On Sunday, March 27th, the 94th Academy Awards ceremony was held in Hollywood at the Dolby Theatre. Various awards, such as best picture, best actress, and best actor, were announced throughout the night along with a few other interesting events.
The heart-warming movie Coda, took home best picture. Coda, which tells the story of a hard-of-hearing family navigating financial and personal tension, was the first film distributed by a streaming service (Apple TV) to win best picture. It was an unexpected win for the night and a precedent that made history. Even better, Troy Katsur won best supporting actor for Coda which makes him the first deaf man to earn an acting Oscar. He had been acting in multiple low-budget deaf productions, so his role in Coda and his win made it a very exciting experience.
Sadly, the academy and ABC ended up cutting eight categories — mostly less popular ones: best original score, film editing, production design, makeup and hairstyling, sound, documentary short subject, live action short film and animated short film — from the live show. They instead wedged edited footage into the show to increase views, yet this made the show flow less smoothly.
The largely unspoken subject of the night was, undoubtedly, the war in Ukraine, which wasn’t mentioned until almost halfway through the show when they requested a moment of silence. Many individuals also acknowledged the war by wearing a blue ribbon to the award ceremony in support of Ukraine.
During the show, an unexpected and unprecedented altercation between Chris Rock and Will Smith also occurred. Chris Rock made a joke regarding Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head which was not found to be amusing by Will Smith.
When Chris made the joke, Jade rolled her eyes as she sat next to Smith and seemed to be very unamused herself. Jada has openly expressed to the public regarding her struggle with alopecia, a disorder that leads to hair loss and has had a significant effect on her.
Will Smith then walked toward Chris Rock on stage and appeared to strike him in the face. He also told Chris to “keep [his] wife’s name out of [his] f***ing mouth” which reiterated Will’s evident frustrations.
The altercation quickly spread on the internet as it is now trending on Twitter and even being widely talked about on social media outlets and the news. Further details regarding if any steps from the Academy, Rock, or Smith will be taken following the incident are not clear yet.
Despite the chaos and ups and downs of the event, the 2022 Academy Awards were very eventful and involved some legendary, history-making moments that will never be forgotten.
This blog post is part of the CIMA Law Group blog. If you are located in Arizona and are seeking legal services, CIMA Law Group specializes in Immigration Law, Criminal Defense, Personal Injury, and Government Relations.
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