Anonymous Person Attempts to Sabotage Lana Del Rey's Oscar Chances

Credit: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images

One of the more ambitious attempts at awards fraud has been perpetrated via one anonymous person's plot to keep Lana Del Rey from earning an Oscar nomination.

Del Rey is among the 75 finalists for this year's Best Original Song category for her song "Young and Beautiful" from The Great Gatsby, but someone made it a point to portray to Academy voters that Del Rey had been disqualified.

An anonymous envelope was mailed to select members of the Academy's music branch with a printout from a fake online article claiming that “Young And Beautiful” had been disqualified from the Best Original Song category over a technicality involving The Great Gatsby's changed release date. Warner Bros., the studio that released Gatsby, caught word of the story and checked the alleged source article, which boasted a Variety headline. However, it turns out the article in question was never published by Variety, or by any legitimate news source. After failing to discover the origin of the letter, Warner Bros. and Interscope, the label behind the film's soundtrack, went directly to the Oscar committee members who received the falsified document. The record has been set straight, and now Warner Bros. is rededicating itself to earning Del Rey that nomination, as the studio has now recut a music featurette to emphasize the collaboration between the singer and director Baz Luhrmann.

Ultimately, the would-be saboteur has caused the song to earn greater attention than it otherwise might have. In essence, Lana Del Rey's Oscar chances have improved considerably, all thanks to one person's attempts to make certain a nomination wouldn't be in the cards. Pfft, show business.

Via: Deadline