I'll give it another try because you're right that first part was a rap for me.
2017 Oscars Nominees...Damn they LOVE that La LA Land huh?
- Thread starter playahaitian
- Start date
The Rock,Janelle and Affleck were like
Meryl looking like she about to faint 
The Rock,Janelle and Affleck were like
ya I'm puzzled @ anyone tryna act like this taints moonlights victory...for black folks a win is a win...I'll tell you whose nite was tainted tho...everyone who got up on that stage ready to celebrate la la land...la la leave the stage please
ya I'm puzzled @ anyone tryna act like this taints moonlights victory...for black folks a win is a win...I'll tell you whose nite was tainted tho...everyone who got up on that stage ready to celebrate la la land...la la leave the stage please
you saw how fast Faye Dunaway dipped off stage..
Hailee Steinfeld should get the NPO treatment(no geechiedan)
Hailee Steinfeld is bad young 20 year old hollywood starlet, I thought she was gonna break up Khaled's happy home
you saw how fast Faye Dunaway dipped off stage..
Hailee Steinfeld should get the NPO treatment(no geechiedan)
the announcer has pre written cards for ALL the nominees in each category...
once he hears the winner announced?
he reads off THAT specific card.
He HEARD LA LA LAND
so he read the La La Land card
Khaled was trying to smash even though he married..?
That have those prepared for ALL nominees for all categories. They girl will just read the corresponding info for whatever name is read out as then winner.
On 1 of his snaps he looked like he was trying to get it in with her, can't blame him for trying with a young starlet half his age
That makes sense, but it would also allow the announcer the opportunity to read the wrong one by accident, even if they get it right on stage.
BTW, in the In Memoriam segment, they showed a lady who's still alive
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/entertainment/academy-awards-in-memoriam/
The Rock,Janelle and Affleck were like
This is an amazing shot. The amount of stars in this one photo....
very very good point
Makes sense...
Warren Beatty Asks Academy President to Clarify Oscar Fiasco
2:48 PM PST 2/28/2017 by the Associated Press
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Warren Beatty onstage at the 89th Academy Awards
"I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible," said the actor.
Warren Beatty says Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs should "publicly clarify" what happened during Sunday night's best picture presentation "as soon as possible."
Beatty on Tuesday released a statement to the Associated Press in which he declined to comment further on the debacle that led to him and co-presenter Faye Dunaway mistakenly reading La La Land as best picture winner rather than Moonlight. Instead, he urged the Academy to answer questions.
"I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible," said Beatty.
Representatives for the Academy didn't immediately comment Tuesday.
Since Sunday's broadcast, the Academy has largely left the explaining to PwC, the accounting firm that has taken the blame for La La Land mistakenly being read as the best picture winner by Beatty and Faye Dunaway. PwC, which is in charge of tabulating the winners, has said partner Brian Cullinan mistakenly handed them the wrong envelope.
The Academy didn't release a statement of its own until late Monday.
"We deeply regret the mistakes that were made during the presentation of the best picture category during last night's Oscar ceremony," it read. "We apologize to the entire cast and crew of La La Land and Moonlight, whose experience was profoundly altered by this error. We salute the tremendous grace they displayed under the circumstances. To all involved — including our presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the filmmakers, and our fans watching worldwide — we apologize."
On Monday, the Academy said it has spent Sunday night and the following day "investigating the circumstances" and "will determine what actions are appropriate going forward."
Neither PwC or the Academy has commented on whether Cullinan's use of social media was a factor in the error. The PwC partner tweeted a behind-the-scenes photo of best actress winner Emma Stone moments before the best picture announcement. The tweet was later deleted.
As per protocol, Cullinan and PwC colleague Martha Ruiz toted briefcases to the awards via the red carpet, each holding an identical set of envelopes for the show's 24 categories. The accountants are also supposed to memorize the winners. During the telecast, the accountants were stationed in the Dolby Theatre wings, one stage left and one stage right, to give presenters their category's envelope before they went on stage.
