"Gary from Chicago" says his post-Oscars experience "was horrible"

The Hollywood Reporter

Gary Alan Coe, who was thrust on to the Academy Awards as the most prominent of several unsuspecting tourists, says the surprising experience was turned into "something ugly" after it was revealed he was a registered sex offender who had just been released from prison three days earlier. "I didn't ask to be put on the Oscars," says Coe, whose then-fiancee broke up with him shortly after Denzel Washington fake-married them before a worldwide audience. "I was minding my own business, walking down the street. I was like, 'Wow, that's crazy — that's America for you.'"