Wait what…Best Picture psyche out! I’m so glad Moonlight won and not La La Land but OMG really Warren Beaty?
Was Steve Harvey reading the winner?
For some reason, I thought Dunaway said the name. I have it recorded, but my 15yo La La Land fan is just UPSET.
This was hilarious, though I encourage the inevitable process of re-evaluation and rehabilitation, this was a record. Maybe next week it will be Hail Caesar!
Personally, I blame Mr. Peanutbutter…
She did.
Normally, it requires a “wardrobe malfunction” to cause this much DVR replaying.
Yeah he obviously hesitated unsure of what was happening, then Dunaway took the card, probably didn’t read it carefully and plowed ahead.
What baffles me is how long it took to correct. There should be a person at the side who can correct such blunders in ten seconds tops especially after what happened with Miss Universe. It would still be embarrassing but not nearly as much as the chaos that unfolded here.
The Oscars
You want to look away but you just can’t!©
Someone is out of a job tonight.
Exactly this. Even more, how did they manage to give them the wrong card? The Best Actress category was already done. Are there duplicate sets of cards backstage? Isn’t someone from Price Waterhouse handing them out? Or did someone put a duplicate Best Actress card in the Best Picture envelope?
Either way, I really don’t see how much blame can be put on Beatty or even Dunaway, given how clearly something weird happened.
You just KNOW the Commander-in-Cheeto is going to make some tweet to the effect of, “They spent the whole night slamming me and they can’t even get their own Best Picture right! Sad!”
(The difference being, of course, that THIS mistake isn’t going to cause anyone any long-term suffering.)
There is someone from PWC in the wings. One year, the host (I forget who) brought him out to show the briefcase that he was guarding like it was the nuclear football. But as you said, I would have thought they’d issue the correction before the winners even had a chance to speak.
Like everyone else, I’ve been Zaprudering this, and just before the take-back, a guy with a headset is in the center of the group. Then the guy at the mike says “We lost, by the way,” and the bald headed guy says “This is not a joke.” And so forth.
I feel bad for Beatty because already he is getting clowned on social media and sites like Drudge Report as an idiot. He was clearly handed the wrong card as evidenced by Dunaway reading out La La Land. If the card said Moonlight, she would have declared Moonlight the winner. Someone in the back screwed up big time, it’s simply not his fault!
Andy Ihnatko Tweeted out a still frame of the envelope in Warren Beatty’s hand. It’s a bit hard to read, but it says “Actress In A Leading Role.”
An interesting play-by-play of things backstage from USA Today -
and this too -
Why would Beatty have BOTH envelopes? Sounds to me like whoever was supposed to be checking presenters and their envelopes did a really crap job.
What’s everyone’s guess as to how much of a hit PriceWaterhouseCooper stock takes tomorrow morning?
My guess is it drops 20-25%.
Also, Eric Idle won Twitter:
Writer Mark Evanier, who aside from writing numerous comic titles has written for television including variety shows, had this to say on his blog tonight:
"I know that someone apparently handed the presenters another Best Actress envelope instead of Best Picture. I just don’t know how they allowed the folks behind La La Land to make their way to the stage and deliver several speeches before the error was corrected.
You may recall I once wrote about the near miss back in 1985 when Sir Laurence Olivier presented the Best Picture Oscar to the right film by sheer accident. He didn’t open the envelope but instead announced the first film on the nominee list was the winner…and it happened that the right film, Amadeus, was first in alphabetical order.
I was told that after that, a fail-safe system was put in place. The company that tallies the votes has people backstage who know what’s supposed to be in each envelope and if the wrong “winner” is announced, there’s a code or an alert they can issue to stop the proceedings immediately. I dunno if they still do this."
I highly doubt this will happen. Not only because most won’t associate the flub with PwC, but also because PwC is a privately held company.