ABC’s censors needed to use the bleep button during the 91st Academy Awards for the first time when Free Solo filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi cursed when accepting the Oscar for Best Documentary feature.
After Aquaman star Jason Momoa and Helen Mirren announced the film won the award, Chin clearly said “Oh s–” while walking to the microphone. A second bleep was heard after he finished the first censored expletive.
Videos by PopCulture.com
After a few chuckles, Vasarhelyi began her speech, thanking National Geographic for hiring women and people of color to work on the film. She also thanked the other producers and crew of the film. Chin and Vasarhelyi also thanked their children.
“Thank you Alex Honnold for giving us the courage and teaching us how to believe in the impossible, and inspiring us,” Vasarhelyi said of the film’s subject. “This film is for everyone who believes in the impossible.
The film follows Alex Honnold on his free solo climb of El Capitan, a mounted formation in Yosemite National Park.
It earned near unanimous praise from critics and won several awards on its way to the Oscars, including four at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, and was named one of the five best documentaries of 2018 by the National Board of Review.
The other nominees for Best Documentary Feature were Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Minding The Gap, Of Fathers and Sons and RBG.
After Free Solo won Documentary Feature, the film Period. End of Sentence. was honored with Best Documentary Short Subject. The other nominees in that field were End Game, Lifeboat, Black Sheep and A Night at the Garden.
Free Solo was a risky movie to make, but Casarhelyi said Honnold wanted to take the risk.
“We asked ourselves about the ethics of doing this,” she told Rolling Stone. “Could we live with ourselves if we enabled [Alex’s death]? It came down to the film itself being about a life well-lived. Alex has made a very conscious choice to do what he loves.”
The film also explores the importance of Honnold’s relationship with his girlfriend, Sonni McCandless, who was at the Oscars with him. He told Rolling Stone he was fully aware that he could “explode on impact” if he made any mistakes during the climb.
“It’s terrible but that’s reality,” the 33-year-old said. “And the way I see it, if that scenario of falling to my death is totally overwhelming, then I shouldn’t be up there in the first place. It’s funny because I’ve done a lot of interviews where people have asked me if I’ve considered that fact that I could die. And sometimes I’ll say, “Well, have you?” I can kind of tell from their face that they haven’t. We’re all gonna go at some point.”
Photo credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