Most presenters entered stage right, where Cullinan was posted and where he handed Beatty and Dunaway the errant envelope. Yet the previous award, best actress, had been presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, who entered stage left and received the envelope from Ruiz. That left a duplicate, unopened envelope for best actress at stage right.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...academy-president-clarify-oscar-fiasco-981670
2:48 PM PST 2/28/2017 by the Associated Press
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Warren Beatty onstage at the 89th Academy Awards
"I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible," said the actor.
Warren Beatty says Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs should "publicly clarify" what happened during Sunday night's best picture presentation "as soon as possible."
Beatty on Tuesday released a statement to the Associated Press in which he declined to comment further on the debacle that led to him and co-presenter Faye Dunaway mistakenly reading La La Land as best picture winner rather than Moonlight. Instead, he urged the Academy to answer questions.
"I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible," said Beatty.
Representatives for the Academy didn't immediately comment Tuesday.
Since Sunday's broadcast, the Academy has largely left the explaining to PwC, the accounting firm that has taken the blame for La La Land mistakenly being read as the best picture winner by Beatty and Faye Dunaway. PwC, which is in charge of tabulating the winners, has said partner Brian Cullinan mistakenly handed them the wrong envelope.
The Academy didn't release a statement of its own until late Monday.
"We deeply regret the mistakes that were made during the presentation of the best picture category during last night's Oscar ceremony," it read. "We apologize to the entire cast and crew of La La Land and Moonlight, whose experience was profoundly altered by this error. We salute the tremendous grace they displayed under the circumstances. To all involved — including our presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the filmmakers, and our fans watching worldwide — we apologize."
On Monday, the Academy said it has spent Sunday night and the following day "investigating the circumstances" and "will determine what actions are appropriate going forward."
Neither PwC or the Academy has commented on whether Cullinan's use of social media was a factor in the error. The PwC partner tweeted a behind-the-scenes photo of best actress winner Emma Stone moments before the best picture announcement. The tweet was later deleted.
As per protocol, Cullinan and PwC colleague Martha Ruiz toted briefcases to the awards via the red carpet, each holding an identical set of envelopes for the show's 24 categories. The accountants are also supposed to memorize the winners. During the telecast, the accountants were stationed in the Dolby Theatre wings, one stage left and one stage right, to give presenters their category's envelope before they went on stage.
Most presenters entered stage right, where Cullinan was posted and where he handed Beatty and Dunaway the errant envelope. Yet the previous award, best actress, had been presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, who entered stage left and received the envelope from Ruiz. That left a duplicate, unopened envelope for best actress at stage right.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...academy-president-clarify-oscar-fiasco-981670
Why the Oscar Pundits Got It Wrong This Year
12:33 PM PST 2/28/2017 by Stephen Galloway
Kevin Winter/Getty
'Moonlight' director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney onstage at the 89th Academy Awards.
We all predicted that 'La La Land' would win best picture, and we all owe our readers a mea culpa.
The pundits got it wrong. I don’t mean a few of them; I mean almost every single one, at least among those with any media following and any credibility, my colleagues and I included. We all predicted that La La Land would win best picture, and we all owe our readers a mea culpa.
On Sunday night, a friend emailed me to say he’d bet $300 on Moonlight with 8-1 odds — about the same odds any of us would have given him, if we were even that generous. Had he told me in advance, I’d have scoffed; now I’m eating humble pie.
The thought of the Academy rewarding a $1.5 million movie with an all-black cast its top award was unimaginable — a movie, at that, that had failed to win the big litmus-test awards.
There are lessons in this for all of us — from the journalists toiling in their office bubbles to the studio executives who consistently have avoided taking chances on minority-themed pictures. What Moonlight’s victory tells us, above all, is this: Just as so many of us discovered during the recent presidential election, we’ve lost touch with the voters.
During the presidential election, prognosticators overlooked vast swaths of the country teeming with anger and ready for change; during the Oscar campaign, our own prognosticators overlooked a large group of outsiders hailing from the indie and international worlds.
During the election, observers failed to understand how voting systems can make a gigantic difference to the final result; during the Oscar campaign, we failed to give full weight to the impact of a preferential voting system that may benefit less-polarizing films, even if others get more first-round votes.
