The 89th Annual Oscars Ceremony was last night, and brought out all of the major stars of Hollywood and beyond. Every year they vie for the most well publicized and controversial awards of the year. However, this year, something even more shocking than last year’s implied racism in the #OscarsSoWhite scandal occurred. As the Best Picture Oscar was being handed out, there was a problem.
The man presenting the award, Warren Beatty, opened the envelope to find Emma Stone’s name written on the piece of paper and La La Land. Stone had won the Best Actress Oscar earlier in the evening. Beatty stopped himself announcing the winner when he saw the name, but his co-presenter Faye Dunaway thought this to be an attempt by Beatty to cause suspense. She caught a glimpse of the card and announced La La Land to be the winner of the award. However, this was not the correct card, and Beatty was right not to make the announcement originally. It turns out that neither of the presenters were at fault for mistakenly announcing La La Land the winner, it was indeed another party.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the accounting firm who count the ballots in secret for the Oscars every year, made the major mistake. Only two people working for the firm every year know the full results before the ceremony. It was one of these two who made the blunder. Instead of handing Mr Beatty the Best Picture card, they handed him a copy of Emma Stone’s Best Actress card. This obviously caused the hugely confusing finish, and resulted in the chaos of La La Land being announced Best Picture winner when in reality Moonlight had won the award.
After the cast and crew of La La Land had accepted the award, and begun their acceptance speech, the mistake was realized. Jordan Horowitz, one of the La La Land directors, said that there had been a mistake and Moonlight were the actual winners. In the confusion of the moment, it was a horrible thing to happen to La La Land, given it was the favorite going into Oscars season to win the award.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers released a statement regarding the mistake, which is below:
“We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for Best Picture.”
“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.”-Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
Of course, the Oscars ceremony every year is a grand occasion. So much preparation goes in that it is painful for such a blunder to happen. However, hopefully La La Land is able to move on and enjoy the six other awards they won during the evening. For more of my ramblings check out The Comical Theory on Facebook. Alternatively look up @ComicalTheory on Twitter. Thanks for reading!