The Rio cinema in Dalston, London, pranked its audience after the notorious best picture announcement fiasco at the Oscars by playing a short snippet of La La Land before a screening of Moonlight.
Oliver Meek, executive director of the Rio, said that after the events on Oscars night, when La La Land was announced as winner of the Best Picture Academy award instead of the actual winner, Moonlight, we thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we played a bit of La La Land?’
‘We saw we still had the La La Land teaser trailer on the projector, so just before Moonlight started, at 9.15, our manager brought up La La Land. After about 20 seconds we faded it down and made it look like it had been a bungle by the projectionist: we cut the picture, but you could still hear the sound, for a few seconds, then cut that. Then we started up Moonlight as normal.’
‘There was a hush, then a huge round of applause.’
Social media picked up on it quickly, with Meek crediting one particular tweet, from comedian Sophie Dukebox.
Props to @riocinema in #Dalston for playing the first 20 seconds of La La Land immediately before last night’s screening of Moonlight pic.twitter.com/2ZLllrnPFq
— Sophie Dukebox (@sophiedukebox) February 28, 2017
This post originally appeared on TNS.