READ MORE
Oscars: How an Accountant's Tweet Turned Into the Biggest Mistake in Academy History
There are other lessons, too. Here are five takeaways:
1. SAY GOODBYE TO #OSCARSSOWHITE (FOR NOW)
This week’s Oscars — coming three years after 12 Years a Slave was named best picture — gave the lie to any notion that the Academy as a whole is prejudiced. I argued last year — the year of #OscarsSoWhite, when I felt ashamed to see so few people of color receive nominations — that the fault lay more with the studios than the Academy, more with the men and women greenlighting pictures than the ones who get to vote on the finished films. God knows there’s enough blame to go around, but the real problem lies with the studio heads and independent financiers who have refused to back projects starring people of color. The success of Moonlight, Fences and Hidden Figures alone should make Hollywood question outdated notions of what audiences want. So should what’s happening in television, where African-American actresses such as Viola Davis and Kerry Washington have proved their drawing power. Let’s give the Academy kudos this year for recognizing the merits of a tiny movie featuring characters from a social setting most of its members know nothing about.
2. SAY HELLO TO #PUNDITSSOWHITE
Rarely has the gap between expectation and result been as big as it was Sunday night. If the onstage fiasco (when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway named the wrong best picture) hadn’t overshadowed everything else, there would have been gasps when Moonlight trounced its opponents. Why? Because the depth of its support had failed to register with the analysts calling each play. Time for our pundits to find better sources. Too often, a narrow group creates an echo chamber in which outside voices fail to be heard. That group consists of a few hundred people — awards campaigners, along with older and less diverse Academy members — who appear and re-appear at the same screenings and cocktail parties, along with the journalists who engage with them and repeat what they’re all saying. As with any opinion poll, we need to sample a bigger crowd. Minority members, foreign members, younger as well as older ones, all need to be canvassed — and not just by reporters who bear an unhealthy resemblance to the people they’re currently canvassing.
3. FORGET THE OTHER AWARDS SHOWS
Awards beget other awards. Or so it is believed. It’s no coincidence that one publicist, complaining about the coverage her client received, asked that we show a photo of him receiving an award. That would plant the seeds for other voters to think of him in awards terms, too. But what these Oscars showed was that the different awards overlap far less than we might think, and certainly far less than in recent years. Not even the hitherto-reliable Producers Guild and SAG awards were able to tip us off to the fact that Moonlight was going to win.
4. RECOGNIZE THE ACADEMY HAS CHANGED
The massive effort the Academy underwent to broaden its membership, adding more women, people of color, indie and international filmmakers, may finally have paid off — and that will have to factor in to future awards campaigns. In the past, only a few outliers (Harvey Weinstein, most notably) were adept at targeting members who lay outside the vast voting pools of Los Angeles and New York; now everyone will have to learn to do so. Hollywood may still be the center of the business and of the Academy itself, but other power centers are beginning to emerge and campaigners will have to target them.
5. UNDERSTAND THE VOTING SYSTEM BETTER
In the old days, winning the Oscar was about who got the most votes. Now members rank their choices in order of preference — and in a tight race, those second- and third-place votes truly matter. One theory (unproved) is that La La Land didn’t get enough first-place votes to lock up a win, and was too polarizing to pick up as many second-place votes as Moonlight did. If true, campaigners will now have to encourage voters (1) to think seriously about their second-place choices; and (2) exclude any movie from their ballot that is considered serious competition.
12:33 PM PST 2/28/2017 by Stephen Galloway
- EMAIL ME
Kevin Winter/Getty
'Moonlight' director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney onstage at the 89th Academy Awards.
We all predicted that 'La La Land' would win best picture, and we all owe our readers a mea culpa.
The pundits got it wrong. I don’t mean a few of them; I mean almost every single one, at least among those with any media following and any credibility, my colleagues and I included. We all predicted that La La Land would win best picture, and we all owe our readers a mea culpa.
