MTV honors 'Transformers'
Monday June 02nd 2008
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. (AP) — "Transformers" is the winner of best movie at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards.
Last summer's robots-in-disguise blockbuster took the top honor Sunday night. Megan Fox helped accept the award.
The ceremony was held at the Gibson Amphitheatre, only a couple of hundred yards uphill from the disastrous fire that ripped through the adjacent Universal Studios lot earlier in the day in Universal City, Calif.
Online voters chose winners for categories such as best kiss, best villain and best summer movie so far. Johnny Depp won twice, and got the biggest ovations of the night while shyly accepting best comedic performance and best villain awards.
Tom Cruise presented Adam Sandler with the Generation Award, the show's highest honor.
There was smoke — but no mention of fire — at the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night.
Presenters Seth Rogan and James Franco, stars of the upcoming stoner comedy "Pineapple Express," pretended to smoke marijuana — were they really pretending? — before presenting the new category of best summer movie so far. But there was no mention of a disastrous fire that ripped through the adjacent Universal Studios lot earlier in the day.
"Kids, don't really smoke fake weed like this," Rogan told the crowd at the Gibson Amphitheatre, with a degree of sarcasm to suggest that the only fake thing was the idea that it was fake.
As they pulled out the "contraband," the cameras pulled away to a wide angle, staying that way until Rogan and Franco had lit up their "fake fatty joint" and left the stage. The awkward moment made some in the audience laugh, but left Robert Downey Jr. — who accepted the award on behalf of "Iron Man" — with a puzzled look.
The MTV Movie Awards format allowed viewers to vote online for categories such as best kiss and best villain. Presenters were threatened to keep their speeches short by a man resembling Javier Bardem's character from "No Country for Old Men" — complete with the bob hairdo and pneumatic cattle gun.
Best female performance winner Ellen Paige from "Juno" escaped unscathed, but best fight winners Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet were ushered off stage by the menacing lookalike.
Host Mike Myers kicked off the live ceremony with a dance-off with singer Chris Brown. Toward the middle of the show, he was joined by Dana Carvey for a reprisal of their early '90s TV and movie characters Wayne and Garth of "Wayne's World."
Best comedic performance went to Johnny Depp, who got the biggest screams of the night took the stage to accept it.
"I'm not a very funny person," the "Sweeney Todd" star said.
"That's very sweet."
During the ceremony, Adam Sandler received the Generation Award, the show's highest honor. After an introduction by Tom Cruise, Sandler took the stage to perform "Nobody Does it Better," including a guitar solo on his gold Gibson Les Paul.
Earlier, Coldplay performed its new single, and the Pussycat Dolls were also scheduled to perform.
Nominees for best movie included "Juno," "Transformers," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "I Am Legend," "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" and "Superbad," which led the pack this year with five nominations.
Smoke from the Universal Studios fire, which broke out early Sunday and damaged several sets only a couple of hundred yards downhill from the awards show venue, was still visible from backstage.