MTV Movie Awards: The Weirdest, Craziest Moments in the Show’s History
MTV is known for pushing the boundaries of television, first with music videos and later with reality television. In 1992, the network began airing the MTV Movie Awards which eventually changed into The MTV Movie & TV Awards. Producers and executives at MTV decide the nominees and the general public votes for their favorites. The winners receive the coveted “golden popcorn” and the show is always a little bit wilder than other award shows.
The nominees for this year’s event (hosted by Drew Barrymore on May 7, 2023) have just been announced. Voting is now open for iconic categories such as Best Kiss, Best Reality On-Screen Team, and Best Villian. The nominees for Best Movie include Elvis, Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Nope, Smile, Scream VI, and Top Gun: Maverick. In honor of this wacky award show, let’s look back at some of the craziest moments that have happened over the last 22 years.
Craziest MTV Movie Award moments
During the very first MTV Movie Awards, Star Trek actor William Shatner sang and performed spoken word of some of the lyrics of the Best Song from a Movie category. Shatner reciting “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd is truly… something.
A year later, several of The Brady Bunch cast members reunited to reenact the sexy Basic Instinct scene with wholesome Florence Henderson playing Sharon Stone‘s part. It feels more than a little odd to see these actors in completely different roles. Henderson recited in the scene, “I liked having sex with him. He gave me a lot of pleasure … and a 30 percent discount on rump roast.”
In 1999, Jim Carrey fooled audiences and MTV producers when he appeared onstage to accept the Best Male Performance MTV Movie Award for The Truman Show in a long-haired wig and bushy beard and played a hippie character. He joked, “I got a little bone to pick with the programming department. I like rap music as much as a nice, frightened Caucasian … But would it kill you every once in a while to play a little Foghat?” Carrey reportedly stayed in character from the red carpet until the end of the night. Why? No one really knows…
After MTV partied like it was 1999, 2000 soon came around and had even more antics. Ben Stiller perfected his Tom Cruise impersonation and became Tom Crooze, his movie stunt double. Both Stiller and Cruise laugh creepily towards the end of the bit and Stiller once admitted that it was real laughter due to the “absurdity of the moment.”
In 2003, heartthrobs Justin Timberlake and Seann William Scott co-hosted the awards show and Scott showed up in a superhero costume, much to his dismay that his co-star didn’t bother to dress up too. So, he got down to his underwear, revealing a set with Timberlake’s face on them. Talk about awkward!
Later on, in 2007, funny guys Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen accepted the award for Best Kiss. Traditionally the stars will re-create the kiss on stage and they did not disappoint. The two started making out after a lover’s quarrel and truly made history with their silly antics.
After the success of Tropic Thunder and the surprising character Les Grossman played by Tom Cruise, he appeared as the character at the 2010 awards to try to sell Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner on a new film called Bad-Ass Cops. It doesn’t exactly go well.
What is your favorite wacky clip?
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