involved in the production of the ceremony. Actor
Peter Coyote, who served as announcer for the telecast, was often seen before commercial breaks live behind the stage. Musical directors
Burt Bacharach,
Don Was, and Rob Shrock composed a techno-pop soundtrack that substituted for a live orchestra during most of the ceremony. In addition, Bacharach rounded up musicians that included
Garth Brooks,
Queen Latifah, and
Dionne Warwick to perform a medley of songs previously nominated for
Best Original Song. Choreographer
Kenny Ortega supervised the "
Blame Canada" musical number.
Box office performance of nominees At the time of the nominations announcement on February 15, the combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees was $521 million with an average of $104 million per film.
The Sixth Sense was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $278.4 million in domestic box office receipts. Only
The Sixth Sense (2nd),
The Green Mile (13th),
The Talented Mr. Ripley (26th), and
American Beauty (27th) were nominated for directing, acting, screenwriting, or Best Picture. The other top 50 box office hits that earned the nominations were
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1st),
Toy Story 2 (3rd),
The Matrix (5th),
Tarzan (6th),
The Mummy (8th),
Stuart Little (11th), and
Sleepy Hollow (20th). On March 6, 2000, 1,000 of the ballots were discovered at a
US Postal Service regional distribution center in
Bell, California. In response to affected members, AMPAS sent replacement ballots sealed in yellow envelopes, and extended the voting deadline by two days to March 23.
Oscar statuettes theft On March 10, 2000, 55 Oscar statuettes were stolen from a
Roadway Express loading dock in
Bell, California. In the event the stolen awards were to be still missing during the festivities, AMPAS announced that
R.S. Owens & Company, the manufacturer of the awards would produce a new batch of the golden statuettes. Nine days later, 52 of the stolen statuettes were discovered in a trash bin at a
Food 4 Less supermarket located in the
Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles by a man named Willie Fulgear. For the safe recovery of the stolen statuettes, Roadway Express rewarded Fulgear with $50,000, and the academy invited him and his son Allen to the ceremony. Two Roadway Express employees, truck driver Lawrence Ledent and dock worker Anthony Hart, were arrested for the theft of the Oscars. Both men pleaded no contest. Ledent served six months in prison and Hart received probation. A third man who was Mr. Fulgear's half-brother was initially charged with the crime, but police dropped those charges after Mr. Fulgear divulged that they were estranged from each other. Three years later, one of three remaining missing Oscar statuettes was discovered during a drug bust at a mansion in Miami, Florida; the other two have yet to be found.
Critical reviews The show received a positive reception from most media publications. Television critic Monica Collins of the
Boston Herald praised producers Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck for overseeing a show that was "clean, snappy, high-gloss and very well produced." She also quipped that host Billy Crystal did not need to save the show this time because "everything seemed to come together.
The San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris wrote "the show was downright hip, more so than it's been in decades." He also gave high marks for the "techno-chic" production elements from the music and stage design. Columnist Paul Brownfield of the
Los Angeles Times raved that "the 72nd annual Academy Awards telecast was hipper than in years past, sleeker in look and edgier in tone." He added that Crystal was "the perfect antidote to the entire evening's self-serious posturing." Some media outlets were more critical of the show. John Carman of the
San Francisco Chronicle lamented that despite being solid and tidy, "the show never quite managed the big surprises, sloppy excesses and emotional highs we hope to see."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette television critic
Rob Owen criticized the uneven pacing of the ceremony writing that the telecast "started slowly – 20 minutes of Billy Crystal's spoofs and singing that weren't as funny as his past Oscar intros – and never got up to speed." Caryn James of
The New York Times remarked that "the four-hour show turned into a zombie." She also stated that the telecast was bloated with too many tributes to Hollywood's past.
Ratings and reception The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 46.52 million viewers over its length, which was a 3% increase from the previous year's ceremony. It also drew a higher 1849 demo rating with a 19.86 rating over a 39.34 share among viewers in that demographic. Two months later, the ceremony won one of those nominations for Louis J. Horvitz's direction of the telecast. =="In Memoriam"==