The Academy promises to probe just went on with Chris Rock and Will Smith at the Oscars, but will take weeks to report.
In a little-reported incident at the start of the week, a ‘disagreement’ on the stage of the Academy Awards took place, where Will Smith and Chris Rock had something of a moment. It’s a genuine surprise that many columnists haven’t jumped in to put forward their take on all of this, and that more wasn’t made of it all on social media. Still, here we are.
Will Smith issued an apology to Chris Rock yesterday about what happened, but the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – that’d be AMPAS – has also written to its membership promising that it’s going to do something. That something amounts to an investigation into what happened, that will lead to a “determination on appropriate action for Mr Smith”.
It’s going to take some well paid people a while to get to the bottom of this, with the letter from AMPAS president David Rubin saying that the “official process … will take a few weeks”. By which time the rest of the world’s media might just have got its arse in gear and decided to report on it all. We can’t keep holding them all up forever.
“We will continue to update you on any developments, but we also ask that you respect your Board, Academy staff and the process as this unfolds so it can work in the considered way it was intended and mandated”, Rubin said. “Please trust that the Board of Governors will conduct this process in a manner that is both expedient and respectful of all involved while maintaining the standards of the Academy”.
This’ll be the Board of Governors that presumably signed off on eight awards being given out whilst a live television audience wasn’t watching, and still ended up with a show that ran longer than normal.
More on this very slowly developing story in a few weeks, then.
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