‘MOONLIGHT’ WIN ECLIPSES MIX-UP
Oops: ‘La La Land’ gets best picture nod, then Oscar officials realize the mistake
LOS ANGELES — Oscar winner, take two.
Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” — not, as it turned out, “La La Land” — won best picture at the Academy Awards in a historic Oscar upset and an unprecedented fiasco that saw one winner swapped for another while the “La La Land” producers were in mid-speech.
Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway apparently took the wrong envelope — the one for best actress winner Emma Stone — onto the stage. When they realized the mistake, representatives for ballot tabulators Pricewaterhouse-Coopers
raced onstage to stop the acceptance speech.
But backstage, Stone said she was holding with her envelope at the time. “I think everyone’s in a state of confusion still,” said Stone. Later the actress, who pledged her deep love of “Moonlight,” added, “Is that the craziest Oscar moment of all time? Cool!”
It was, nevertheless, a shocking upset, considering that “La La Land” came in with 14 nominations, a record that tied it with “Titanic” and “All About Eve.” Barry Jenkins’ tender, bathed-in-blue coming-ofage drama, made for just $1.5 million, is an unusually small Oscar winner. Having made just over $22 million as of Sunday at the box office, it’s one of the lowest grossing best-picture winners ever.
“Even in my dreams this cannot be true,” said an astonished Jenkins, once he reached the stage.
Host Jimmy Kimmel had come forward to inform the cast that “Moonlight” had indeed won, showing the inside of the envelope as proof. “I knew I would screw this up,” said Kimmel, a first-time host. “I promise to never come back.”
Producer Jordan Horwitz then graciously passed his statue to the “Moonlight” producers.
Up until the chaotic end, the telecast had seesawed between jabs at Donald Trump and passionate arguments for inclusivity, with awards going to “La La Land,” “Moonlight” and “Manchester by the Sea.”
Damien Chazelle’s celebrated musical “La La Land” took a while to start cleaning up. But as the night went on, its haul began piling up, winning for cinematography, production, score, song “City of Stars” and best actress for Emma Stone. Chazelle, the 32-year-old filmmaker, also became the youngest to win best director.
“This was a movie about love and I was luckily enough to fall in love while making it,” said Chazelle.
Barry Jenkins, the writer-director of “Moonlight” and Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose play it was based on, won for adapted screenplay.
Kenneth Lonergan won best original screenplay for “Manchester by the Sea.” “I love the movies. I love being part of the movies,” said Lonergan, who then thanked his star. “Thank you Casey Affleck, Casey Affleck, Casey Affleck.”
A short time later, Affleck won best actor — his first Oscar — for his soulful, grief-filled performance in “Manchester by the Sea.” Affleck and Denzel Washington (“Fences”) were seen as neck-and-neck in the category. An admittedly “dumbfounded” Affleck looked shocked when his name was read.
“Man, I wish I had something bigger and more meaningful to say,” said Affleck, who hugged his more famous brother, Ben, before taking the stage.
The show kicked off with Justin Timberlake dancing down the Dolby Theatre aisles, singing his ebullient song, “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” from the animated film “Trolls.” It was an early cue that the Oscars would steer, at least in part, toward festiveness rather than heavyhandedness. Kimmel, in his opening monologue, quickly acknowledged that he “was not that guy” to heal a divided America.
But he still, pointedly, led a standing ovation for the “overrated” Meryl Streep.
The wins for Davis, who co-starred in Denzel Washington’s August Wilson adaptation “Fences,” and Mahershala Ali, the “Moonlight” co-star who was born in Oakland and grew up in Hayward, were both widely expected. Their awards marked the first time in more than a decade that multiple Oscar acting honors went to black actors.
“I became an artist, and thank God I did, because we are the only profession to celebrate what it means to live a life,” said Davis, the best supporting actress winner.
Ali glowed on the stage as he informed the crowd that he and his wife, Amatus Sami-Karim, welcomed a daughter four days earlier. The actor, who got his start as an actor at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga (on a basketball scholarship no less) thanked his wife for “being such a soldier through the process.”
Both stuck to more private reflections over politics. But a more blunt protest came from a winner not in attendance. Best foreign film for the second time went to Asghar Farhadi, director of Iran’s “A Salesman.” Farhadi, who also won for his “A Separation,” had said he wouldn’t attend because of Trump’s travel ban to seven predominantly Muslim nations. Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian astronaut, read a statement from Farhadi.
“I’m sorry I’m not with you tonight,” it read. “My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.”
The broadcast often veered between such strong personal statements and Kimmel’s efforts to keep things a little lighter with bits reminiscent of his late-night show. Shortly before he led a dazed, unsuspecting tour group into the theater, presenter Gael Garcia Bernal, the Mexican actor, declared: “As a migrant worker, as a Mexican, and as a human being, I am against any wall.” Rich Moore, one of the three directors of Disney’s best animated film winner “Zootopia,” described the movie as about “tolerance being more powerful than fear of the other.”
Ezra Edelman’s “O.J.: Made in America” took best documentary, making it — at 467 minutes — the longest Oscar winner ever, beating out the 1969 Best Foreign Language Film winner “War and Peace” (431 minutes).