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The Oscars Telecast Lasted Less Than 10 Minutes Before Its First “Hidden Fences” Slip-Up

Who keeps hiding them?!

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Let the record show that we didn’t make it even 10 minutes into the Oscars telecast before someone slipped up and mentioned the year’s most famous nonexistent movie: Hidden Fences. The honor of being the first to name-check the imaginary title at the Academy Awards goes to People editor-in-chief Jess Cagle on the Oscars red carpet, while discussing the diversity of this year’s nominees (oof):

Hidden Fences, a conflation of two of this year’s Oscar nominees, Hidden Figures and Fences, was born at the Golden Globes when first Jenna Bush, then Michael Keaton flubbed the name of Hidden Figures, accidentally (and painfully) mixing it up with the other major black movie that came out in 2016. The title soon took on a life of its own, spawning countless memes, fake movie trailers, and even a stage play.

At this point, the Hidden Fences problem is self-perpetuating. (It does roll off the tongue.) To his credit, Cagle realized his mistake almost immediately and corrected himself, but the damage to all of our psyches is done. In 10 years we’re all going to swear that we not only clearly remember a movie called Hidden Fences, but that it won Best Picture. Hey, it’s happened before.

Read more in Slate about this year’s Oscars.