I recorded the Academy Awards last night so I could fast forward through the
commercials, and I even added 30 minutes extra to the recording time, and I STILL missed the Best Picture Award.  How the heck can this be the 87th Academy Awards and they still can’t figure out how long it’s going to run?  35 minutes long on a three-hour show?  That’s off by 20%!

So here’s my solution: get a dentist to produce the Oscars.  There isn’t a single dentist I know who would consistently run over by 20%.  Dentists know how to make those 10-minute blocks work.  They certainly learn from experience, and if they ever did run over on a procedure, they wouldn’t book the same amount of time the next 86 times!

As an aside, I probably won’t be the first person to point out that while an Oscar was given to a screenwriter who spoke eloquently about his near suicide and how people shouldn’t give up, and another was awarded for best short documentary about the veterans’ hotline,  where the director spoke of how she lost her son to suicide, that the Best Picture winner was the one film where (spoiler alert!) the lead character kills himself. Huh? I love irony as much as the next guy, but seriously, folks.

Back to the show timing. Here’s a suggestion.  You are nominated for an Oscar, which means you have a 20% chance of being in front of 1 billion people accepting the award.  So prepare something eloquent. If you can’t think of something eloquent, ask someone to write something for you and then memorize it.  Then pick the two most important people you want to thank, thank them and do a blanket thank you for everyone else. (We actually watched someone thank his dog last night, which Mickey Rourke also did a few years ago.) That way maybe, just maybe, we could watch more film clips and more retrospective montages rather than strangers in badly-fitting tuxedos listing their co-workers, agents and family members.

Which is why a dentist would also be a great producer for the show.  Dentists know that the schedule is about treating patients, so they would know that the Academy Awards is about our love of movies. They’d focus on that, get it done right and get us to bed on time.

And finally, why a dental office should be more like the Oscars:

Take a little more time each day to express your gratitude and appreciation to your team. And, as team members, express that appreciation more to each other.  One thing we do learn from these acceptance speeches is that these people all know they didn’t get there alone.  None of us do.  Express it often, and don’t be afraid to go long.

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