The Oscars' Play-Off Music Was Especially Vicious This Year

A number of winners at the Oscars barely got a word in as music played them off stage during Sunday’s ceremony — and it didn’t go without notice.

The Academy Awards playing off winners is not a new concept. The show’s executive producers and showrunners, Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss, recently told CNN that any “heartfelt, well-meaning speech” wouldn’t get hit with a load of sound.

“If you start reading off your grocery list of what you need to do tomorrow, probably the music’s gonna come in,” said Kirshner.

But winners’ speeches about family were noticeably cut short while others barely got their speeches off the ground.

Judy Chin, co-winner of the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for her part in “The Whale,” got cleared offstage by music, with one user noting that fellow co-winner Annemarie Bradley should’ve received some airtime as well.

Later, some viewers noticed a trend in who the Oscars were playing off after two Indian filmmakers, Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Mongadouble, got their onstage time cut short during Mongadouble’s Best Documentary Short Film acceptance speech for their film “The Elephant Whisperers.”

The next winners, Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud, noticeably did not get the play-off treatment for their speeches accepting Best Animated Short Film for “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and The Horse.”

Host Jimmy Kimmel later made light of winners seconds after members of the “Avatar: The Way of Water” visual effects team were played off stage during co-winner Eric Saindon’s speech about family.

Kimmel, who spoke from the audience, joked that there’d be an after-party at “CGI Fridays.”

Viewers on Twitter, however, weren’t laughing at his quip.