Star Wars legend Carrie Fisher wrote a banned Oscars sketch

At the 74th Academy Awards, held to honor the films of 2001, Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” It was nominated for a whopping 13 awards, including Best Picture. It ultimately won four Academy Awards, indicating that fantasy films were now considered prestige films; Traditionally, the Oscars have gravitated toward biopics, histories and dramas of a personal nature. For the purposes of this article, I’ll remind readers that “Fellowship” lost its award for Best Original Song to “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc. The song “Fellowship” was a peaceful, dream-like folk lullaby called “May It Be” written by Nikki Ryan, Roma Ryan, and popular rock singer Enya.

Whoopi Goldberg hosted the televised Academy Awards that year, and she brought just the right balance of reverence and irreverence to the evening. The show was directed by Louis J. Horowitz and featured 18 credited writers, all with impressive pedigrees. The lead writer was Bruce Vilanch, who wrote many of the Oscars, TV specials, comedy sketches, and lord knows what else. Also on the writing list were Wanda Sykes, Rita Rudner, James Cameron, Cameron Crowe, Buck Henry, David Mamet, and others.

For those who are not familiar with her awards show career, Carrie Fisher has also contributed to the Academy Awards several times, most notably on the 69th, 74th and 79th TV shows. In the 69th show, she appeared on stage to take admonition from her mother, Debbie Reynolds, for writing “bullshit” for the show.

Fisher, always a sarcastic soul, knew that Enya had been nominated for an Oscar that year, and decided to write a joke at the songwriter’s expense. Bruce Vilanch talked about the Fisher Enya gag 2017 interview with People magazine. The gag seemed to go over well with everyone…almost.