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To fans of “On Cinema at the Cinema” — Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s vast fictional universe that has shoehorned over a decade’s worth of tragedy into a pointless movie review show that gives every single film a perfect score — Oscar night has much higher stakes than the race between “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” It’s also the night of the “On Cinema Oscar Special,” a morbid comedy tradition now entering its 13th year of live-streamed gallows humor. And, as always, there’s no telling which characters will survive the celebration.
The format-defying “On Cinema” has spanned 16 seasons and a five-hour murder trial, a feature-length mockumentary, and multiple spin-off series. And while the massive multimedia project breaks just about every rule of narrative pacing, it makes up for it with the ultimate slow-burn story about two utterly unqualified film critics whose ongoing attempts to celebrate Hollywood history has killed, traumatized, and financially ruined far too many of their acquaintances to count.
No event on the “On Cinema” calendar comes with more anticipation than the Oscar Special, which usually serves as the culmination of a year’s worth of storylines. Like all “On Cinema” offerings, it begins with the fictionalized versions of Heidecker and Turkington promising to discuss movies before proceeding to ignore the topic entirely in favor of their own feuds, debts, legal woes, and maladies. But the specials distinguish themselves for their production value and brutality, as the shows often see Heidecker’s character getting unimaginably drunk as his planned show goes off the rails and his associates all suffer.
‘On Cinema’The three-hour live specials air at the same time as the Oscars — a brilliant intentional plothole if there ever was one, as it’s hard to imagine why any movie buff within the universe of the show would ever choose to watch this nonsense over the actual ceremony. But to the show’s legions of real-world fans, the annual tradition fills the real Oscar night with more excitement than it otherwise deserves.
The past dozen years of Oscar Specials have showcased tragedies that include (but are not limited to): a “Jaws” recreation that saw a man enter a coma after the crew nearly suffocated him by failing to remove a diving helmet from his head, the same comatose man being spray painted gold and forced to pose as a “living Oscar” statue the following year, a DNA test to see if an elderly actor was lying when he claimed to be James Dean, a scripted court hearing to see if George Lucas ripped off Tim and Gregg when he directed (not a typo) “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” a house that collapsed due to poor handling of a rodent problem (and an Orkin exterminator who lost his job for having a glass of celebratory champagne on air), and a tribute to The Joker that ended in multiple cases of carbon monoxide poisoning after Gregg drove a running car into a poorly ventilated soundstage.
‘On Cinema’During a recent conversation with IndieWire, Heidecker and Turkington reflected on the alt-comedy juggernaut that they’ve created over the past 13 years and their unlikely status as the two undisputed kings of Oscars counterprogramming. They explained that while “On Cinema” is all one large tapestry, the Oscar Specials distinguish themselves with the additional layer of production value provided by live editors, who often create jokes that even the cast don’t catch until afterwards.
“The ‘Oscar Special’ is definitely singular compared to everything else because we have this another voice that isn’t generally in the regular show, which is the live editor,” Heidecker said. “We have this control room with Eric Notarnicola, but also some hilarious genius director, editor, writer voices in there, Dan Longino and Bill Benz and Sascha Stanton Craven, these people that have their own sensibility or their own great instincts. And so they’re putting up funny pictures of Steven Spielberg or they’re putting up the music choices they’re making. All that stuff is very singular to the Oscar Special, and a big part of what’s funny about it.”
Over my years of covering “On Cinema,” one constant theme that comes up in conversations is how there’s far less preparation than you’d expect for such an intricate work of art. The core creative team of Heidecker, Turkington, and Notarnicola starts thinking of jokes for the Oscar Special around Christmas each year, then use the following three months to figure out how to execute everything. They often don’t start rehearsing with the entire cast until the afternoon of the show, and actors are sometimes kept in the dark about major twists until after they happen.
‘On Cinema’“As little prepping as possible,” Joe Estevez, who has appeared as a fictional version of himself in every Oscar Special, told me over the phone when I asked about the process. He recalled the 12th annual special, in which Gregg’s “Movie House” collapsed at the end, as an example of the secrecy. “When the whole place came down last Oscar night, I didn’t see that coming,” he said. “We’re standing outside and thinking, ‘This place is collapsing.’ Because I had no idea that special effects was in there rigging everything to fall. So that was absolutely marvelous. Whatever the plan is, Tim and Gregg take it three steps further.”
The live format and lack of preparation pairs perfectly with the multitude of guests who make it onto the specials. From minor stars to celebrity impersonators, the show often blurs the line between fantasy and reality by asking guests to play themselves in a world that isn’t nearly as similar to ours as it looks at first glance. (My personal favorite appearance comes from Dee Thompson, the author of the real faith-based memoir “How I Went to the Oscars Without a Ticket.”) But even when Heidecker and Turkington gamble on someone who might not fully get the joke, the result miraculously fits itself into their world of cringe comedy.
