Why last night's Oscar Best Picture award blunder is bad for EVERYONE

Image from ABC

By Darian Scalamoni

            Do accidents happen? Of course, they do but the mistake at last night’s Academy Awards was so unbelievable and catastrophic then many people (including myself) didn’t know what to make of what the whole world had just seen. In case you’re in the minority and had no idea what occurred last night, it went as follows: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the honor of announcing the most prestigious honor in cinema for the year with the award for Best Motion Picture. Though many had pegged the magnificent musical, La La Land to be the frontrunner, other films like Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea had the ability to play spoiler. Well, La La Land won…for about 8 seconds.

            In historic fashion (and not for the right reasons), one of the accountants/producers of the Academy Awards had handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope that displayed the winner for Best Lead Actress for Emma Stone in La La Land. Beatty tried to stall and had a strange reaction to opening the envelope before showing Dunaway. Many had thought this was a joke from the legendary filmmaker and actor yet the film title that Dunaway had seen on the card displayed La La Land, so she announced the Best Picture winner as La La Land. This was an incredible mistake and after the cast and crew of La La Land got up on stage were handed their Oscars and gave some sort of speeches, it was announced by none other than one of the producers of La La Land, Jordan Horowitz that there had been a catastrophic error and that Moonlight, the $1.5 million indie darling was indeed, the recipient of the Best Motion Picture of the Year.

            The reason I have such a strong reaction to what had happened and the title of this article is what it is, is because looking back less than 24 hours later, it’s easy to see why this is one of the worst things that has ever happened in Hollywood. Think about it like this: Yes, La La Land was nominated for 14 Oscars and won 6 including Best Director for Damien Chazelle and Emma Stone for Best Actress in a Leading Role BUT the fact of the matter is that for a few moments, the epitome of what most of those people have dreamed of their entire lives was accomplished just to have it ripped from their very hands after giving acceptance speeches to their loved ones will not matter in the grand scheme of things.

            In regards to Moonlight, which I happened to watch for the first time just hours before the Oscar ceremony, it’s a brilliant film. One that will resonate with all people; blacks, whites, Hispanics as well as those who are straight, gay or anything else because more than anything the movie is about growth and learning about yourself amongst struggle. It was not my favorite film of the year, but was it deserving of Best Picture? Absolutely it was.

            The unfortunate circumstance and my thoughts on what happened are not only for those who worked on La La Land but also for the producers of Moonlight. The controversy surrounding those final moments in which they had an amazing accomplishment becoming the lowest budgeted movie in history to win the coveted golden trophy will forever be in the front of people’s minds when remembering the 89^th Academy Awards. Moonlight was an incredible movie within my top 5 for the year that will forever be in the history books as Best Motion Picture, the upsetting fact that in society it’ll always be correlated to a terrible mishap doesn’t give it the true nature of a victory that it deserved however. With rushed speeches, an awkward hush amongst the crowd and Jimmy Kimmel trying to make sense of all of it, it’s hard to really bask in the glory of an unnatural and cringe-worthy final segment that has cemented all those who worked on Moonlight as Oscar winners and all those who had worked on La La Land who had thought they had joined that illustrious company being told that because of a mistake, this wasn’t the case.

            All in all, it was a horrific night for Hollywood and the entertainment industry, one that many would love to look back at and shy away from because of a fault from a transition of envelopes. Congratulations to Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Adele Romanski, Barry Jenkins and the rest of the cast and crew of Moonlight for an amazing achievement.