Last night at the Academy Awards, Chris Rock embarked on a mission to help his daughters Lola and Zahra sell Girl Scout cookies. Troop members were unleashed into the audience, where they offered their delicious wares. But while Rock later announced that the Scouts had raised a triumphant $65,243, it turns out that he inflated their profits considerably.
Now, to be clear, the Girl Scouts still sold many, many boxes of cookies — a hefty 500 boxes, to be precise. But at $5 a box, TMZ reports that their profits came to $2,500. This is great! It’s just a considerably smaller number than the one touted during the ceremony.
A Girl Scouts representative explained to TMZ that the first, grandiose figure “was just a joke…for the skit.” Indeed, they were thrilled to sell as many cookies as they did and grateful for Rock’s championship.
TMZ also notes that “it’s possible some of the audience members ordered boxes that would be delivered at a future date.” That said, if I were presented with the option to chow down on a box of Tagalongs rather than to defer that pleasure, I would have taken a cue from Christian Bale. The Oscars ceremony is four hours long and eminently boring; any mortal would need to be fed under those conditions.
Rock indicated that all proceeds would support his daughters’ troop in New York, but this, too, is not actually the case. Instead, a troop in Inglewood, California will benefit from the cookie sales.
The aforementioned inaccuracies are a little peculiar, but they probably don’t matter. Ultimately, a Girl Scout troop had the opportunity to attend the Oscars, encourage stupidly rich people to support them, and earn thousands of dollars in the process.
Mya, a Cadette who attended the ceremony, noted the significance of making the Girl Scouts of the USA visible nationwide. She says, via Sunshine Sachs PR, “The opportunity to be at the Oscars, and getting to experience it all, is what I will remember most. I felt very proud to represent millions of Girl Scouts.”
But this was also a lesson in entrepreneurship. Kamille, also a Cadette, reports that “the most exciting thing was having the opportunity to take selling Girl Scout cookies to another level!”
The “joke” may have been a perplexing clunker, but the girls had fun, and we all watched as Morgan Freeman nabbed some Trefoils. All in all, I’d call that a success.
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Images via Sunshine Sachs PR.
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