The first Academy Awards under a Trump Presidency was always going to be a controversial affair, but the climax of the evening, had nothing to do with the US President. But rather the now, infamous, ‘Steve Harvey moment’ with the incorrect awarding of the prestigious Best Picture Award, will long be remembered.
Bonnie and Clyde stars, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were given the honour of announcing the Best Picture Award, but it quickly turned to disaster.
As Beatty opened the envelope and read the card of the winner (not aloud): ‘La La Land’ he clearly look confused and motioned for Dunaway to assist him. Beatty then searched the envelope for a second card that might clarify the Best Picture winner, before Dunaway read out ‘La La Land’ to the audience and the viewers at home.
It wasn’t until La La Land producer, Jordan Horowitz announced on stage during numerous thank you speeches that their had in fact been a mistake, “I’m sorry, no, there’s been a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture. This is not a joke,” Horowitz said.
The reason for the horrible mixup was that the envelope that Beatty had been given was the envelope containing the winner of the Leading Actress award, Emma Stone.
Beatty was clearly confused by this and explained so afterwards, “I opened the envelope and it said, Emma Stone La La Land. That’s why i took a long look at Faye, and at you, I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Beatty explained.
Fortunately for La La Land, they had multiple other successes to offset this disappointment throughout the night, with six Oscars, including Best Actress, Best Director and Original Score.
Casey Affleck, younger brother of Ben took out the Best Actor award for his role in, Manchester By The Sea. Whilst, Mahershala Ali took out the Best Supporting Actor gong for his work on ‘Moonlight’, and Viola Davis won Best Supporting Actress for her role in ‘Fences’.
Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi won for Best Foreign Picture, but he didn’t attend the Academy Awards night in protest of President Trump’s attempted travel ban. A statement was read out on Farhadi’s behalf, “My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of the other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S,” Farhadi said.
Unsurprisingly, host Jimmy Kimmel certainly didn’t hold back his attacks on the President. He addressed the racism issue that plagued the Academy Awards in 2016, arguing, “Remember, last year, when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? “That’s gone, thanks to him,” Kimmel joked, referring to how Trump’s perceived racism has overshadowed the 2016 Oscars race issues.
He also made a quip about President Trump’s tweeting habits, “Some of you get to come on this stage and make a speech that the President of the United States will tweet about in all caps during his 5 a.m. bowel movement,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel also live tweeted to Trump during the program, which Trump, somewhat surprisingly failed to respond to.
Following the conclusion of the program, it was also revealed that an error was made during the “In Memoriam” segment of the show. Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer with four Oscar nominations, who passed away in October last year was shown with the wrong photograph during the presentation. The image used, was actually that of Patterson’s former colleague, Jan Chapman, who is alive and well and still involved in the movie industry.
“I had urged her agency to check any photograph which might be used and understand that they were told that the Academy had it covered. Janet was a great beauty and four-time Oscar nominee and it is very disappointing that the error was not picked up,” Ms Chapman said.