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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, @07:55PM
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!!