It’s time once again for the Oscars, and with it the glitz, the glamour, and the NEW WORLD ORDER THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT, MAN!
Hollywood’s self-congratulating awards extravaganza isn’t immune to the wild speculation and unfettered inference of Internet sleuths.
Some of these theories have backing evidence, some are just cruel persistent rumors, others are… less than rational?
But enjoy reading up on all the curses, secrets, and lies — that may or may not be true with the wildest Oscar conspiracy theories (below)!
The Illuminati
Is there an Internet rule where if something gets famous enough there’s a theory it’s rune by the Illuminati?
For those who don’t have a paranoid (or maybe a little too well-informed) uncle, the Illuminati are the hypothetical group of obscenely wealthy and powerful people who secretly run the world. While we know for sure the great majority of the world’s wealth resides in the hands of a morally outrageous percentage of the population, this is different. The Illuminati are said to control events with a sinister, secret agenda.
Despite their obsession with remaining clandestine, the group can’t help but brand everything they touch with Egyptian imagery — leading to theories involving everything from the Washington Monument to the pictures on our money.
In 2013, the Academy Awards logo was rebranded — replacing the classic globe with what theorists say is a golden pyramid…
Of course, we’ve also heard the statue itself referred to as a golden representation of the god Ptah, and that’s not true.
The statue purposely doesn’t have any features at all so it can represent anyone who wins — like most trophies. As far as the body shape goes, it’s modeled not after an ancient god but a modern one — Mexican model/actor/director/hunk Emilio “El Indio” Fernández.
Cuba Badding
This one is real… for some at least…
The theory goes, while winning the most prestigious award in film is an ultimate goal for so many artists, it can also be the beginning of the end of their careers. Actors specifically are said to be cursed to terrible career and even personal downfalls after getting their statues.
Take the poster boy for this theory, Cuba Gooding Jr. He was a popular actor with a celebrated body of work when he won Best Supporting Actor for 1996’s Jerry Maguire.
It was only after this magical moment that it all fell apart.
He followed up his winning performance with forgettable whiffs like Instinct (with fellow winner Anthony Hopkins) and Men of Honor (with fellow winner Robert De Niro). Then came Michael Bay‘s high budget misfire Pearl Harbor… and then, just five years after collecting that award, the infamously abominable Snow Dogs.
https://giphy.com/gifs/snow-dogs-A3gcP4hMbyqju
The next year he made a transparent attempt to get another statue with Radio, and let’s just say we can’t say anything about that role that Tropic Thunder didn’t already say better… in a decidedly more vulgar way than we could get away with.
The coming years would see Cuba mostly fade into obscurity until recently when he has become more famous for the charges of sexual harassment against him.
That story is just one of many. Halle Berry went from Monster’s Ball to Catwoman. Mira Sorvino went from Mighty Aphrodite to Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion. Jared Leto went from Dallas Buyers Club to Suicide Squad.
Is winning an Oscar like winning the lottery? Does it ruin your career and life??
Is there really a curse? If so, there are plenty of people who get out unscathed. De Niro won Best Supporting Actor in 1975 and went on to win Best Actor a few years later. Denzel Washington won for Glory then went on to be nominated several times over the next decade in all sorts of projects — eventually winning for Training Day. And of course Tom Hanks followed up his Oscar win with NOTHING BUT MORE OSCAR WINS.
So if there is a curse, it’s as random as the rest of life’s luck…
The Love Curse
Similar to the previous theory, this specific curse says if you’re a woman who wins an Oscar, it ruins your love life.
Again, there are multiple examples here. Take for instance Sandra Bullock, who brought along husband Jesse James as her date throughout the 2010 award season before eventually taking home the top prize for her work in The Blind Side.
Then not even a month later it was revealed Jesse cheated on Sandy B — not just that, the source of the story was the other woman herself — who turned out to be a genuine Nazi sympathizer!
Oof. Obviously this led to the couple’s split.
Sadly, Sandy’s is just one story of many…
In 2009 Kate Winslet won for The Reader, then she got divorced. Bette Davis won an Oscar in 1938 for Jezebel and got a divorce that same year. Reese Witherspoon won in 2006 for Walk The Line — she and Ryan Phillippe announced their divorce just seven months later.
So obviously there is evidence for a curse… however, there’s another explanation here. A lot of men are trash, a lot of relationships end, and eventually they’re going to overlap with career success — especially for women because that makes some trash men very insecure. Just sayin’.
Mistake-a Tomei
This one is so mean!
Back in 1993 Marisa Tomei was a sort of David against four Goliaths in the Best Supporting Actress category. She was a standout in the hilarious sleeper hit My Cousin Vinny, but no one thought she could actually win against the more critically acclaimed Joan Plowright in Enchanted April, Vanessa Redgrave in Howard’s End, and Miranda Richardson in Damage, and Judy Davis in perennial-favorite-at-the-time Woody Allen film Husbands And Wives.
So that was a lot of Oscar-friendly material. And, you know, the Academy already almost never awards comedies with anything. But Marisa’s scene-stealing performance snuck in there and won her the gold!
Or did it??
The conspiracy theory goes that Jack Palance, who 74-year-old actor who presented the award, got confused — much like the moment decades later when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway accidentally gave the Best Picture award to La La Land — or couldn’t read the small print on the card so instead read the name still appearing on the teleprompter: Marisa Tomei.
Sadly the rumor has spread and been joked about for years — even Marisa herself laughed it off during an SNL monologue.
But was the whole thing really an accident? Here’s the vintage video:
Looked legit to us! And here’s why it’s almost certainly B.S.:
As we had heard for years — and saw in practice during the Moonlight disaster — the accountants from Price Waterhouse Cooper have the names of the winners in front of them, so mistakes will get caught pretty quickly.
And you know what else? Marisa Tomei is a damned national treasure, and actresses do not get enough credit for their outstanding work in comedy that keeps us entertained and moved every single year. Trying to steal this moment is snobby and wrong!
We’re positive!
https://giphy.com/gifs/movie-marisa-tomei-my-cousin-vinny-3oKIPlTZ3FSkmtMoRW
[Image via Oscars/WENN/Avalon/Disney/YouTube.]
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