It's the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don't care about.

I mean, if they're doing a television show every night like Jon Stewart, or Ellen, or David Letterman, then they have their bunch of people who are sitting on a payroll someplace, who are coming up with material every day of the week. Those are the people who wind up doing the bulk of the work for them when they host the thing, because that's their team.

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

They make a humongous profit, but the people that work on the shows don't get paid a lot because they're working on the Oscars show. It's the biggest show in the world.

I think probably the best example was the year Jack Palance dropped down and gave us push-ups when he accepted his award for supporting actor. Then we got to throw away a lot of the script because we just did Jack Palance jokes, because it was just too delicious, watching this old man carry on like that.

It's the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don't care about.

We're shaking up a format, which I think is always a good thing. The thing about [2011 Oscar hosts] James [Franco] and Anne [Hathaway] is, they've both hosted Saturday Night Live, and they both did a good job at it. So they are accustomed to working with short rehearsal time, and live, lots of pressure, rewrites, things like that. They can make quick changes, which is very advantageous, and they're skilled comedians.