JoBlo.com covers the 2008 MTV Movie Awards!

June 1^st, 2008 was not just
another day. It was the day that JoBlo.com would cover the 2008 MTV
Movie Awards for the very first time. This was a big friggin’ deal
and frankly, I was a little nervous. But I had a good nights sleep,
and everything seemed full of goodness… until I turned on the television.
It was then that I learned of the massive fire that left parts of the
Universal Studio backlot utterly destroyed. King Kong, New York Street
and Courthouse Square are now gone and all this was just below the Gibson
Amphitheatre where the ceremony was about to take place. Hell, I could
see this monstrous cloud of smoke from outside my window… I only live a
few miles away. But the question was, will there still be a awards
show with this massive fire still causing trouble? And after a couple
of phone calls, I found that you can’t kill The Metal, er, golden popcorn.

So once my faithful compadre and
cameraman Rusty Eltringham arrived, we ventured over to the where the smoke
rose. Yes folks, this was a humongous fire and it had the smell of
burnt plastic, so we both had visions of dealing with smoke and ash.
But surprisingly, the wind was blowing the debris away from the
amphitheatre. And once there, we walked along what is known as
Citiwalk, searching for fans or anything else of interest we could find.
At the gated entrance to the theme park, we found three nice young women who
shared with us the signs they made to show love to Mr. Robert Pattinson from
the upcoming TWILIGHT. The words, “bite me”, were expressed.

We asked another couple of girls who seemed to be dressed up for the event
and we offered them a chance to talk to JoBlo.com… they had no interest.
Oh well… I will hopefully be talking to the girl that I really wanted to
speak with soon enough… Liv Tyler. I’d never met her before, but I
really wanted to because I find her to be just utterly beautiful.

After all that fun we had with a few
perfect strangers, it was check in time. We followed a group down to
the press tent and found that we were only going to be handling arrivals.
And here Rusty and I are, we are wandering with someone trying to figure out
where we were supposed to wait. We followed her to the “gold
carpet” and ended up just chillin’ there. It seemed we were much
too early. But it was a great opportunity to check out what the after
party would look like. And since we weren’t invited to that… what
better way to check out the coolness of a Seventies type theme, with a few
bright red couches that were placed in the middle of about four to six gold
chairs. They would soon be used for people getting hammered on free
booze. But along with all the searching, I found a little surprise.
We were given a ticket to watch the show. Hey! Not bad right?
I’d never seen a live awards ceremony, so I was kind of stoked. I
even got to see my favorite tour guide Perry Smith heading off to work.
The “spilled kool-aid joke“ in regards to JAWS is really funny……
trust me on that one.

While we were waiting, the whole place
was absolutely insane. There were dozens of people putting up lights,
setting cameras, doing mock interviews to check for sound and everything
that could go wrong. The two of us were hanging out at the bleachers
where they would load contest winners who won a free slice of the Hollywood
pie… yes folks, the once in a lifetime chance to sit and watch the stars
arrive… from really close up. And it ends up, there were a few
tables that were placed across from this place of fan worshipping. On
one of those tables would be the name JoBlo. It is there that we would
be setting up our equipment and waiting for the parade of actors and
actresses, and a whole lot of reality TV show stars would honor us with
their presence. Although seriously… I had not heard of almost 99% of
these reality “celebrities”. So you won’t find their interview
here.

As the parade of talent arrived, an old
friend of JoBlo came by. It was Jon Voight who is always good to talk
to. A few others gave us some quality talk time including, Christa
Campbell, Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson, just to name a few. Even
TRANSFORMERS king himself, Michael Bay stopped to talk with us. He
didn’t seem to be all over the place to talk to press, but who knows,
maybe he is familiar with the site because he decided to say hello. We
saw a ton more, but we also found that many of the bigger names seemed to be
a bit tired of the ole’ gold carpet by the time they got to our section.
And others may just not have wanted to talk…… you know, like Lindsey
Lohan.

But we saw a few of them and then
something miraculous happened. FANBOY WARNING! One of those who
was running late, and quickly rushed by us was the lovely Liv Tyler. I
called out to her, but she kept walking as all those around me called her
name too. I was then desperate to connect as her back was turned to me
and she was walking away. Thinking fast, I shouted out how much I
loved her in THE STRANGERS (which I did)… she turned to me and thanked me,
all the while, reaching to take my hand. And soon after that, I got a
hug from Christa Campbell. END FAN BOY WARNING.

After all the gold carpet fun, I went
in to enjoy the actual award ceremony. At this point, I have to
thank MTV for giving us a wonderful opportunity and also for a pretty good
seat for the show itself. I’m sure most of you watched as
“Wayne’s World” reunited host Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey (funny
stuff).

Also funny: Tom Cruise made a mistake or two
in his delivery of the “Generations” award to Adam Sandler.

Or you would’ve caught a pretty solid
performance from Coldplay and a less than solid performance from the
Pussycat Dolls… Spice Girls with less clothes, and a pretty silly song,
yet they are hot so there you go.

But watching a live awards show is an
interesting thing. Every commercial break there was a gentleman whom I
did not see until the very end of the show throwing T-shirts at people.
He was our applause guide as he let us know when the break was over and the
adoration should begin. He also asked us to give Coldplay a standing
ovation… which I did. As people got up and go to the bathroom during
the “commercial break”, it was fun to see those in the audience scamper
around as he told them to please get to their seats or the cameramen will
run them down.

But my favorite part of the entire
awards show… it was short. With one musical act (and a burlesque
performance from the Dolls), they got the presenters out and they read the
teleprompter to make the jokes and announce the winners. Aside from
being short, I enjoyed seeing how each of the talent dealt with the
teleprompter. It was fun watching Steve Carrell, Dwayne “The Rock”
Johnson and Anne Hathaway go way off the teleprompter as Steve had a bit of
word play with some guy in the audience.

It was also somehow cool to hear Megan
Fox use “f*ck” in her moment on stage, and for some reason, it made her
even hotter.

But the awards were quick and to
the point, with Seth Rogen and James Franco diverting a bit and sharing a
(fake?) joint. I thought it was quite funny how the camera pulled
way back on Seth and James as they were having their fun. No close ups
for those getting high (though you can watch the uncensored footage here).

After it was all done, I was lost in a sea of
people, trying to get out. But considering how tiring red carpets can
be, I was pleasantly surprised to see MTV pull this one off as well as they
did. And most importantly, I got to shake Liv Tyler’s hand. I
even got to see the great, Mr. Johnny Depp accept a couple of awards only a
few feet away.

It was a terrific day that had finally come
to an end. So with all that, what did you think of the awards?
Did your favorites win? Or were your favorites even nominated?
Strike back below!

All photos courtesy WireImage and MTV