What if
Banksy wins? Justly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary with the excellent film
Exit Through The Gift Shop (
review here), the fact that the British graffiti artist could actually win a Golden statute seems to have given the ceremony organisers reason to pause for thought. Very few people on the planet know for sure who Bansky is and naturally he isn't going to give up his hard-earned anonymity for a 30 second congratulate applause. He's already no-showed the annual Oscar luncheon and it sounds like because of his absence at the event, executive director of the Oscars Tom Sherak and the documentary's producer Jaimie D'Cruz made a gentleman's agreement on just what what might happen if "Exit" wins to save the organisers any red faces on the night. Speaking to
The Wrap of his Oscar luncheon chat he said;
"The reason we had that conversation was that we had to make sure we were all comfortable with what would happen if he was to win, knowing that he doesn't want anybody to know who he is. If Banksy isn't comfortable showing his face on the Kodak stage, then the Academy isn't comfortable having him on that stage. We suggested to them that it might be a good idea that if he did win, one of them would accept in his place that it would not be dignified for the Academy to have somebody come up wearing a monkey's head."
As soon as Bansky's nomination for Best doc was announced I had visions of the deliciously subversive stunts he could pull. He has a knack for eluding security so maybe he could replace the envelopes with a typically humorous calling card and switch the trophies for something like these;
But there's still a slight chance that he may add a bit of spice to the prim and proper proceedings. Just because his producer has agreed to no shenanigans, who knows if he will go along with it?