MY MOVIE WEEKwith Mike Shaw

All that fuss over who would host the 2012 Oscars, and now Eddie Murphy has gone and quit. It all started late last week when Academy Award producer Brett Ratner resigned after he made some stupid comments while promoting his latest movie, Tower Heist.

Asked about using rehearsals ahead of a film shoot, he replied “rehearsing is for fags”. He subsequently apologised, but gay rights groups and some members of the Academy took issue with his use of the word. Whether he was joking or not, it was a dumb thing to say, and was compounded by stuff he had said earlier in the week about various subjects, including the size of his testicles.

Ratner, the director of Rush Hour and X-Men: The Last Stand, stepped down, and was quickly followed by Eddie Murphy, who was only named as next year’s Oscar ceremony host two months ago. At first, it was assumed that he walked because he didn’t want to be associated with a show tainted by homophobia, but it seems the truth is he quit as a show of solidarity.

Loyalty is quite rare in Hollywood, but is this really the best occasion to make a stand? If there’s a time to let a buddy take the hit on his own, this is probably it. Murphy’s departure threw organisers into turmoil once more, as they scrambled around to find a replacement. Planners have been struggling to liven up the show’s image for a few years due to a steady decline in its TV ratings and no shortage of rival awards shows that manage to entertain.

Their tactics have included shortening stupendously long shows and experimenting with different hosts. Sometimes it works (Hugh Jackman proving himself to be an entertainment superman), sometimes it doesn’t (Anne Hathaway and James Franco last year), and the decision to go for Murphy was a sign that they were going to try the traditional funnyman host one more time.

So what else could they do in their hour of need than turn to the man with eight Oscar ceremonies under his belt already, Billy Crystal. Yeah, good idea, that’ll pull in the punters.

If they wanted bigger audiences and younger viewers, why not ask Hugh Jackman again. Or Neil Patrick Harris who did such a sterling job at this year’s Tony awards. Or maybe show some backbone and hire Ricky Gervais. Sure, he annoyed some people at the Golden Globes earlier this year, but he delighted far, far more. Not only that, but it got huge ratings and tons of press.

I get it, Oscar organisers were panicking and Crystal is a safe pair of hands. But do we really need to hear the same jokes he’s told eight times before? Wasn’t Rob Schneider available? What about the reanimated corpse of John Wayne? Hell, give Lindsay Lohan a bottle of vodka and some cue cards and treat us to a disaster on the same scale as Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood’s 1989 Brit Awards. Anything but Crystal AGAIN.

» Anyway. Speaking of actors people don’t want to see anymore, Forbes have produced a list of the 10 most overpaid actors. They went back three years and found out how much their movies made, then divided that number by how much the star was paid. The results are quite surprising.

In first place comes Drew Barrymore, because for every $1 she’s paid, her films return an average of just 40 cents, which is a nice way of saying she lost 60 cents for every dollar she was given. The full rundown is:

1. Drew Barrymore – $0.40

2. Eddie Murphy – $2.70

3. Will Ferrell – $3.50

4. Reese Witherspoon – $3.55

5. Denzel Washington – $4.25

6. Nicolas Cage – $4.40

7. Adam Sandler – $5.20

8. Vince Vaughn – $5.20

9. Tom Cruise – $6.35

10. Nicole Kidman – $6.70

Check out our buddy Eddie there at No2. Anyway, it’s important to note that this list covers just the past three years, so huge money-makers like Charlie’s Angels haven’t influenced Drew’s score, while Cruise is being judged for the likes of Knight and Day rather than Minority Report, but still – there are some surprising names on the list. However, any list like this that doesn’t have Jennifer Aniston on it, deserves closer scrutiny.