what a surprise, after last year all of a sudden we get several black winners.
Tweet from Ricky Gervais:
“Apparently, I’m favourite to host next year’s Oscars! Warren Beaty just told me. Very excited.”
I’ll go ahead and assign Beatty and Dunaway each 5% of the blame. I don’t think Beatty threw her under the bus, I think he was more ‘look at this, WTF?’.
I’ve re-watched the kerfuffle several times. I like how many of the La La Land folks, while onstage and learning that they had not won, displayed an instant of anger before quickly switching to graciousness. Shows a human side, I thought.
mmm
Yes, there are two duplicate sets of cards. Each is in the possession of an official from PWC, Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, who are both standing offstage on either side.
As they said in interviews,
So, it’s possible that Beatty was mistakenly handed the (wrong) duplicate envelope while Emma Stone was holding her own card. They now have to determine which of them gave Beatty the wrong One.
I’m guessing it will be announced by PWC, that after long and devoted careers, both Brian and Martha will be retiring, to spend more time with their families…
Here’s what I saw in my in-depth review of the video evidence (sort of; I rewound my DVR once and saw a shot of the envelope on Twitter):
-The card does say the category at the bottom, but it’s in smaller print. When the producer holds the “Moonlight” card up and they show a close-up, you can see it says “Best Picture” at the bottom of the card. I assume the card Beatty had said “Best Actress In A Leading Role” at the bottom, but again, it’s smaller type, and as an over-50 man myself, I wouldn’t have been able to read that very well without glasses.
-I saw a closeup of the envelope Beatty had before he opened it, and it clearly had “Best Actress In A Leading Role” printed on the front. I don’t really blame Beatty that much - you’d just figure you were handed the correct envelope, right?
It’s clear Beatty was confused by what he found in that envelope. He actually looks into it a second time, as if there might be another card in there, then he bails on the whole thing and shows it to Dunaway. What should have happened, of course, is one or both of them should have stopped everything and called on help from offstage. But with this never, ever happening before, with this big moment at the end of the show, it’s understandable how they just plowed ahead and went with the name of the movie they saw on the card.
Even surprisinger, after the last 88 years we get mostly white winners.
The blacks get all the breaks, don’t they? Lucky blacks.
To be fair, whenever Warren Beatty is in doubt, he screws a woman.
When I told my husband (who is Doper Andy L) what happened, he said, “And the Best Picture is…Marisa Tomei!”
Can you imagine what would’ve happened if it had been the other way around, with *Moonlight *being announced, and then La La Land winning?
I wish Siskel and Ebert were still alive. It would be fun to hear their take on this.
Flashback to 2003 Tony Awards" EVERYBODY thought Wicked was a shoo-in for Best Musical. When presenter Nathan Lane said “The Tony Award for the best musical goes to” the cast and crew of Wicked was standing up, and The Times Square marquee actually flashed: Best Musical: Wicked.
Lane opened the envelope, read the card, looked up in a daze, read it again and whispered “Avenue Q” in a very puzzled tone. Everybody gasped, and cast and crew of both Wicked and Avenue Q were totally stunned. When they recovered, Wicked sat down and AQ ran to the stage.
Yes, but there’s also a backup envelope. Regrettably, guess what Beatty was handed.
From a process viewpoint this is a truly amazing screwup because it took a huge amount of screwing up by multiple people:
- Someone handed Beatty the wrong envelope.
- Beatty failed to notice the envelope clearly said “BEST ACTRESS” on it.
- Upon opening the envelope, Beatty saw that it said “Emma Stone, La La Land,” and was clearly confused but decided not to look back, or look at the envelope, or do anything useful, despite the fact that Warren Beatty is a man rather familiar with the process of awarding and receiving Oscars.
- Faye Dunaway, who’s also been on stage for more than a few Oscars, also failed to notice the card wasn’t correct.
- When the wrong winner was announced, it took a ridiculous amount of time to correct it. It’s a 15- second sprint, tops, from the wings to the podium; why the PWC backup wasn’t there faster than the La La Land producers I do not for the life of me understand.
That said, in time it’ll just be an amusing anecdote, not any sort of outrage, and the records will say “2016 Best Picture - Moonlight,” which is really all that matters.
I think the implication here that these people only won because they were black is really horrible.
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Moonlight was a goddamn fantastic movie. In my opinion it won the award completely on merit.
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Viola Davis is beloved in Hollywood and is an actor of titanic skill and professionalism and would have won the award if every 2015 award had been given to a black person. As long as she kept appearing in movies, the Academy was going to find an Oscar to give to her.
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The only doubtful call in my mind is Mahershala Ali, who is perfectly good in “Moonlight” but IMHO wasn’t a great choice because he’s not actually even the best supporting actor in that movie. I would have voted for Trevante Rhodes. That said, he was widely acclaimed by his peers and has been considered a shoo-in for this award for months, so A) apparently they are seeing something I did not, and B) so he didn’t just nose out the competition on guilt votes.
And what will people remember Warren Beatty for? His acting? His directing? His womanzin?
No, his Oscar fuck-up.
I actually turned off the TV right after the announcement of “La La Land.” I was a little disappointed “Moonlight” didn’t win, since it was the best of the nominees that I had seen (I had LLL ranked 5 of 6). So I got a little happy surprise this morning during my morning briefing!
It’s also slightly odd that Viola Davis was nominated for and won best supporting actress, when she was the female lead. (She was nominated for and won the best actress Tony for the same role on Broadway.)
He should’ve slapped her until she gave the right answer.
But, unfortunately, a legitimate question. After last year’s controversy, there was no way at least some major awards weren’t going to be won by people of color. As a dispassionate non-movie buff, I have no idea if the winners of these awards were the best or not. I can tell you that the Oscars won’t ever have all white winners of the major awards again. So yeah, for at least the next few years if a PoC wins an award I’m going to wonder if its legit or if the Academy is filling their PoC quota.