How Did Neil Patrick Harris Predict The Oscars? - 5 Possible Solutions To His Magic Trick

It was magic... wait-for-it... al. MAGICAL!

In the aftermath of the 2015 Oscars, the internet's been abuzz with discussion. Did Birman really deserve to win Best Picture? Is it right to applaud rich actresses for talking about a pay divide? Is John Travolta really that out of touch? Should you ring your parents? But, more so than any of those, what had everyone talking was Neil Patrick Harris' hosting. Namely, how he seemed to let everyone (read: Twitter) down. But in all the condemning of racially tricky jokes (getting the star of The Help to perform a night-long menial task) and awkward delivery, one big part of the night has been overlooked - his prediction trick. Well known as a fan of magic (he's President of the Board of Directors of Hollywood's Magic Castle and repeatedly called on his hobby for How I Met Your Mother), everyone expected Harris to do some dazzling feat of the mystic. And he did, sort of, making some eerily correct "Oscar Predictions". The trick ran thusly: Harris submitted his predictions the Thursday before the show, which were kept in a sealed briefcase with Oscar balloters PricewaterhouseCoopers until the ceremony, where it was held in a glass case in clear view of the audience in the Dolby Theatre (and anyone viewing the stream on the official Academy website). Then, at the end of the show, he revealed a list of predictions not for the awards, but the noteworthy events of the ceremony - the content of award winners speeches, accidentally fluffed lines and the like. The general reaction was a bit underwhelming, but that doesn't shake the itch to figure out how he did it. The man himself has been pretty coy since the awards, which leaves only rampant speculation. Here are five potential ways Neil Patrick Harris could have pulled off the biggest Oscar magic trick since Crash.

Honourable Mention - Actual Magic

In the absence of any official explanation, there's an outside chance that Neil Patrick Harris actually used real precognition to predict what would happen at the ceremony. Now that is one way of doing it no one would guess. Of course, that can't actually be true - Harris never went to Hogwarts and network TV would never air real magic, but it's probably more exciting than the real solution.
Contributor
Contributor

Film Editor (2014-2016). Loves The Usual Suspects. Hates Transformers 2. Everything else lies somewhere in the middle. Once met the Chuckle Brothers.