On Sunday night, a friend emailed me to say he’d bet $300 on Moonlight with 8-1 odds — about the same odds any of us would have given him, if we were even that generous. Had he told me in advance, I’d have scoffed; now I’m eating humble pie.
The thought of the Academy rewarding a $1.5 million movie with an all-black cast its top award was unimaginable — a movie, at that, that had failed to win the big litmus-test awards.
There are lessons in this for all of us — from the journalists toiling in their office bubbles to the studio executives who consistently have avoided taking chances on minority-themed pictures. What Moonlight’s victory tells us, above all, is this: Just as so many of us discovered during the recent presidential election, we’ve lost touch with the voters.
During the presidential election, prognosticators overlooked vast swaths of the country teeming with anger and ready for change; during the Oscar campaign, our own prognosticators overlooked a large group of outsiders hailing from the indie and international worlds.
During the election, observers failed to understand how voting systems can make a gigantic difference to the final result; during the Oscar campaign, we failed to give full weight to the impact of a preferential voting system that may benefit less-polarizing films, even if others get more first-round votes.
READ MORE
Oscars: How an Accountant's Tweet Turned Into the Biggest Mistake in Academy History
There are other lessons, too. Here are five takeaways:
1. SAY GOODBYE TO #OSCARSSOWHITE (FOR NOW)
This week’s Oscars — coming three years after 12 Years a Slave was named best picture — gave the lie to any notion that the Academy as a whole is prejudiced. I argued last year — the year of #OscarsSoWhite, when I felt ashamed to see so few people of color receive nominations — that the fault lay more with the studios than the Academy, more with the men and women greenlighting pictures than the ones who get to vote on the finished films. God knows there’s enough blame to go around, but the real problem lies with the studio heads and independent financiers who have refused to back projects starring people of color. The success of Moonlight, Fences and Hidden Figures alone should make Hollywood question outdated notions of what audiences want. So should what’s happening in television, where African-American actresses such as Viola Davis and Kerry Washington have proved their drawing power. Let’s give the Academy kudos this year for recognizing the merits of a tiny movie featuring characters from a social setting most of its members know nothing about.
2. SAY HELLO TO #PUNDITSSOWHITE
Rarely has the gap between expectation and result been as big as it was Sunday night. If the onstage fiasco (when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway named the wrong best picture) hadn’t overshadowed everything else, there would have been gasps when Moonlight trounced its opponents. Why? Because the depth of its support had failed to register with the analysts calling each play. Time for our pundits to find better sources. Too often, a narrow group creates an echo chamber in which outside voices fail to be heard. That group consists of a few hundred people — awards campaigners, along with older and less diverse Academy members — who appear and re-appear at the same screenings and cocktail parties, along with the journalists who engage with them and repeat what they’re all saying. As with any opinion poll, we need to sample a bigger crowd. Minority members, foreign members, younger as well as older ones, all need to be canvassed — and not just by reporters who bear an unhealthy resemblance to the people they’re currently canvassing.
3. FORGET THE OTHER AWARDS SHOWS
Awards beget other awards. Or so it is believed. It’s no coincidence that one publicist, complaining about the coverage her client received, asked that we show a photo of him receiving an award. That would plant the seeds for other voters to think of him in awards terms, too. But what these Oscars showed was that the different awards overlap far less than we might think, and certainly far less than in recent years. Not even the hitherto-reliable Producers Guild and SAG awards were able to tip us off to the fact that Moonlight was going to win.
4. RECOGNIZE THE ACADEMY HAS CHANGED
The massive effort the Academy underwent to broaden its membership, adding more women, people of color, indie and international filmmakers, may finally have paid off — and that will have to factor in to future awards campaigns. In the past, only a few outliers (Harvey Weinstein, most notably) were adept at targeting members who lay outside the vast voting pools of Los Angeles and New York; now everyone will have to learn to do so. Hollywood may still be the center of the business and of the Academy itself, but other power centers are beginning to emerge and campaigners will have to target them.
