Chalk it up to the flap over the recent excesses of live television. Hollywood was on its best behavior Sunday night, not even testing the five-minute delay during the Oscar telecast.
Not rowdy, downright respectful. In several ways, it was throwback to years past, a night of honoring Hollywood stalwarts and respecting tradition.
From the eloquence of Blake Edwards, who pretended to make a slapstick entrance, to the clips honoring Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope (an 18-time Oscar host), the evening paid tribute to greats of old.
In many ways, the 76th annual Academy Awards was a model of decorum.
Even the spare presentations of the original songs contributed to the making it a very grownup night for the film industry.
As for host Billy Crystal, "master and commander" of Hollywood for the night, he killed even before the medley.
At the start of the telecast, Crystal hailed the film nominees in phony film trailers that saw him digitally interjected into each movie. Naked in a three-way scream with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in "Something's Gotta Give," and suggesting a Massachusetts wedding to Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation," he didn't miss a note.
Next Crystal nailed the song parodies, even while continually clearing his throat. (To the tune of "Ol' Man River," he sang "Mystic River," "as dark and murky as Mom's chopped liver. ...")
Crystal may not be a fresh, radical, envelope-pushing host. Some of his shtick has a Borscht Belt ring to it. But he gets the envelope-opening job done with smart humor that plays well within the industry as well as to the global millions.
With every line, he skewered a pop-culture trend, event or person of the moment. As usual, Crystal made watching the Oscars a short-course in American pop culture circa 2004. In his traditional overblown production-number satire and in bits throughout the evening, he managed digs at DVD pirating, the Disney-Michael Eisner showdown, the second Bush war in Iraq, Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent, questions surrounding President Bush's Texas National Guard duty, Strom Thurmond's black love child, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and the fractionalized ethnicities of Los Angeles.
Crystal left to Robin Williams the first reference to Janet Jackson's exposed breast and the resulting five-minute broadcast delay, which ABC adopted in order to give the censors time to avert another live gaffe, indecent or otherwise. You can bet movie fans at the Federal Communications Commission were watching to see how television's next mega-event presented America to the world.
Crystal carried a distinctly patriotic thread through the proceedings, trashing Saddam Hussein, sending a "big hello" to servicemen and women posted around the world, and stomping on Michael Moore's 2003 anti-war speech in digitally enhanced animation. Perhaps this was a way of signaling that famously left-leaning Hollywood would be buttoned-down in this election year.
Of course, Crystal had his moment, translating what was going through the stars' heads. When the camera shot to a dignified-looking Julie Andrews, he observed:
"God this sunburst nipple broach is killing me!"
As producer Joe Roth promised, the performances of the original-song nominees were uncluttered by kicking choruses or break-dancers. Clustered about 70 minutes into the production, the novel treatment of the musical works was appropriate, even if it perhaps drove the under-18 demographic screaming from the television set.
The award show's set - a matrix-like invention with a vanishing horizon in the far distance - was less distracting than in some years.
And the quick replays of "sounds of Oscar" highlights that served as bumpers before commercials were a nice addition in a generally clean, subdued production.
Joanne Ostrow's column appears Sunday in Arts & Entertainment as well as Mondays and Thursdays in The Scene section.
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