Spoiler: Everything was fine this time around.
At the 2017 Academy Awards, viewers were stunned when the true winner of the Best Picture category turned out to be Moonlight instead of La La Land.
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Picture it: Faye Dunaway standing beside a bewildered-looking Warren Beatty, as she took the envelope from him and confidently announced that La La Land had won Best Picture.
Then moments later Jordan Horowitz, producer of the “winning” film, rushed to the microphone and said, “There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture.”
Horowitz reiterated that this wasn’t a joke and was in fact very, very real. He even went as far as holding up the card featuring text of the actual winning film as definitive proof — it was a MOMENT.
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And like all big, shocking, wow-did-that-just-really-happen moments, the Oscars made use of the memorable incident by making jokes about it on Sunday night.
ABC
“This year when you hear your named called, don’t get up right away,” Kimmel joked at the beginning of his monologue. “Just give us a minute. We don’t want another thing.”
ABC
They even parodied it in their promos for Sunday’s show, with Beatty serving as therapist for host Jimmy Kimmel as he struggled to come to terms with the mess.
Kimmel said the chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company that creates the coveted Oscar, said that its “singular focus” this year would be “delivering the correct envelops.” Kimmel then joked, “Just out of curiosity, what was your focus the other 89 years?”
ABC
Finally, when the time for Best Picture came, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty graced the stage, just like they did during the 2017 ceremony, but things went more smoothly this year.
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This time Beatty read the card, letting Guillermo del Toro know that he was the recipient of the night’s top honor for The Shape of Water — all was well.
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