Just a quick note on the remarkable ending of the Academy Awards show last night - talk about history being made live on TV! The wrong movie being named as winner of Best Picture, with the correction coming after speeches have been made ... oh, the drama!
It was fun to watch, but it never should have gone on as long as it was allowed to. It was mostly hubris by Price Waterhouse Cooper, of course. Such a mistake had never happened before (the talk of Jack Palance naming Marisa Tomei the Supporting Actress winner by mistake in 1993 should certainly be laid to rest now), although they did get lucky in 1985 when Laurence Olivier presented Best Picture to Amadeus. It seems he didn't read the card with the winning film on it, but just read the name of the movie at the top of the alphabetical list, which luckily happened to also be the winning film.
Officials from PWC have said that while the possibility of an onstage mistake is "very unlikely," they did intend to take quick action to correct any such mistake. The two representatives from the firm are in the wings on each side of the stage, each with a full complement of envelopes for all the categories. Which is where the error came in last night - Emma Stone's Lead Actress envelope from one side of the stage went out with Leo DiCaprio for presentation to her, but the duplicate envelope from the other side apparently went out with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, instead of the Best Picture envelope. That's got to be a screwup by PWC ... and they didn't exactly take "quick action."
Beatty opened the envelope, looked at the card, realized it said "Emma Stone, La La Land," and was obviously confused. He actually looked in the envelope again, to see if there was a different card in there. He stalled for a time a bit, then handed to card to Dunaway (maybe to see if she could figure it out - instead she just read out the name of the film, which is a totally understandable thing to do after Beatty has been stammering and stalling that long). Of course, one or both of them should have stopped the show and called for help from the wings, since that's what the PWC folks are there for, but, whatever. They didn't. They read what they saw on the card, and announced La La Land.
That's where things should have been corrected. But, no ... the cast and crew of La La Land made their way to the stage, two producers got their hands on Oscars (another clue ... there would have been three if La La Land had actually won), and two people got through their speeches with a third getting started on his. Meanwhile, you could see a flurry of activity onstage behind the microphone, and once you saw the fellow with the headset on, you figured something was up.
Well, it shouldn't have taken that damn long! The PWC reps know what's in the envelopes, they knew when Dunaway announced La La Land that it was wrong, and they should have known they'd better get that corrected right now ... instead, train wreck.
I'm sure this will change procedures for upcoming Oscar presentations, which will be all well and good. This certainly wasn't an earth-shattering error that changed the fates of nations or anything, but it was damn good TV drama. I did feel bad for the La La Land folks who got a couple of minutes worth of joy and excitement, only to be rushed off the stage because somebody screwed up in the wings. Much credit to the producer of La La Land, who was incredibly gracious and heartfelt in announcing the actual winner, Moonlight, and urging them to come up to take their time in the sun, but geez ... you had one job, Price Waterhouse Cooper. One job.
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