The 89th annual Academy Awards show aired last night. For some reason, my wife and I decided to watch most of it, mainly to see what political jokes host Jimmy Kimmel and company would come up with.
But a major mistake at the climaxing, final moment overshadowed the award presentation, a moment that’ll go down in Oscar history as the biggest screw up of all time. After presenter Warren Beatty fumbled or delayed the announcement of the best picture, his co-presenter and Bonnie and Clyde co star, Faye Dunaway, grabbed the envelope and said the winner was, “La La Land,” the favorite for the best picture category.
Then, during the best picture acceptance speeches, men with headsets on scrambled behind the dais and told the winners that they didn’t win, that “Moon Light” had won the top honor in film for 2016. La La Land’s producer interrupted their glow and announced that the Moon Light crew should come up on stage because they’d actually won best picture… and he wasn’t joking.
Jimmy Kimmel tried to fall on the sword afterward, blaming himself and – jokingly – Steve Harvey, who’d screwed up the winner’s announcement at a recent Miss Universe beauty pageant. For some reason, Beatty had been handed the best actress envelope, an award previously won by Emma Stone of La La Land.
Now we learn that there are TWO sets of envelopes with each category’s winner listed inside it. Somehow, Beatty was handed the wrong envelope for an award that was already given out (Stone mentioned she had an envelope in her hand during the post-show press conference.)
The official apology came down a few hours later from the firm that does the ballot counting, PriceWaterhouseCoopers:
“The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.”
It will be hard to top that Oscar faux pas. Enjoy the video of the historic mistake.
Doc Watson