5. UNDERSTAND THE VOTING SYSTEM BETTER
In the old days, winning the Oscar was about who got the most votes. Now members rank their choices in order of preference — and in a tight race, those second- and third-place votes truly matter. One theory (unproved) is that La La Land didn’t get enough first-place votes to lock up a win, and was too polarizing to pick up as many second-place votes as Moonlight did. If true, campaigners will now have to encourage voters (1) to think seriously about their second-place choices; and (2) exclude any movie from their ballot that is considered serious competition.
Oscars: How an Accountant's Tweet Turned Into the Biggest Mistake in Academy History
6:40 AM PST 2/28/2017 by Rebecca Ford , Pamela McClintock
Chaos erupted both onstage and behind the scenes after a starstruck accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope for best picture.
Oscar night's best picture fiasco — in which the top award was
mistakenly given to La La Land before it was taken back and handed to the actual victor, Moonlight — continues to be a car wreck 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 some commotion and yelling coming from backstage. At first, he wondered if an interloper, a protester of some kind, had wandered onstage. A stagehand walked onstage (which should never happen during a live show) and showed Berger and Horowitz the envelope that said "La La Land, Emma Stone" on it as Platt gave his acceptance speech. Something was going very wrong, but in the chaos, Berger and Horowitz still didn't know what was happening. 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, also unaware of what had happened, wrapped up his speech and pushed Berger toward the microphone. At first Berger said no, but with the mic sitting open, he had to talk. 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 came about 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.
No one has yet offered an explanation as to 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 told 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.
Christopher Polk/Getty Images
La La Land producer Fred Berger embraces Moonlight star Mahershala Ali.
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 a 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, tried to suggest it was Beatty's fault 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. It 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.
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.
"The contract could have spelled out the duties of PricewaterhouseCoopers including an obligation to present the right results," says Devin McRae, a litigator at Early Sullivan. "They've been doing this so long, they might have developed a contract that's really detailed. The Academy might attempt to get a price break, telling PwC, 'You have to take a hit. This is the worst possible error you can make.'"
In this scenario, a dispute would reach the courtroom only if the parties couldn't agree on financial compensation for the supposed negligence. If the Academy did sue, McRae says it would be challenged to show damages. The case would likely also explore what was the proximate cause for the flub.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...turned-biggest-mistake-academy-history-981276
6:40 AM PST 2/28/2017 by Rebecca Ford , Pamela McClintock
Chaos erupted both onstage and behind the scenes after a starstruck accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope for best picture.
Oscar night's best picture fiasco — in which the top award was
mistakenly given to La La Land before it was taken back and handed to the actual victor, Moonlight — continues to be a car wreck 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 some commotion and yelling coming from backstage. At first, he wondered if an interloper, a protester of some kind, had wandered onstage. A stagehand walked onstage (which should never happen during a live show) and showed Berger and Horowitz the envelope that said "La La Land, Emma Stone" on it as Platt gave his acceptance speech. Something was going very wrong, but in the chaos, Berger and Horowitz still didn't know what was happening. 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, also unaware of what had happened, wrapped up his speech and pushed Berger toward the microphone. At first Berger said no, but with the mic sitting open, he had to talk. 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 came about 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.
No one has yet offered an explanation as to 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 told 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.
Christopher Polk/Getty Images
La La Land producer Fred Berger embraces Moonlight star Mahershala Ali.
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 a 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, tried to suggest it was Beatty's fault 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. It 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.
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.
"The contract could have spelled out the duties of PricewaterhouseCoopers including an obligation to present the right results," says Devin McRae, a litigator at Early Sullivan. "They've been doing this so long, they might have developed a contract that's really detailed. The Academy might attempt to get a price break, telling PwC, 'You have to take a hit. This is the worst possible error you can make.'"
In this scenario, a dispute would reach the courtroom only if the parties couldn't agree on financial compensation for the supposed negligence. If the Academy did sue, McRae says it would be challenged to show damages. The case would likely also explore what was the proximate cause for the flub.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...turned-biggest-mistake-academy-history-981276
Well damn...
The 2 big bosses at price Waterhouse are permanently banned from any future oscars...
Oakley laughing.
The 2 big bosses at price Waterhouse are permanently banned from any future oscars...
Oakley laughing.