20 Devastating Oscars Moments Hidden In Plain Sight
8. Apocalypto Sound Mixer Has A Very Bad Night
At the 2007 Oscars, the Best Sound Mixing award went to Dreamgirls, and as drama-free as that sounds, there was plenty of heartbreak going on behind the scenes.
Dreamgirls was up for the award against, among other films, Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, whose sound mixer Kevin O'Connell received his 19th (!) Oscar nomination without a win.
O'Connell failed to win the award, and while that's unfortunate, things got much worse from there.
O'Connell's mother, Skippy, was extremely ill at the time of the ceremony, and so as soon as his award was presented, he rushed to the hospital to be with her.
O'Connell's mother ended up passing away that night, and because that wasn't enough of a crushing double-blow, one of Dreamgirls' Oscar-winning sound mixers, Michael Minkler, disparaged O'Connell to the press, claiming that he was trying to win an Oscar out of sympathy and should consider another line of work. Talk about being a sore winner.
There is a closing positive to the story, though, as O'Connell finally won a belated Oscar on his 21st nomination in 2017 for Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, where he proudly thanked his late mother.