Our film critic, Nick Johnston, is currently on a plane to Austin to cover the film component of South-By-Southwest. In our most recent planning session, we told him to go coverage wild on film premieres and conferences, but to also be on the lookout for Ryan Gosling, especially since the highly-anticipated new Terrence Malick-directed drama Song To Song is set to premiere during the Austin festival.
Turns out now we have to warn him about alleged RyGos impersonators.
According to Consequence of Sound, a Gosling impersonator crashed the stage at the recent Goldene Kamera Awards in Germany, actually accepting an award for Best International Film (for La La Land), and though the whole thing seems rather fishy (it also appeared in Variety), it’s still pretty funny.
The story goes like this, writes CoS: “Apparently, the elaborate prank was conceived by German comedians Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf. They were able to convince event organizers that Gosling would appear at the event, but only if they agreed to certain conditions (such as not requiring him to walk the red carpet or meet with the show’s host beforehand). This allowed the impersonator — a chef named Ludwig Lehner — to gain access to the stage to accept the award for Best International Film. It wasn’t until he took the mic and thanked the pranksters before his true identity was exposed.”
The camera caught Colin Farrell during the incident, and Farrell looks like he smelled a fart. And while the Gosling impersonator bears a bit of a resemblance to the Drive and La La Land actor, we’re just not sure how this got past everyone involved. Maybe PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants smuggled him in.
Of course, this whole thing seems a bit like a grand set up, and if so, it worked, because we’re sitting here writing about the Goldene Kamera Awards.
Oh well.