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Think YOUR job is difficult? Hey, there's a guy in Hollywood who has to hand the right envelope to the right person at the right time.
Oh, wait. That sounds really easy—yet it got screwed up.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports:
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are about to announce best picture, the culmination of entertainment's biggest awards show. Beatty opens a red envelope and looks at the card inside, giving a double-take. He looks inside the envelope to see if there's anything else there.
BEATTY: "The Academy Award..."
He pauses, looks at the envelope again.
BEATTY: "For best picture..."
He pauses again and looks offstage, then hands the envelope to Dunaway, who gives it a quick glance.
DUNAWAY: "La La Land."
The audience applauds, as the cast, crew, and producers of "La La Land" take the stage to accept what many had anticipated, the coveted honor of best picture. Producers Jason Horowitz and Marc Platt give speeches, but something seems amiss as Platt speaks. There's commotion among the people standing behind him as a man wearing headphones appears and checks red envelopes being held by producers.
[...] HOROWITZ: "There's a mistake. 'Moonlight', you guys won best picture. This is not a joke."
PLATT: "This is not a joke. I'm afraid they read the wrong thing."
[...] [Oscars host Jimmy] KIMMEL: "Guys. This is very unfortunate what happened. Personally, I blame Steve Harvey for this."
[...] KIMMEL: "Warren, what did you do?"
BEATTY: "I want to tell you what happened. I opened the envelope and it said 'Emma Stone, La La Land'. That's why I took such a long look at Faye and you. I wasn't trying to be funny."
takyon: 89th Academy Awards
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @07:22PM (11 children)
My guess at the rest of the story:
If, as tfs says, Warren reported correctly: "I opened the envelope and it said 'Emma Stone, La La Land'."
Who got the envelope for Best Actress? Seems likely there was a switcheroo and this one probably said, 'La La Land' inside it. After the Best Actress presenter covered up the error (perhaps subconsciously) by verbally adding in the missing 'Emma Stone', they should have reported the problem to the back stage manager.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Monday February 27 2017, @07:36PM (6 children)
There are 2 sets of envelopes, each goes to one of 2 employees of the accounting firm responsible for the counting. One person is on the left of the stage, the other on the right. So 1 person screwed up by giving the wrong envelope to Beatty, I'm guessing they won't be doing the Oscars next year.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @07:48PM (2 children)
So 1 person screwed up by giving the wrong envelope to Beatty, I'm guessing they won't be doing the Oscars next year.
Or not. I'm not saying it was planned, but it sure did generate a lot of buzz.
After all, the story would not have been posted here if it weren't for the mix-up.
There is a saying in hollywood - I don't care what you say about me, just as long as you spell my name right.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)
I'm not saying it was planned, but it sure did generate a lot of buzz.
Wake up sheeple!
Everybody involved in this crisis are actors.
It was obviously a planned stunt in order to take power from Price Waterhouse Coopers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @11:30PM
Remember Carnac? [wikipedia.org]
Apparently, that was a better system of custody than what happened last night.
The balloting, counting, and the envelopes are the exclusive responsibility of PricewaterhouseCoopers right up to the moment the envelope is handed to the presenter.
As Snotnose noted above, there are duplicate envelopes.
AC #472491 notes more specifically that it's for convenience.
The logical way to handle this would be to have a rack/bin for each envelope custodian.
When an award has been given out, the duplicate envelope for that is binned.
Have the guys assigned to the task have dry-run practices.
I mean, how hard can it be to get this right?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @07:55PM
Interesting, so it's a combination of:
Duplication of the data (two sets of identical envelopes?) so that the presenters can come onstage from either direction and be handed an envelope at the last moment before walking out.
Counting error by one person, who didn't keep up with the flow--they need to discard the matching envelopes to those given out by the other side of the stage.
Safer to have the presenters all come out the same way, past one accountant, with one stack of envelopes.
This whole thing brought back memories of high school and stage crew. Many of the actors were stuck-up jerks, so we retaliated by trying to hit them with (lightweight) flats that we flew up and down during scene changes.
For "The Wiz", we built a rotating covered bridge so the actors could walk on and then we would rotate 180 deg...and they would walk off and be back where they started. Worked great the first two nights. On the final night, the crew guy on the switch let it spin around a few times. It stopped past the correct clock angle and he reversed it (3-phase motor, instant reverse) to leave it in the right place. The actor trapped inside was pretty dizzy when he staggered out!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @01:01AM (1 child)
Seems UI engineers are destroying other industries too. Is it really that difficult to have the award type and name on the same card?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 28 2017, @02:13AM
They did have both on the same card.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday February 27 2017, @07:38PM (3 children)
Who got the envelope for Best Actress? Seems likely there was a switcheroo and this one probably said, 'La La Land' inside it.
Except that the apparently missing card would have said "Moonlight," not "La La Land."
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday February 27 2017, @07:58PM (2 children)
While the other (correct one) read:
Clearly Beatty was under a lot of pressure and Dunaway didn't really even look at the card before reading the movie name, but it's possible they *could* have noticed that PWC had screwed up and simply said something about appearing to have the one card and made a joke of it while waiting for it to be checked and sorted out. Not ideal, but still better than what actually happened.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday February 27 2017, @08:58PM (1 child)
they *could* have noticed that PWC had screwed up and simply said something about appearing to have the one card and made a joke of it while waiting for it to be checked and sorted out. Not ideal, but still better than what actually happened.
Perhaps not ideal, but so close to ideal that it would have made no noticeable difference...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday February 28 2017, @08:44AM
People will react the damndest ways to unrehearsed situations.
Ever seen the reels of bloopers even experienced actors do?
Except this one went live.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]