Oscars: ‘La La Land’ & ‘Moonlight’ Make History – For All the Wrong Reasons

“I wasn’t trying to be amusing”, said the 79-year-old American actor and filmmaker.

After Dunaway announced the victor as La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s musical ode to dreamers, the film’s producers, director, and cast stormed the stage and accepted their Oscar. Moonlight actually won the Oscar, and the audience was left stunned.

She explained she had kept the card naming her as best actress – suggesting the one Beatty and Dunaway had was a duplicate. I blame myself for this. Apparently, Beatty had been given the wrong envelope and card to read.

In one of live television’s most toe-curling moments on Sunday night (26 February), the 89th Academy Award descended into chaos in what was supposed to be its highpoint after the wrong film was announced as best picture.

Sunday’s err was apparently caused by an envelope mix-up, leading Beatty and co-presenter Faye Dunaway to hand out the best picture award to La La Land instead of the real victor, Moonlight.

Jordan Horowitz interrupted his fellow producer, Fred Berger, who was making his acceptance speech, after he realised a crucial and historic mistake had been made. Horowitz then rushed to the microphone. “There’s been a mistake”, he said.

La La Land was initially mistakenly named as Best Picture over “Moonlight’ at the Oscars 2017”.

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is responsible for calculating the results of the voting process and are in charge of handing the envelopes to presenters, and have apologised unreservedly for the mix-up which saw Warren get handed the envelope with the Best Actress winner’s name inside. But she did, and the cast and crew of Moonlight were of course shocked by the mistake, but seemingly not shocked by the win. Warren said onstage that he was also confused because the card read “Emma Stone for La La Land”. Hmm, what kind of a movie usually gets awards? “Everyone was asking, ‘Can I see the card?’ And he was like, ‘No, Barry Jenkins has to see the card, I need him to know.’ And I felt better about what had happened”, Jenkins explained. By the time anyone knew something was amiss, the cast and producers of La-La Land were on the stage, just in time for a humiliating climb-down. “Security would like the envelopes, Mr. Beatty”, Natoli said. Stone said she still had hers in hand as the scene unfolded.