I’ve been watching the Oscars all my life, and I can truly saylast night’s telecastwas the most insane I’ve ever seen. Things were odd enough with surprising wins here and there (more on that in a moment), but not only was the wrong Best Picture winner’s name called, twoLa La Landproducers got through their speech before the error was rectified andMoonlightwas unceremoniously named therealBest Picture. So what exactly happened? What were the other big surprises? And what was the cause of the shakeup in this year’s winners? Let’s break it down.
We’ll start with the biggest surprise of the night,the wrong Best Picture winner being called. Seriously. That is amassivescrew-up on the part of the Oscars that resulted in embarrassment for theLa La Landteam and a bittersweet win forMoonlight. While we all thoughtWarren Beattywas simply being cute with his long announcement of the Best Picture winner after opening the envelope, he took to the microphone to explain that the card inside said “Emma Stone,La La Land,” which was the cause of his prolonged introduction. Stone, meanwhile, told reporters backstage that she had her Best Actress card and envelope in hand. So what was Beatty talking about? Is there a bigLa La Land-gate conspiracy afoot?
Not at all. It turns out,there are two envelopes for each category, one held in each briefcase by the two PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants on either side of the stage. So while Stone was given the envelope thatLeonardo DiCaprioread, the other unopened envelope somehow ended up in Beatty’s hands on the other side of the stage (PricewaterhouseCoopers is investigating the situation to see how this happened).
This is, again, probably the biggest misstep in Oscar history. Not only was theLa La Landteam faced with a very public disappointment, but the correction onstage led to a muddled response to theMoonlightwin as the audience was still trying to figure out A. What was going on and B. If this was an elaborate (and very inappropriate) gag byJimmy Kimmel. The win forMoonlightalone would’ve given us a show-stopping upset moment and no doubt an emotional speech from writer/directorBarry Jenkins, but instead we had a staged mixed with stunned/angry/devastatedLa La Landfolks and shocked/bewildered/elatedMoonlightpeople. What should have been a towering win for the biggest prize of the night was, frankly, a disaster.
But setting aside the circus surrounding the Best Picture win, the actualwinforMoonlightis a huge deal. Going into the awards,La La Landhad a record-tying number of nominations and was the heavy favorite to take home the Best Picture prize; I was so certain of its inevitability that I now have a hat to eat. How did this happen? What caused one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history?
The simple answer isMoonlightwon more votes, but the interesting part about this year’s Oscars is that, in the wake of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Academy presidentCheryl Boone Isaacstook serious steps to diversify the membership. Not only did the Academy instill new rules meant to phase out older and inactive members, but of the record 683 new members invited to join the voting ranks, 41% were people of color and 46% were female. This large block of younger and more diverse voters makes up about 10% of the Academy voting body as a whole, and I think it had a serious effect on the outcome of this year’s awards.
The preferential ballot—which is used only in the Best Picture category—no doubt helpedMoonlight, as the film likely scored a lot of #2 and #3 mentions. WhereasLa La Land, a film that seemed to grow more divisive with each passing week, may have landed more than a few #8 and #9 slots. Some were expectingLa La Landto sail to a Best Picture win on a first ballot alone thanks to a slew of #1 votes as we shrugged off angryLa La Landeditorials as simply the silly backlash that materializes for every Best Picture frontrunner, but it appears the race was much closer than we thought.
Moonlight’s win is also meaningful. This is a tiny budget film from A24 (the studio’s first Best Picture win) about a young gay black man in America. Conventional wisdom will tell you it’s movies likeThe ArtistorArgothat win Best Picture—agreeable movies that don’t really ruffle too many feathers—butMoonlightmarks the latest in a run of winners like12 Years a SlaveandSpotlightthat seem almosttoogood to win Best Picture. Is this an outlier or a sign of things to come?
The shakeup wasn’t just seen in Best Picture. Best Sound Mixing is a category that almostalwaysgoes to a musical if nominated (see:Les Miserables,Dreamgirls), soLa La Landwas the heavy favorite to win. But in a pretty surprising twist,Hacksaw Ridgetook it. The BAFTA-approvedHacksaw Ridgealso won Best Film Editing overLa La Land(a sign the musical maybe wasn’t destined for Best Picture glory after all),Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Themwon Costume Design over favoritesJackieandLa La Land, and even Best Makeup and Hairstyling threw a wrench into Oscar prognosticators’ ballots by going with the critically pummeledSuicide SquadoverStar Trek Beyond.
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While precursor statistics can only serve as a guide for prognosticators like myself, it was hard to ignore the fact that the Screen Actors Guild winner for Best Actor has matched up with the Oscar for Best Actor every time since 2003, when the SAG instead went toJohnny DeppforPirates of the Caribbean. So even thoughCasey Affleckwas winning all the critics awards, the SAG win forDenzel Washingtonsignaled that the Oscar glory was probably his. Wrong! The Academy still went with Affleck, cutting down yet another statistic and further slaughteringmy pitiful predictions ballot(spoiler alert: this year was a record-low for me).
All of this to say, this was aweirdOscars year, even without the Best Picture kerfuffle. And I’m not complaining, I’m happy with most of the winners. But that so many categories flew in the face of long-held wisdom or Oscar statistics or any of the other things prognosticators like myself latch onto to guide our picks signals to me that this shakeup in Academy voters could be marking a sea change. Instead of following the same old trends, these voters this year really seemed to go with choices they felt truly deserved to win. That’s a nice change of pace, and I’m incredibly curious to see what the makeup of the new Academy members this year is, and if next year’s Oscars also bucks tradition.
As for the telecast itself, the Best Picture disaster is going to cast a pall over everything, but I actually thought the show that producersMichael De LucaandJenifer Toddput together was the right mix of entertainment and celebration. The video montages of select categories was a nice touch, and you really couldn’t have asked for a better opening number thanJustin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”Jimmy Kimmelwas a swell host with just enough subversion to keep things interesting, while also showing enough deference so as not to disrespect those up for awards. We probably could’ve done without two or three of his bits, but while they caused the show to run long, I found most of them quite funny.
But yeah,La La LandproducerJordan Horowitzcalmly and respectfully telling the audience thatMoonlightactually won Best Picture is probably what we’re all going to remember the most from this year’s Oscars. Again, it’s probably the nuttiest Oscar moment in history, and while I’m now doubting my own predictions in pretty much every aspect, what youcanbet on the Oscars taking triple precautions next year to ensure this kind of announcement mistake never happens again.
