Neil Patrick Harris is awards-show host with the most

TV or not TV by Scott Pierce

Published: June 12, 2011 10:28 pm
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Can Neil Patrick Harris just host all the awards shows? Forever?

It wasn't any more surprising than "The Book of Mormon" winning the Tony as Best Musical on Sunday night, but Harris was great as the host. Fantastic.

He's funny, charming, talented and cool under pressure. His opening number about how Broadway is "not just for gays anymore" was an instant classic.

Even he couldn't make every moment of the show sparkle — having the nominated actors talk about their roles made for some very bad TV — but Harris made the show worth watching all by himself.

Here are just a few of his best lines:

"Backstage it's mental. I saw the casts of 'Sister Act' and 'Book of Mormon' get in a fistfight. I was like, 'Oh, my Gods.'""Brooke Shields! You're super hot! You made me think I was straight for, like, 23 years!""Al Pacino! You're way to famous to participate in this bit.""You should see backstage. Backstage is madness. I just had to stop Daniel Radcliffe from poking out the War Horse's eyes."

(Think "Equus.")

And Harris had a slew of good "Spider-man" jokes, topped by this one:"I sent Bono a congratulatory cable, but it snapped."When are they going to start begging this guy to host the Oscars?

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