Honored with a seat at the Oscars this year was Messi the dog, the breakout star of award season (in my opinion) and one of the stars of Anatomy of a Fall (the objective fact). Messi the dog did not take this privilege lightly, and when it came to honoring the recipients of the biggest award in film, Messi was ready to participate: When the crowd clapped, Messi "clapped" along with them.
If you think about this too hard, it invites a lot of questions (is someone perched at foot level clapping fake paws? Is Messi unnerved by the phantom paws? Am I unnerved by the phantom paws?). So, in line with the celebration of film that we, and Messi, are here to enjoy, I invite you to suspend your disbelief and watch the dog clapping.
Messi even got a shout-out from host Jimmy Kimmel: "I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gérard Depardieu," Kimmel quipped.
But this isn't Messi's first brush with the circuit. He also attended the Oscars nominee lunch, where he befriended Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and Billie Eilish; before that, he attended a live reading of the Anatomy of a Fall screenplay and joined a press junket. "It’s probably the maximum that you can accomplish in this field," gushed his trainer, Laura Martin, with whom Messi lives in Paris.
