The 10 weirdest Oscar moments of all time
Rubbing the ego of Hollywood on an annual basis, the Academy Awards are inherently strange. A night hosted and attended only by the industry elite, the Oscars are a chance for actors, directors, cinematographers, producers, writers and more to express just how much they ‘loved’ each other’s work, all whilst secretly criticising each other behind their backs in the hopes that they will take home the glittering Oscar statuette.
This swirling cauldron of talent, egos and eccentricity has inevitably created a number of weird moments over the 94 years of Oscars history. These moments range from minor oddities, such as questionable speeches and fashion attire, to mammoth mistakes, embarrassing performances and even, in one infamous case, physical violence. That’s why we’re here to round up ten of the all-time strangest moments in one place.
Our list of the ten weirdest Oscar moments of all time includes a number of significant events, such as when Will Smith took to the stage at the 94th Academy Awards and slapped comedian Chris Rock across the face for saying an offensive joke about his wife. Causing a tidal wave of controversy, the moment has since gone down as one of the most shocking moments in Oscars history.
Take a look at our list below, where we discuss Smith alongside other names, including Seth McFarlane, Trey Parker, Matt Stone and more.
The 10 weirdest Oscar moments:
David Niven’s streaker (1974)
The British actor David Niven dealt with a brave streaker at the 46th Academy Awards with the utmost professionalism, smiling at the naked gentleman before taking a while to laugh at the absurd situation. “That was almost bound to happen,” Niven stated before masterfully joking: “Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings”.
It is this same sharp sense of humour that Niven became known for, making a name for himself in such iconic movies as A Matter of Life and Death, The Pink Panther and Casino Royale.
Eminem’s surprise performance (2020)
The iconic rapper Eminem was not nominated for an Academy Award in 2020, nor was the John Boorman movie Deliverance, but this didn’t stop the artist from performing at the Oscars with a curious showcase that included visuals from the 1972 thriller. Everyone from Billie Eilish to Martin Scorsese looked utterly baffled as to why the rapper was given the stage at the Oscars, having no connection at all to any of that year’s nominees.
Eminem did win an Oscar back in 2003 for ‘Best Original Song’ for his song ‘Lose Yourself’, but this doesn’t really go to explain why he made a reappearance at the 2020 awards show 17 years later.
Jack Palance does push-ups on stage (1991)
Actors are never too old to perform; just ask Jack Palance, the star of the 1991 comedy western City Slickers, who won an Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ back in 1992. Proving that he was still capable of physical feats of strength, during his acceptance speech, Palance got down on the floor and went about performing a one-handed press-up, stating: “That’s nothing really as far as the two-handed push-up is concerned, I could do that all night”.
He then goes about some slightly confusing, sleazy jokes. It’s a strange moment that Palance only marginally gets away with. These days it would just come across as conceited ego-rubbing.
John Travolta tries to say ‘Idina Menzel’ (2014)
Practising pronunciation is something that presenters must go over again and again and again in the green room before each and every Academy Awards show. Still, John Travolta clearly didn’t practice enough, infamously butchering the pronunciation of ‘Idina Menzel’, the singer of ‘Let it Go’ from the Disney movie Frozen, who was just about to perform. Bizarrely, Travolta didn’t even nearly say ‘Idina Menzel’, saying something that better resembles ‘Adele Dazeem’.
The star of Grease and Saturday Night Fever put the blunder down to the name being changed on the card he read from, with the production team breaking Menzel’s name phonetically to help the reader.
Kathleen York’s car-crash performance (2006)
The 2006 Oscars was one to forget for the Academy. Infamously, this was the year when Paul Haggis’ film Crash took home the award for ‘Best Picture’, with contemporary critics naming the movie as one of the worst ever to take home Hollywood’s most coveted prize. The heavy-handed movie was made even worse by Kathleen York’s clumsy performance of ‘In the Deep’ at the same Oscars ceremony.
Nominated for ‘Best Original Song’, York didn’t manage to take home the prize, with her unusual performance definitely not helping her case. The art-school dance performance and burning car in the background simply amplified just how bad the show really was.
La La Land wins ‘Best Picture’… nearly (2017)
The award for ‘Best Picture’ is undoubtedly the biggest and most important award of each and every Academy Awards show, so to mess up the announcement is a pretty major mistake. This happened in 2017 when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced La La Land as the winner of the show’s biggest award, despite Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-age drama Moonlight actually being the eventual recipient of the award.
It turns out that Beatty took the wrong envelope on the stage, taking the ‘Best Actress’ one instead of ‘Best Picture’. It has since gone down as one of the biggest goofs in the history of awards shows.
Snow White’s peculiar performance (1989)
What the hell was in the water of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1989? The baffling performance from Snow White, one of Disney’s most iconic fictional princesses, is extremely weird and very camp indeed, feeling more like a game from Ru Paul’s Drag Race. Interacting with the Hollywood stars, the actors and directors in the audience are bemused by the show, which had no connection at all to the 1989 Oscars.
If this wasn’t enough, then Merv Griffin sang ‘I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’ to a number of women with coconuts on their heads. After all that, Rob Lowe performed a bizarre rendition of ‘Proud Mary’ with a sexualised undertone.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone on acid (2000)
The Oscars is a massive event that is more than just an indoor ceremony. Indeed, the preceding red carpet event is almost just as big as the show itself, and in 2000 the South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to ridicule the spectacle by taking LSD and dressing up in spectacular gowns. Nominated for ‘Best Original Song’ for ‘Blame Canada’ that features in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Stone and Parker showcase was a thinly-veiled protest against the Oscars.
As Parker told Comedy Central after the event: “Imagine then actually having to sit there in the actual Oscars, and you’re coming down off the acid, so you’re simultaneously coming down, and you’re having to now sit through the Oscars, which fucking suck”.
‘We Saw Your Boobs’ (2013)
The Family Guy creator seemed to be everywhere back in the early 2010’s, helming Ted in 2012 and 2014 in A Million Ways to Die in the West, all whilst he hosted the Oscars in 2013. Nowadays, he’s not so much in the limelight. Maybe it’s something to do with his tasteless hosting of the awards ceremony, taking part in a skit called ‘We Saw Your Boobs’ in which he called out actors and the corresponding movies in which we see their breasts.
It turns out that the whole skit was pre-recorded, so those reactions from the crowd weren’t so genuine, but this didn’t excuse the song from going down pretty badly with viewers.
The Will Smith slap (2022)
The most recent incident on this list may be the single most controversial too. Taking to the stage to present the award for ‘Best Documentary Feature Film’, Chris Rock delivered a pretty standard intro to present the nominees in which he took aim at Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Unhappy with the joke, Smith climbed onto the stage and slapped Rock across the face for offending him and his wife.
Shocking the audience, Smith returned to his seat and then proceeded to shout, “keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth”. The decision followed with Smith receiving an Academy Award for his performance in King Richard, but the actor was later handed a 10-year ban from the Academy Awards for his actions.