“When we try to prep them, sometimes it works really well. Sometimes it doesn’t work really well,” Turkington said. “I’m amazed at how many times I’ve had conversations with somebody five minutes before we started rolling and was thinking, ‘Oh my God, we’re in trouble. This person doesn’t get it at all. And then it starts rolling and they do get it, and they give a great performance. It’s definitely kind of a crapshoot. We try to give them some basic rules to the thing, and sometimes they just barrel ahead with their own thing. But I think in general, we’ve been real lucky.”
“It’s an alternate universe. I just feel like it’s Joe Estevez in this particular universe, and I play by the rules that universe has,” Estevez said of his own role. “They just give you enough string to hang yourself a dozen times over. I take full advantage of that.”
Last year’s 12th Annual Oscar Special saw Turkington’s alter ego achieve a lifelong dream of interviewing Eric Roberts, only to waste the opportunity by spending the entire interview reading off running times of Roberts’ movies. It was a perfect execution of one of the show’s defining bits — Gregg’s obsession with mundane movie trivia that betrays his lack of understanding about why anyone loves movies so much — and one that challenged their live editors to ensure nobody was seen laughing on camera.
“Gregg just droning on and really wasting everyone’s time and not stopping is something that makes us laugh, but it also makes him laugh,” Heidecker said. “Especially in the early days, that was always the high-wire act, sort of like, how long can he keep droning on until he cracks and ruins everything?”
“I’ve had to train myself not to laugh over the years,” Turkington confirmed. “So when we’re doing the show, if that were to happen, it can be cut. But on the live special, you have to hope that the editors know when to duck away the minute that the uncontrollable laughter starts.”
While the Oscar Specials were largely contained to soundstages during the show’s Adult Swim years, production value has scaled up since the show moved to Heidecker and Turkington’s independently owned HEI Network. The 8th Annual Special saw the two characters host their own competing specials on separate feeds that didn’t sync up until the very end. And the 9th Special caused its own problems when they staged the entire show on an outdoor ranch that pushed the indie team’s logistical abilities to their limits.
‘On Cinema’“That was the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” Heidecker said. “It poured rain the next day. It just unloaded on Southern California the next day, and if that would’ve happened a day earlier it would’ve washed out the whole thing. We were also in COVID times, so I think we were dealing, those first few Oscar Specials were really the most stressful because we were really having to adhere to the SAG standard and DGA standard for shooting during COVID, which meant if Gregg tested positive, I tested positive, we couldn’t be in the show. … They could make a movie about that one.”
In 2024, they upped the ante again by streaming the Oscar Special from Amatocon, a fictional real estate convention that they staged at the Glendale Hilton. The show was filled with brilliant moments, from Estevez’s improvised drunken rampage to Gregg’s painfully awkward marriage proposal to a disinterested news anchor, but it’s most memorable for being the first Oscar Special filmed in front of a live audience — consisting, of course, of actors who were paid to not laugh.
‘On Cinema’“I think that one might have been the most fun for me,” Heidecker said. “I’m sure they were as confused as they would be if they were real people. That was the idea, trying to not tell them too much so that they were just experiencing this really terrible meltdown happening. They generally seemed like people that might not find this kind of stuff funny in real life. So it was fun to play to them. I mean, it was actually very dispiriting playing to them!”
But no matter how much the jokes evolve each year, few things are funnier than the very premise of the specials: it’s Oscar “coverage” that airs during the Oscars, while rarely acknowledging anything happening on the actual show. Heidecker and Turkington admit that the specials were originally meant to be more connected to the ceremony, but their creative ambitions grew inversely to their respect for the actual awards.
“Originally it was kind of meant for us to be watching the Oscars and commenting on it the way you would do sort of a commentary live stream of something going on, but it kind of devolved quickly,” Heidecker said. “And also at the same time, the Oscars themselves diminished in everyone’s minds is something worth paying attention to.”
It’s a sentiment that’s shared by many of their collaborators.
“I always hated Oscar night. Even as a kid, I hated it,” Estevez said. “And before you ask, it has nothing to do with me not being nominated! I just thought ‘My god, this is so boring.’ So it’s just perfect for me to do these Oscars every year with Tim and Gregg. It makes it special. I used to always need an excuse not to go to these Oscar parties, and now I have one.”
This Sunday’s edition is being billed as the “Final” Oscar Special — part of Tim and Gregg’s latest fake breakup storyline that nobody actually believes — but there’s every reason to believe that the “On Cinema” gang will be making us laugh on every Oscar night for years to come. The only possible hurdle would come if someone in the cast was nominated for an actual Oscar… but they might have a contingency plan for that too.
“I don’t think it will happen, but I don’t think I would ignore ‘On Cinema,’ that’s for sure,” Turkington said of his hypothetical future nomination. “It would be such an interesting opportunity to bring that world to the Oscars.”
“There’s a version where you’re live-streaming in the lobby of the Academy Awards as we’re waiting for you to come back to us,” Heidecker added with a laugh.
“The 13th Annual On Cinema Oscar Special” airs live on HEI Network on Sunday, March 15 beginning at 7 p.m. ET before streaming the following day.
English (US) ·