Sticks and Stones

Avatar Sketch Nixed at Oscars

To spare James Cameron's feelings.

How fearful is the Academy of James Cameron? According to New York Magazine, Bill Mechanic, who is producing the Oscar telecast, has yanked a Sacha Baron Cohen sketch over fears that the Avatar director might get so angry that he'd walk out of the ceremony. An unnamed insider said that Baron Cohen intended to appear onstage as a female Na'vi, whose statements would be translated by Ben Stiller. As the sketch progressed, Baron Cohen would become increasingly angry with Stiller's obviously false translations, then reveal that "she" was pregnant with James Cameron's love child before confronting the director Jerry Springer style. The sketch was cut, as another unnamed insider put it, because "Cameron isn't known to be, shall we say, 'self-deprecating.'"