We keep hearing that the Academy is moving toward a more youthful membership, and now we can say this for sure: the Academy's official red-carpet greeter just got a lot younger.
After decades in which the job of greeting and interviewing Oscar nominees and celebrities had been handled by two of the longest-running Hollywood columnists, first Army Archerd and then Robert Osborne, the Academy announced on Wednesday that its new greeter will be Dave Karger, an Oscar writer for Entertainment Weekly and a man at least a couple of decades younger than his predecessors.
When the arrivals end at 5 p.m., Karger will shift to a different assignment for the Academy, co-hosting Oscar.com's "All Access" coverage with Suzanne Whang.
This makes Karger the only one of the Oscar pundits collected on Movie City News' "Gurus o' Gold" chart to be currently receiving a check (one would assume) from the Academy. Whether that impacts the accuracy of his predictions remains to be seen. (He's usually pretty good, even when AMPAS isn't paying him.)
The red carpet over which Karger will preside (left) was laid in front of the Hollywood and Highland Center on Wednesday, with additional preparations taking up the rest of the week until Sunday's Oscar show.
(Photo by Todd Wawrychuk/AMPAS)
