When Carmine Caridi died in 2019 at 85 years old, The Hollywood Reporter looked back on him being the first person to be expelled from the Academy. To hear Caridi tell the story to The Hollywood Reporter, he’s the wronged man here. Academy members get screeners of movies ahead of time, so they vote on awards. Caridi was living in Los Angeles when a “The Godfather: Part III” co-star introduced him to a man named Russell Sprague. Sprague was a film buff, he said, and after he returned to Chicago, he asked Caridi if he would be willing to send him his advance screeners. Caridi was already making copies and sharing with family, and Sprague, he was like family too, right?
The screeners ended up on the internet, and Caridi ended up getting a call first from the Academy, and then from the FBI. He negotiated for immunity in exchange for handing over Sprague, but he was still kicked out of the Academy, sued by several major studios, and ordered to pay each of them $300,000.
That all went down in 2004, and by 2005, Sprague was dead of a heart attack. He had still been waiting to go to trial, and Caridi explained that he hadn’t meant any harm by it: “Who the hell knew he was gonna put ’em on the internet? I had no idea. I was duped.” He continued, saying the Screen Actors Guild still sent him screeners: “I lend them to my neighbor.”
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