Three years ago at the Academy Awards, Ellen DeGeneres took a selfie with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Lupita Nyong’o, Kevin Spacey, Jared Leto, and Channing Tatum that eventually broke Twitter’s record for the most retweets ever.
The Oscars and other award shows have since tried to out-viral the tweet, with varying degrees of success, and tonight’s ceremony was no different. Host Jimmy Kimmel invited unknowing riders on a Hollywood tour bus into the Dolby Theatre during the Oscars, where they met Jennifer Aniston, Ryan Gosling, and Mahershala Ali. No one had more fun than “Gary from Chicago,” who recorded the whole thing on his phone. When his fiancée Vicki was asked to name her favorite actor, she replied, “That man right there.” She was pointing at Denzel Washington, who got up and pronounced them “husband and wife, kiss the bride.” Vicki was also gifted Aniston’s sunglasses, but that’s probably not as exciting as getting married by Detective Alonzo Harris.
Kimmel instructed the tourists — who would probably be upset with the bit, where they were “cast” as the normal people gawking at celebrities, if they weren’t in the presence of Octavia Spencer — to not look into Gosling’s eyes (“He’s very handsome”), pointed out Casey Affleck as a “bearded gentlemen [who’s surprisingly] not a vagrant,” and quickly led them by Meryl Streep. She’s “overrated,” he joked. That was fine with the riders, who really just wanted to pose with Ali’s Oscar, anyway. Can you blame them?
Also, who goes on a tour of Hollywood… during the Oscars?
