‘Moonlight’ wins award as best picture after Oscar flub

Jordan Horowitz and Jimmy Kimmel react as Warren Beatty holds the card for the Best Picture Oscar awarded to “Moonlight”, after announcing by mistake that “La La Land” was victor during the 89th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California, the United States on February 26, 2017.

To be clear, it isn’t just how Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the wrong envelope and proceeded to announce “La La Land” the Best Picture victor instead of legitimate champion “Moonlight”.

With the dust now settling, the question becomes who will take the fall for the greatest flub in Oscar history?

“It doesn’t sound very complicated”, Cullinan said, “but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope”.

The 89th annual Academy Awards have come and gone faster than those sweet treats that floated from the rafters during the fun-filled ceremony.

It fell to “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz – already onstage and delivering a speech after receiving his best picture statuette – to announce the error to a sea of confused faces amid scenes of chaos onstage at Hollywood s Dolby Theatre. So he did. And then he ended his speech by saying: “We lost, by the way”.

Awards official: “Guys, guys, I’m sorry”. Noting that PwC had taken full responsibility, the Academy said it has begun an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident and that it “will determine what actions are appropriate moving forward”.

While we are supposed to trust the academy’s voting processes and obsessive secrecy around the results – it’s clear that nobody involved in the broadcast had prepared Moonlight graphics for the best picture win – the events themselves have had a few off-script moments. “This is not a joke”. “This is not a joke”, Horowitz continued, understanding that, in that moment, the most important thing was to get the facts right. Michael Beugg ’85 was executive producer of “La La Land”, which earned Oscars for Directing, Best Actress, Production Design, Cinematography, Original Score, and Original Song. He held up the card that proved it: “Moonlight”.

I turned off my TV feeling a little sick at the humiliation of the La La Land crew and the implication that justice had somehow prevailed.

Returning to the stage to explain what had happened later in the ceremony, Beatty told the audience and host Jimmy Kimmel: “I want to tell you what happened”.

It was in his closing sentence, however, that Kimmel acted like the ideal host of a party where a guest behaved badly. “Guys, this is very unfortunate what happened. Personally, I blame Steve Harvey for this”, he says, referencing Harvey’s gaffe during the Miss Universe competition. “I could see if I was in his place how they would feel, and I think they looked over at us and they saw how we had felt as well”. “I’m going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from Moonlight”. “But accuracy of reporting is one of the tenets of PwC”, said Katie Sprehe, director of reputation research at Washington-based communications consultancy APCO Worldwide. That’s when Warren Beatty walked to the microphone to explain what happened.

Pixar’s Finding Dory was notable by its absence in the Best Animated Feature category, but Disney (which owns Pixar) wasn’t too fussed, because its playful cartoon Zootopia won the gong instead. Confused, he and co-presenter Faye Dunaway announced “La La Land” the victor. “I’m done with it because this is true”, he said. “It was not a prank”, Kimmel said.

“Of course it was an awesome thing to hear La La Land, ” Stone said. “Moonlight. Best Picture”, he said as the camera moved closer. But we are so excited for Moonlight. “I’m gonna start watching Game of Thrones just to calm my nerves”.

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.

Describing how he and Ruiz are the only two people who know the winners before they are announced – and even take separate cars and different routes to the show to ensure at least one of them makes it there – Cullinan suggested to the Web site Medium that handing over the right envelopes is no stretch.

Three minutes before the envelope was handed off, Cullinan tweeted out a photo of Emma Stone with her new Oscar. Last night, when it counted the most, the moment found them. “The La La Land team graciously handed over their trophies to Barry Jenkins” Moonlight team who were just that gracious in accepting them.