Meet The Man Who Wrecked Oscars
Jimmy Kimmel and Warren Beatty on Sunday night (Photo: Eddy Chen/ABC)
Oscar night's best picture fiasco — in which the top award was mistakingly given to La La Land before it was taken back and handed to the actual victor, Moonlight —
continues to be a car wreck that keeps replaying in slow motion. And as
it does, more details are emerging about how the unprecedented gaffe
affected those at the center of the pile-up.
Having just felt the elation of being called to the stage as a best picture winner, La La Land
producer Fred Berger sensed something was wrong. Standing alongside
his fellow producers Jordan Horowitz and Marc Platt, he looked out from
the stage and saw a crewmember next to the timer clock waving his arms
frantically and furiously shaking his head no.
Then Berger heard someone nearby yell, "it's wrong! Moonlight
won!" At first, he wondered if an interloper, a protester of some kind,
had wandered onstage. But then stage manager Gary Natoli himself rushed
onstage, carrying a red envelope of his own, showing it to Berger and
Horowitz as Platt gave his acceptance speech. At that moment, Berger and
Horowitz realized La La Land hadn't won — Moonlight
had. In the audience, several Lionsgate executives were hugging each
other and jumping up and down when one of their colleagues uttered
ominously: "Something is wrong with the card."
Platt,
who was unaware of what had happened, wrapped up and pushed Berger to
give his acceptance speech. At first Berger said no. "But I thought, 'I
really want to thank my wife and my family,'" he told THR later that
night. So he did. And then he ended his speech by saying: "We lost, by
the way." Horowitz rushed in and said "There's a mistake — Moonlight, you won best picture."
It
was the biggest blunder in Oscar history, with many in the media
initially blaming presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. But several
hours after the event, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that
tabulates and hands out the results, took responsibility for the
mistake and issued an apology to all involved.
The
chaos that ensued was all because Beatty had been handed the wrong
envelope — he was given the extra copy of Emma Stone's best actress card
— by Brian Cullinan, chairman of the U.S. board of PwC.
Sharing Academy
Award duties with colleague Martha Ruiz, Cullinan is known for being
enamored with Hollywood and tweeted a photo of Stone backstage after her
win, just minutes before he handed the wrong envelope to Beatty. The
only two people who know the results ahead of time are the two
accountants from PwC, who each have a full set of envelopes and stand in
opposite wings of the theater since they don't know from which side the
presenters will enter.
Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan from PwC at the Oscars on Sunday night (Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
No
one has yet offered an explanation why the PwC accountants didn't
immediately correct the mistake, especially when Beatty was clearly
confused and paused before showing the card to Dunaway, who announced, "La La Land!" It took two minutes and 25 seconds from when Dunaway said the name of the film to when Horowitz said Moonlight was the real winner, an eternity under such circumstances.
"There
was definitely a delay before they told stage manager Gary Natoli,"
says a source. Natoli in turn informed the show's producers, Michael De
Luca and Jennifer Todd, who were backstage watching the monitors and
director Glenn Weiss. Natoli rushed onstage and informed the La La Land
team what was happening. Host Jimmy Kimmel, who was seated in the
audience because he was planning to wrap up the show with a bit with
frenemy Matt Damon, saw that something was wrong and rushed onstage as
well.
There
were possibly other hitches that might have set the stage for the
disaster. Sources say there was an intricate set change planned that
would have given Beatty and Dunaway a more dramatic entrance, but it was
scrapped at the last minute. There's a chance that also threw off the
flow of the event and perhaps contributed to the chaos.
With
the dust now settling, the question becomes who will take the fall for
the greatest flub in Oscar history? The Academy normally has an awards
committee hold a show postmortem within one month of the annual
broadcast, and the committee then takes its analysis to the Academy
board, which will hold its next meeting March 28. But sources say there
was an meeting right after the show, and that Academy president Cheryl
Boone Isaacs and CEO Dawn Hudson were livid when reps for PwC didn't
immediately take responsibility for the error and initially resisted
putting out any kind of statement.
PwC, which has overseen the Academy's ballot-counting process for 83 years, released its statement of apology three hours later. PwC followed up with a second apology,
which it described as a "revised statement," Monday evening. Saying it
took "full responsibility for the series of mistakes and breaches of
established protocols," it singled out Cullinan for his tweeting during
the event and for handing Beatty the wrong envelope."
The
Academy subsequently issued an apology of its own — to Beatty, Dunaway,
the filmmakers and fans. 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."
Some
believe the Academy should sever ties with the accounting agency for
future awards shows, despite their long-standing relationship. But
sources say the Academy could find it very difficult to hire a new
accounting company because of the complicated system used for voting
tabulation as well as the fact that PwC handles other accounting chores
for the Academy.
The now-deleted Tweet (Photo: Twitter)
Lawyers
surveyed don't expect the Oscars flub to result in litigation by the
Academy against PwC, although if the Academy wanted to get aggressive,
it could attempt to argue that PricewaterhouseCoopers breached a duty of
care.
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