Entertainment, Music - Army Times

Will Silverman be magic for MTV awards?

In an attempt to boost viewership for its 2007 MTV “Movie Awards” (Sunday, 8 p.m. ET/PT), the network is presenting the program live for the first time. And it has a raunchy host: stand-up comic Sarah Silverman, who shocked attendees at February’s Independent Spirit Awards when she simulated sex with a block of cheese.

Does live broadcast plus Silverman equal danger?

“The truth is, I’ll probably be swearing a lot,” Silverman says, acknowledging that she will have to tone her act down. “But I don’t think it will be any less funny. It will be fun to flirt with the conventions of live television.

”There’s no way it’s going to go totally smoothly, and I know, as a viewer, I’m always watching for the evidence of the ‘live-ness.’ “

The man responsible for taking the show live and hiring Silverman is producer Mark Burnett (“Survivor,” “The Apprentice”). “The person responsible for the seven-second delay is the person with the hardest job,” he kids.

Burnett is new to the show, too, part of an effort to breathe life into the event, which has seen its ratings slump from a peak of 7 million viewers in 2002 to last year’s 3.2 million, according to Nielsen.

“It’s a fun night,” Burnett says. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the show. I don’t have a magic wand. All I’m doing differently is going live and involving the public at home more.”

That includes fan-generated movie spoofs and a giant “Web wall” showcasing viewers who will drop in from their personal webcams.

Another highlight: Silverman shot a sequence in which she visits different movie scenes searching for presenters.

“There’s always something where you see the host in different movies, and this is a different spin on it,” she says. “I love watching those every year.”

Silverman says she’s not one to get star-struck — even with British singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse performing and such stars as Cameron Diaz, Bruce Willis and John Travolta gathering under the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City.

She does concede that last month, while she was working on her “Sarah Silverman Program” (which returns to Comedy Central this fall), she found herself obsessed with a special visitor to the studio lot.

“Angelina Jolie was shooting a commercial for Japan right next door to us,” Silverman says. “And we all decided to write outside that day. She came over and said hi and said she watches the show. She’s so strikingly beautiful.

“None of us could work the rest of the day until we knew she was gone. It was so pathetic.”

Contributing: Gary Levin

AP-NY-06-01-07 1157EDT