And the Oscar goes to … wait a minute, let’s see if we have got it right this time.” The 89th awards decided on by the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will almost certainly be remembered for the most monumental bungle in the institution’s history.
It is also a sad fact of the somewhat transitory nature of the medium of film and awards of any nature which follow, that this one wide-screen slip will be remembered long after the excellence of the acting, producing and cinematography have been subsumed by the next round of Oscars.
The first awards, officially titled the Academy Award of Merit, were made in 1929, and the 3.856kg gold-plated statuette has become an Oscar in popular parlance.
But when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope announcing La La Land as the best picture, hastily changed to Moonlight – with a subsequent embarrassing switch of on-stage personnel – the damage had been well and truly done.
The auditors, who joined the red faces all around, apologised but it was all too late and the red carpet ceremony had been dragged down to something approaching a Keystone Cops comedy.
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