Banned from the Oscars: the Godfather actor booted by the Academy long before Harvey
As one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein was able to get behind practically any velvet rope of his choosing. But few clubs come more elite than the one he has been unexpectedly thrown into this weekend. When Weinstein was, in October 2017, stripped of his membership to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he became just the second man in Hollywood history to have their Oscar voting privileges revoked.
But while the Academy took the unusual move to bin Weinstein in light of the countless allegations to have disgraced the film mogul in the past two weeks, his predecessor was thrown out of the organisation for far less grim, if still resolutely illegal, reasons.
You likely won’t have heard of 83-year-old Carmine Caridi, but in 2004 the actor, typecast for years as Mafia heavies in films like The Godfather Part II and Bugsy, was booted from the Academy for sharing copies of the screeners annually mailed out to members.
These screeners give prospective voters home access to many of cinema’s newest releases, with members often sharing their collection with friends and family during Oscar season. That despite dire warnings on screener packaging written to prevent distribution.
“How could a guy who was born on the Lower East Side of New York to immigrant parents and who became a successful actor, not share these movies with my brother and sister?” Caridi asked during a Los Angeles Times report in 2005.
Unfortunately for Caridi, his tendency for screener-sharing resulted in him crossing paths with a piracy legend. For at least three years in the early Noughties, Caridi gave his screeners to a friend named Russell Sprague, who he had met when Sprague came to fix his VCR. Unknown to Caridi, Sprague was also a notorious movie pirate, whose copyright-be-damned criminal career began in 1975.
According to Sprague’s wife Roberta, her husband got off on the thrill of distributing bootleg copies of major movies long before they actually hit cinemas, telling the Los Angeles Times that it made him feel “important and popular.”
Having lost track of Sprague during the Eighties, police once again had him in their sights once pirated copies of the Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai hit the internet in 2003 -- a screener watermarked with Carmine Caridi’s name. Similar screeners for films including Big Fish, Something’s Gotta Give and Mystic River also turned up bearing the same watermark.
After visiting Caridi and seizing his lengthy collection of screeners, police reportedly offered him immunity in exchange for Sprague’s name. Caridi gave up his friend, police tracking Sprague down to his Illinois home, where he had been creating digital copies of Caridi’s VHS screeners and uploading them online. He eventually plead guilty to his crimes.
Before trial began, however, Sprague was allowed to return home to live with his family -- until his wife shopped him to the police after she caught him smoking marijuana with their 17-year-old son. She also claimed he was still distributing pirate DVDs. Holed up in a jail cell and awaiting trial, Sprague died of an apparent heart attack.
Despite Sprague’s death, Caridi was unrelenting in his opinion of the man, telling the Los Angeles Times that “this guy ruined my life.” Caridi was ordered to pay $300,000 each to both Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros (he has claimed he couldn’t afford such numbers), and was banned for life from the Academy.
“Who the hell knew he was gonna put ‘em on the internet?” Cardi told the Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “I had no idea. I was duped. [But] I don’t blame the Academy. I did violate their law.”
Cardi also told the industry paper that he does still receive screeners from the Screen Actors Guild, but not the same volume as he did when he was a member of the Academy. He did, however, reveal that his run-in with Oscar bosses hasn’t stopped him from sharing copies with his friends and family.
