Out of the Ashes: Let the 2025 Oscars Be a Telethon for Wildfire Relief

Can the 2025 Oscar broadcast double as a telethon to raise money for Southern California’s wildfire disaster? 

A number of people have floated that idea recently, and I think it’s a good one for a number of reasons. The scale of the disaster is unprecedented, even by the standards of California wildfires. It strikes at the heart of the entertainment industry—a business which, despite being used as a cultural and political football, is one of the nation’s biggest exports and economic drivers. And, bizarrely, for the first time since the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created, the president of the United States is publicly suggesting that disaster recovery should be left to individual states.

This year’s Oscar telecast won’t be the first to happen during a crisis ridden period of history. Nor will it be the first in which presenters and winners say something about some political cause or another. But it will be the first to occur as the fate of the entertainment industry as a Southern California industry is itself in doubt. 

The wildfires are now the worst disaster in the history of the United States, with damages currently estimated at $250-$275 billion.  And the presidency is once again under the auspices of Donald Trump. Trump’s hatred of California (whose residents voted for the other candidate three times) is well known. He has amplified false claims that the Federal Emergency Management is biased against states that vote Republican (outgoing FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said the level of disinformation rose to a level “that I’ve never seen before”). During a Fox News appearance (in which, among other things, he falsely claimed that California firefighters had to fight without water) Trump said there would be a “whole big discussion very shortly” on FEMA and that he’d “rather see the states take care of their own problems.”

As Politico’s Michael Grunwald put it in a piece from five years ago titled “Trump’s War on California,” “California is now the world’s fifth-largest economy, up from eighth a decade ago. If it’s a socialist hellhole, it’s a socialist hellhole that somehow nurtured Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Uber, Netflix, Oracle and Intel, not to mention old-economy stalwarts like Chevron, Disney, Wells Fargo and the Hollywood film industry. California firms still attract more venture capital than the rest of the country combined, while its farms produce more fruits, nuts and wine than the rest of the country combined.” 

But the state is now suffering terribly, and the mutual loathing of Trump and Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom (whom Trump calls “Newscum”) has spilled over into Trump’s visit to the state, which is scheduled for tomorrow. At this point, Newsom doesn’t know if he’s to join the president tomorrow as he visits sites of major wildfire damage, and Trump, when asked about Newsom joining, said, “I haven’t even thought about it.” 

Admittedly a telethon would be a mainly symbolic gesture that likely wouldn’t make a dent in the amount of money needed to rebuild Southern California. A telethon for victims of Katrina only raised about $95 million twenty years ago, and a telethon after 9/11 drew about $150 million. But with the event’s baked-in, billion-plus global audience, it would almost certainly do better than any previous such fundraiser. 

Nevertheless, it’s important, for a variety of reasons—including common decency and the economic self-interest of the country, which derives staggering amounts of tax income from the entertainment industry that is distributed in every state—to put the issue in front of the Oscar viewership and give them an easy way to kick in a little bit, if they can.  Joining with a third-party administrator like the California Community Fund or American Red Cross could make the process efficient and provide a degree of transparency. 

And the telecast itself, which tends to be a scattershot potluck of political statements in other years, has a rare chance to get everyone on the same page and devote time to a serious subject, disaster relief, and effectively communicating its importance, perhaps by doing brief segments showing how it has affected what are called “below-the-line” industry workers, such as crew-people, craft service workers, and those working in behind-the-scenes capacities such as electrical, set building, media management, makeup and hair, and transportation. (Actress Jean Smart suggested that any media company that makes money from televising the Oscars should donate all of it to disaster relief; I think that’s a good idea, too.)

A lot of regular working people lost their homes, too, not just executives and movie stars. Even a little help would make a difference, and would send the message that in times like this, Americans are supposed to stick together—and if they can’t, maybe movie lovers in other parts of the world can step in and show us how it’s done.