In the sort of news that makes us genuinely start researching questions like “Which major awards show statue would be the easiest to use as a deadly weapon?”—it’s the Emmy, by the way; those pointy wings!—an Academy Award-winning director has apparently had his Oscar statue go missing after TSA told him it was too dangerous to fly with. This is per Deadline, reporting that Pavel Talankin, who was both the subject and co-director of Best Documentary winner Mr Nobody Against Putin, was flying out of New York’s JFK International Airport this week when TSA told him he couldn’t fly with the statue, which weighs 8.5 pounds—not counting the weight of international cinematic gravitas.
Apparently worried that the filmmaker and schoolteacher would be driven into either a stunningly well-shot cinematic frenzy, or maybe a murder mystery from one of those later Agatha Christie novels where you can tell she’s getting a little tired, TSA told Talankin that he wasn’t getting on the plane with Oscar. (Despite the fact that he’d flown with the statuette several times before, with no issue.) Conversations with Lufthansa and Talankin’s producer on Mr Nobody, Robin Hessman—who served as a translator—were of no avail, as the agent in question was “intractable.” Talankin was ultimately forced to wrap his award in bubble wrap and stick it in a cardboard box for storage in the plane’s baggage area, and, wouldn’t you know it, when he landed in Germany the airline couldn’t find the dang box.
We will note, after thinking about it for a lot longer than we expected to today, that you probably could kill someone with an Oscar; possibly by turning it upside down and taking a big swing with the base. (Compare the humble, practically stunted Grammy, which weighs only 5 pounds, and whose only action-y bit is the lip of the gramophone. The Tony also clearly hasn’t been designed for its martial impact—please internalize these facts before challenging EGOT winner Tim Rice in a battle to the death.) Talankin’s plight was publicized this week by Mr Nobody‘s other credited director, David Borenstein, who questioned whether a better-known, or more English-fluent, Oscar winner would have been given the same “Have to check your Academy Award for the safety of everybody” treatment.
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