Oscar winner's sign too loud

There were at least two documentaries nominated this year that were relevant to Earth to Philly issues. One was Food, Inc., which didn't win, and the other was The Cove, which did.

As detailed in this post from Treehugger, the documentary about the Japanese dolphin-killing extravaganza in Taiji was named best Documentary Feature, and its producers approached the stage...

As director Louie Psihoyos, co-producer Fisher Stevens and The Cove star Richard O'Barry took the stage to accept the award and Stevens started his speech, O'Barry flashed a sign "text 4414 'dolphin'" - which is a way to receive updates on your cell phone about dolphins - but unfortunately, that led to the orchestra striking up the music to cut off an opportunity to let Psihoyos speak.

Treehugger has more, including video of the acceptance speech, a clip of Psihoyos doing his speech in an alternate fashion and reaction from Japan to the win.

All in all, the sign was pretty innocuous. But the Academy, it seems, has been more vigilant about stopping activist rants before they start since the debacle in 2003 by another Best Documentary winner who had the gall to claim, just three days into the Iraq war, that "we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons" and asserted that "We are against this war, Mr. Bush." Really, what was this guy thinking? After the way that whole thing turned out, you can bet his face is pretty red by now.