Let’s Watch the 1996 MTV Movie Awards!

Last week, I wrote about the 30th anniversary of Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket, a story that included a reference to Anderson winning the Best New Filmmaker Award at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards. I watched the Anderson segment while writing the piece, then had to fight the urge to watch the entire show. After finishing the piece, I lost that fight. A 30-year-old awards program whose special guests include Garry Shandling, Godzilla, and a performance by Fugees featuring Roberta Flack? I’m not passing that up.

The 1996 MTV Movie Awards aired on June 8, 1996 and were hosted by Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo, which was pretty much the hippest pairing you could get to host an MTV awards show at the time. Garofalo had recently starred in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, a hit that threatened to catapult her from supporting roles to full-on movie star status without watering down her acerbic charm (though Garofalo would later express some reservations about the film). Stiller had appeared in David O. Russell’s acclaimed Flirting with Disaster alongside Patricia Arquette and, not coincidentally, directed the soon-to-be-released The Cable Guy. Together they were a kind of Burns and Allen for a generation that used The Brady Bunch references and quotes from old commercials as shorthand.

Voted on by MTV viewers from nominees chosen by the show’s producers, The MTV Movie Awards, later the MTV Movie & TV Awards, traditionally aired early in the summer blockbuster season, thus allowing for maximum synergy with upcoming releases. (I say “traditionally” in part because the show hasn’t aired since 2022. I don’t think it’s officially defunct, but nothing suggests it’s coming back anytime soon, either.) Hence the many, many references to Twister, Mission: Impossible and other 1996 blockbusters in a show nominally designed to award films from the previous year.

You’ll find the full program* embedded at the top of this piece, complete with vintage commercials. The picture quality is, well, not great. But it’s watchable. I’ve included some time-coded highlights below and better clips when possible.

(* At least I think it’s the full program. Wikipedia lists Brad Pitt as winning the Most Desirable Male trophy but if that award aired, it’s not included.)

:10 The show kicks off with a parody of Twister (which had kicked off the summer blockbuster season a few weeks earlier) featuring Stiller, Garofalo, and a character named “Dusty” trucking through footage from the film. (Mr. Show director Troy Miller directed the show’s film segments and that’s Mr. Show regular John Ennis as Dusty.) It’s kind of amusing, in a Billy Crystal-steps–into-the-movies-at-the-Oscars sort of way. Unexpectedly, the best moment involves Jay Leno, who drives alongside Stiller and Garofalo claiming he plans to host the awards. 

3:25 The opening credits pay homage to Mission: Impossible (released May 22). It’s one of many points where Stiller’s career intersects with Cruise’s. Stiller played Cruise in his breakout comedy short, a The Color of Money parody called, “The Hustler of Money” (featuring John Mahoney in the Paul Newman role), sent him up on The Ben Stiller Show, and would later memorably cast Cruise as studio exec Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. That film appeared a year after the announcement of Hardy Men, a Hardy Boys-but-they’re-adults comedy in which Cruise would have starred alongside Stiller, had it ever been made. The MTV Movie Awards would also play host to a funny Cruise/Stiller collaboration in 2000, an extended bit in which Stiller played “Tom Crooze,” Cruise’s stunt double.

4:40 The show proper begins with Stiller and Garofalo emerging from a giant slot machine (a nod to Leaving Las Vegas?) via Mission: Impossible-inspired harnesses. “Tonight,” Stiller tells the audience, “we really do have an impossible mission: to have fun,” which he then follows with a sarcastic laugh. Then he launches into a long speech praising Tom Cruise while Garofalo provides sarcastic commentary about Stiller’s Cruise obsession via voiceover. The bit climaxes with Jon Voight—who appears to be three feet taller than both Stiller and Garofalo—emerging to take Stiller backstage where he can call Cruise. It’s all pretty funny and extremely Gen X. Stiller and Garofalo aren’t hosting an awards show. That would be lame. They’re “hosting” an “awards show,” an approach that allows them to escape with their cool intact.

8:09 Mostly. Announcing the presenters of the first award still requires Garofalo to say “one plays a rappin’ genie in the film Kazaam and the other plays Juliet in the new film version of Romeo and Juliet.” Shaquille O’Neal and Claire Danes then give the “Most Desirable Female” award to Alicia Silverstone, who beats out Sandra Bullock, Demi Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nicole Kidman and seems a little embarrassed by the honor.