It was a little less than a month ago when actor/professional Hulk Mark Ruffalo accidentally streamed part of Thor: Ragnarok to the audience of his Instagram Live. Now, he's finally revealed how he actually made such an unexpected mistake. Ruffalo recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote the new film, which releases in theaters November 3, and when asked about the incident admitted that his lack of Instagram savvy is what led to the now-infamous stream. Here's how he explained it:
So I went backstage, and I was doing the Instagram Live. It was fun and games and everyone loved it, and then I was doing the audience. And then they said, 'Return to your seat, we're going to start the movie.' So I pushed the button, what you think is going to stop it. But then there's another button to stop it...The first button just tells you to push the second button to stop it...So I ended up shoving it in my pocket and sitting down and watching the movie. Well, it was live...It's broadcasting the movie basically free to millions and millions of hopefully paying viewers.
Wow, I've never used Instagram Live but it does sound a lot like there might be a bit of a design flaw in this aspect of the app if you need to hit two buttons just to end a live broadcast. From looking up how to end a live feed, you do, in fact, need to tap "End" and then also "Confirm" that you really want to stop broadcasting. Even though Mark Ruffalo poked a bit of fun at himself by saying that his mistaken stream was "a grandpa move," I can see where someone who had never used it before (as Ruffalo explained was the case with him) would think that, well, "End" was the end of the Instagram Live line, and simply put their phone away.
Luckily for Ruffalo and every Marvel fan who's allergic to spoilers, he only streamed the first 10 minutes of the film. While that audio was likely ripped within seconds and is probably still floating around cyberspace for all who are interested, at least he was able to stop the stream before audio from the whole film (end credits scene included) was released. And, it turns out that Ruffalo has another movie-goer to thank for that. As he told Stephen Colbert:
My phone was blowing up. People were texting me. And I must have gotten 50 texts in 10 minutes...So I'm sitting there enjoying the movie with my family, and a woman came up and she poked me on the shoulder. And I turned and said, 'Yeah, what, what?' And she said, 'You're phone is on! You're Instagramming live this whole show! You've been Instagramming live for 10 minutes! Turn it off!'
Obviously, Mark Ruffalo was completely mortified by his mistake, but everything has, it would seem, turned out just fine. As he said on the show, Marvel isn't going to fire him while he's still filming an Avengers movie, and, we hope they never do. You can enjoy Thor: Ragnarok for yourself when it opens tomorrow.
