AND the most controversial Oscar moment goes to the 2017 Academy Awards, aka the Oscars, as the Best Picture category where Moonlight scooped the award was first wrongly announced as a win for the film La La Land.
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Forget how Moonlight became the first black-themed film with homosexual themes to scoop the award or this year’s Oscars, and being the first time the Best Supporting categories went to black actors akin to the 2002 Oscars when the best actor and actress category were won by blacks.
Yes, forget all of these moments as the 2017 Oscars held last Sunday was overshadowed by the great debacle and has now become arguably the most controversial Oscar night in the awards 83-year-old history.
In what was supposed to be saving the best for last, the night ended on a bad note when the Best Picture which was rightly Moonlight’s, was first announced as a win for the film La La Land.
What happened was when it came time to announce the big winner of the night, the Best Picture, veteran actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway read the wrong card. The two actors had formerly worked together in the 1967 Hollywood classic Bonnie and Clyde.
Upon receiving the envelope with the award winner, Beatty was clearly hesitant in announcing the winner and instead handed it over to Dunaway who quickly declared La La Land the winner.
However, in the most embarrassing moment of the whole night, one of the Academy attendees rushed out to stop one of the producers of La La Land in mid-speech to explain the classic “it is not you but them” speech.
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Afterward, La La Land producer Fred Berger, having heard the news, concluded his brief remarks by saying “we lost, by the way”, clearly agitated. This was quickly followed by La La Land fellow producer Jordan Horowitz stepping back up to announce the real winner as Moonlight.
At first, the audience and probably the viewers, myself included, thought it was an elaborate joke as the presenter of the evening’s event was comedian and late-time talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Unfortunately, this night featured no such reprieve as Horowitz presented the correct card to the camera as proof of Moonlight’s win. Beatty, probably cognisant of how talk show host and comedian Steve Harvey made the same blimp in 2015 when he announced the wrong Miss Universe winner, quickly stepped to the microphone to explain what happened.
Beatty explained that the card he had been given named Emma Stone for her performance in La La Land, hence his confused pause. But, as they say in showbiz that “the show must go on”, Moonlight producers embraced the correction and came on stage to give their acceptance speeches.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a popular media outlet on issues to do with Hollywood in the United States, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) is the accounting firm responsible for tabulating results, preparing the envelopes and handing them to presenters at the Oscars. This involves the firm creating two sets of envelopes per award category, which are kept on opposite sides of the stage for the awards in case of emergencies.
What happened last Sunday was caught in video from the broadcast show where it showed Beatty and Dunaway had been given the back-up envelope marked “Actress in a Leading Role” instead of the Best Picture one.
In a statement on Monday, PwC apologised to Moonlight and La La Land producers, Beatty, Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for Best Picture.
“The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, were immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Kimmel handled the situation,” PwC said.
ABC is one of the big American television networks in the United States that screened last Sunday’s awards.
PwC has been handling the integrity of the awards for the past 83 years for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who hosts the annual Oscars event.
US Weekly reported that Harvey later commented and said; “I felt really good and warm and fuzzy on the inside.” It further reported that Harvey jokingly added “I actually lit a cigar and got a glass of scotch and celebrated”.
Harvey no doubt has been vindicated for his 2015 Miss Universe debacle as the Oscars is the top film award show on the planet!
Anyway, though I would like to go on and on about this embarrassing moment, let us get right into the awards themselves.
The 2017 Oscars held no real surprises as all but one of my predictions for the winners proved to be true.
Actress Emma Stone got Best Actress for La La Land, Casey Affleck got Best Actor (Manchester by the Sea), Mahershala Ali got Best Supporting Actor (Moonlight) and Viola Davis got Best Supporting Actress (Fences). Even Damien Chazelle won Best Director as predicted for directing La La Land.
Where I was wrong, but nearly right (no pun intended), was on the Best Picture winner where I had initially pegged La La Land for glory only for it to go to Moonlight.
Moonlight had many wonderful and powerful performances and no doubt as homosexuality is taboo in black culture, the film having that as a theme most probably helped it be a stand out.
The characterisation of the actors in their respective roles helped bring out key elements in the film. As a refresher course, Moonlight tells the story of Chiron who goes through life of self-identity and coming to terms with his homosexuality, family, friendship, and love told from three points in his life, as child, teen and later as an adult.
The film portrays the vital portrait of contemporary African American life and an intensely personal and poetic meditation. The film’s director, Barry Jenkins, managed to piece the film’s plot, acting and overall story into a cinematic story that seeks to showcase African American life while breaking common taboos.
The 2017 Oscars also represented a big night for people of colour as out of the six top categories, from the overall total of 24, there were three winners which also included the biggest category of the night.
The six top categories are the Best Picture which is the top award, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress and the Best Supporting Actress categories.
With Ali, Davis and the film Moonlight winning gongs, this made it the first time three of these awards have gone to a black-themed film.
Congratulations to all the winners and let us hope next year’s edition will not feature another embarrassing moment.
