The Award for Best Picture

Duana:
We were done, you know. We were watching the show, of course, but Emma Stone’s win was obvious, and I don’t even think Lainey came all the way out of the bathroom for Damian Chazelle as Best Director, and then of course La La Land won Best Picture, like obviously, and then all of a sudden Michelle went “Stage Manager. Stage Manager. Stage Manager.”  Like a mantra.

You could feel that something wasn’t right. They were grabbing envelopes out of hands and muttering and then the RIP: Producer Jordan Horowitz YANKS the envelope out and up for everyone to see.

Let’s just be clear here. There was NO time to figure out how to handle this, or what was going on. Some producers acted swiftly and awesomely (although some were pouty as f*ck and did not) but it’s hard to know what the deal actually was.

My very first jobs in TV were awards shows. They are a particular type of beast that is done the same way every time. I had actually forgotten that there are always two sets of envelopes, because the fear is what if one goes missing? How do you declare a winner if you can’t find the envelope? 

But if someone stuffing the correct envelope puts the wrong card inside… or if there was a printing error and someone forgot to throw away a THIRD card, or if the second envelope for a category is mistakenly handed out… (spoiler)…the point is, there are supposed to be a series of checks and balances to make sure the right envelope actually gets given to the presenter. Warren Beatty is not supposed to be the final word in this situation (although, a word. Why are we not talking just as much about Faye Dunaway who actually said the fateful words? Why is Warren taking all the heat?).

No matter what, this is UNPRECEDENTED. This has never happened. LIVE TV shows are planned out down to the second. They rehearse each winner possibility exhaustively. There is no put-your-life-vest-on procedure for something like this, because how could there be? I’d say people got fired, but… it’s the Oscars. The show’s over. It was literally the biggest mistake possible, on the biggest award of the night, at the last possible second, on the biggest night of the entertainment year.

I stopped breathing. I know I did. I started feeling that deprived-oxygen tingle in my fingers. At one point, Lainey actually moved to sit beside me because I think she thought I might need mouth to mouth. Because for the first time ever, as long as I can remember, the Oscar stage was in chaos.
Lainey:
So…at first? I thought maybe there was a streaker. Like what Duana just said about how the stage managers were walking back and forth and immediately you knew that there was something wrong? Duana is a very experienced television producer. We were watching with an even more experienced television producer (Michelle) and they were the ones who picked up that for sure there was a problem. And I’m like… did a naked guy rush the stage? Which goes to show you how f-cking sophisticated I am.

But then of course it soon became obvious that, no, it wasn’t some dude with his dick out getting tackled, it was the biggest HOLY F-CKING SH-T in recent Oscar memory. At this point Duana is over on her bed tearing at her hair and hyperventilating. Michelle and I simultaneously jump off the bed – I end up basically in Duana’s lap, ready to revive her (and selfishly worried that she’d be too overwrought to work through the night) and Michelle’s on the floor, at the foot of the bed, 5 inches from the television as though it were the moon landing. Then Dylan pounded down the door and charged into our room and picked Duana up off her feet, high from the goddamn drama of it all – because we all work in TV and this was almost pornographic. We had, ourselves, just finished working on a live red carpet TV show broadcast across Canada and so we had just come off the high wire – it’s the best kind of terrifying, making that kind of TV, specifically because of the rush: you’re always staring in the face of something that could go horribly wrong. And I’m telling you all this because what happened was terrible but it was also …awesome. The fact that it’s both is what makes the whole situation so compelling.

Like, come ON.

Are you not entertained?

This is what Twitter lives for. Duana and I cracked up for a full 10 minutes (and lost valuable writing time) because of this tweet:

pic.twitter.com/Nb20cccNtk— Rachel Kaplan (@rrkaplan) February 27, 2017

So there are the jokes and the memes, and the thrill of live television …and then there are the conspiracy theories. We were watching Anthony Anderson and Lara Spencer on ABC’s Post-Oscar special and Anthony couldn’t stop screaming about the conspiracy. He was deliberately being a sh-t but there will inevitably be some people who think this was more than duplicate envelopes, the live TV equivalent of a typo, an honest human mistake. Which, of course, delegitimises not just the Best Picture category but all the categories. It’s funny to think that Justin Timberlake might be considering an appeal…

@LaineyGossip Now JT wants a recount for Best Song.— Rod (@mrwritor) February 27, 2017

…but it’s not funny at all that glorious Moonlight, a film with an all-black cast, a film that challenges toxic male masculinity, a film for “all those black and brown boys and girls and non-gender-conforming who don't see themselves”, a film that we need now more than ever, will forever be associated with …conspiracy. Or scandal.

There is no conspiracy. You can see clearly in this photo that Faye Dunaway was holding the wrong envelope:

The Academy prints two sets of envelopes for each category and obviously they gave the wrong one to Faye and Warren. Mystery solved. But … how many people are going to see this photo? How many people are going to follow-up on this story? How many people at your work today will be unaware of the two envelope system?

The winners of Best Picture have almost always enjoyed the privilege of winning that award with the “perfect” experience. That it was “imperfect” and specifically for THIS film in particular… it felt like, well, it felt like the world is what it felt like. It felt unfair. It will always be unfair. And no, when the title “Moonlight” gets engraved on the pillars that lead into the Dolby Theatre, joining all the previous Best Pictures in Academy history, there won’t be an asterisk to indicate that La La Land was called up by mistake, but the people who know will know. And their night will always feel a little bit “what if”. And maybe that’s a metaphor for the bittersweet spirit of Moonlight – that sometimes there are so few people who can see that there’s a winner in you that you end up forgetting for a while too.

The Academy named Moonlight the best film of 2016. It is. It will destroy you and rebuild you. You will never forget Chiron. So, if you still haven’t seen Moonlight, and you need a reason – the only reason should be that it won the Oscar for Best Picture.