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.

11:06 Stiller returns to introduce a clip from one of the Best Movie nominees: Braveheart. Except the clip is from Braveheart starring Bob Newhart and features a painted Newhart atop a horse delivering a halting version of William Wallace’s climactic speech to a crowd that includes several cast members from The Bob Newhart Show. It’s a lot of fun.

13:39 As we head into the first commercial break, we learn that the show is sponsored by, among others, Blockbuster Video and 1-800-COLLECT. Is this show cursed? (That this revelation is followed by an MTV promo starring Siegfried & Roy does little to shake off this feeling.)

18:15 Samantha Mathis and Anthony Keidis give out the Best Fight prize after Mathis slaps Keidis, who then mugs as he pretends to walk around in a daze. Theirs is obviously not the best fight. That award goes to Adam Sandler tussling with Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore, who claim the prize together. Then Whitney Houston performs “Why Does it Hurt So Bad” from Waiting to Exhale, providing a heretofore irony-heavy night with an achingly sincere, and now quite sad, moment.

31:04 Stiller and Garofalo star in a clever fake documentary short about foley artists and the lengths they go to to find just the right sound that plays like a lost segment from The Ben Stiller Show. Then a seemingly unenthused Vanessa Williams and Laurence Fishburne (soon to appear in, respectively, the sort-of-remembered Eraser and the completely forgotten Fled) present the award for Best On-Screen Duo. The prize goes to David Spade and Chris Farley, whose shambolic acceptance speech, like Houston’s performance, now looks poignant in ways it could not have seemed in 1996.

37:17 Speaking of time changing the way things look, Kevin Spacey gets the Best Villain trophy, which he claims from Gabriel Byrne and Natalie Portman after taking the stage wearing sunglasses and a Kangol cap. After the commercial break, Kiss appears in full make-up to hand out the award for Best Kiss. Why Kiss (apart from the name)? 1996 marked the end of the band’s “unmasked” era as the original line-up reunited for a high-profile tour and donned the costumes and greasepaint that helped make them ’70s stars. Generational nostalgia had made Kiss hip again. Or, perhaps more accurately, “hip.” (It was a confusing time. Kids, ask your parents if you can borrow their Ultra-Lounge compilation CDs and If I Were a Carpenter tribute album to better understand the cultural climate of the mid-’90s.) The big winners: Natasha Henstridge and Anthony Guidera for their fatal kiss in Species.

47:06 It’s time for another movie parody, this time Clueless as performed by the cast of The Golden Girls (minus Bea Arthur). It’s good, too! Estelle Getty plays Cher. (Getty: “A C for a class on World War II history? Christ, I lived through the damn thing!”) In the crowd, Silverstone seems to enjoy the homage. Next, Garbage plays “Only Happy When It Rains.” The song has no movie connection, but if you could have Garbage perform on your show in 1996, you just did. There might even have been a law requiring it.

57:56 As the show returns from a break, Ben Stiller channels Bruce Springsteen for another fake doc, this one about an extremely Springsteen-esque film composer who, as it would happen, is working on a song for The Cable Guy. Stiller had parodied Springsteen successfully before and would parody him again in the future. It’s a good impression, but this isn’t the strongest showcase, despite featuring “Springsteen” performing a song he wrote for Weekend at Bernies.

1:01:17 Lela Rochon emerges to hand out the Best Song prize, which goes to Brandy for “Sittin’ Up in My Room,” from Waiting to Exhale. Brandy keeps it brief, giving way to Patrick Stewart, who deadpans about the “quiet strength” and “ability to cut to the core of what a scene was about” of that year’s Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, Godzilla. (Godzilla does not accept the award in person.)

1:13:34 To present the year’s Breakthrough Performance award, David Duchovny is joined by Penelope Ann Miller after a gag in which she’s seen making out with Jon Lovitz on a lip-shaped couch. (A previous moment featured Chris Farley sitting on Garofalo’s lap, making SNL cast members interacting randily with others something of a running gag.) George Clooney wins for From Dusk Till Dawn. Someone from ER starring in movies? It won’t last. 

1:17:14 Clooney’s self-deprecating pre-taped acceptance speech gives way to the third film parody, a version of Seven starring William Shatner, who plays the Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Kevin Spacey parts as, respectively, Captain Kirk, T.J. Hooker, and Willam Shatner, Host of Rescue 911. It’s better in theory than reality. Then Fugees, accompanied by Roberta Flack, perform “Killing Me Softly.” Why? See above, re: Garbage. (It’s a pretty great performance.)

1:28:05 It’s time for the Best Action Sequence award, as presented by Jamie Lee Curtis. Braveheart bests Die Hard with a Vengeance, Broken Arrow, and Bad Boys. The award is accepted by, well, nobody, so Curtis accepts Mel Gibson’s behalf adding, “I’ve kissed him. He’s lovely.” (Once again, time has a way of changing the way we look at things, doesn’t it?)

1:31:15 The “wild and wonderful Wes Anderson” takes the stage after a long selection of clips from Bottle Rocket, a film that virtually no one had seen at this point. Anderson then charms the crowd with a story about James Caan explaining the title of Anderson’s own movie to him: “This movie’s about these guys who aim low, but they get there.” 

1:38:40 Content Warning: Budweiser Frogs

1:39:57 Garofalo introduces her Larry Sanders Show co-star Garry Shandling, who’s there to present the Best Sandwich in a Movie award to the “Ham and Cheese and Sliced Bread” from Smoke. The award gets a laugh, but not as big a laugh as Shandling’s “Aren’t Whoopi and Billy funny tonight?” ad-lib and a later joke about being nervous because “I had sex with the turkey club when it auditioned for The Larry Sanders Show.” (Faye Dunaway accepts the award for some reason.)

1:42:44 Jon Lovitz opens a copy of Playboy featuring Jenny McCarthy while McCarthy stands next to him to present the Best Female Performance to Alicia Silverstone (a double honoree). “Someone call a lumberjack,” McCarthy says after looking at Lovitz’s crotch. “We’ve got wood!” This is all as awful as it sounds.

1:46:06 Ben Stiller introduces “personal friend” Adam Sandler, who performs the song “Mel Gibson” with a full band. It’s a big night for the absent, but apparently widely beloved, Braveheart star.

1:54:35 At least everyone still loves Ellen DeGeneres, presenter of the Best Male Performance prize, right? Will the winner be Mel Gibson again? No, it’s Jim Carrey for Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Carrey accepts via a pre-taped segment in which he does some kind of funny voice then makes bird noises.

1:58:30 We’re nearing the end of the night, so that means it’s time for Whoopi Goldberg (“the star of Eddie”) to slide out of the slot machine and hand out the award for Best Movie. The nominees: Apollo 13, Braveheart, Clueless, Seven, and Dangerous Minds. And the winner is…

…Seven. David Fincher delivers a short speech about how others dismissed Seven as “just an MTV movie” then adds “and tonight I just want to say ‘What’s the problem with that?’”

2:02:04 Stiller and Garofalo end the night thanking all the acts that “may be edited out in post-production,” acts like REO Speedwagon, Styx, Wayland Flowers and Madam, and Shari Lewis and Lambchop. References: Gen Xers love ’em! And we’re done. Oh wait, looks like one of the show’s “consultants” was Louis C.K. OK, now we’re done.