(Above screenshot from YouTube)
After the biggest blunder in Oscar history, the film Moonlight became the first LGBTQ-themed movie to win the Best Picture honor at the Academy Awards Feb. 26.
The error occurred when presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were mistakenly given the envelope for Best Actress, which went to Emma Stone for La La Land, instead of the Best Picture envelope. After Beatty looked confusingly at the card Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner.
As the producers of La La Land were giving their acceptance speech a stagehand came out and gave them the correct envelope with the name of the correct Best Picture winner, Moonlight.
As the producers of Moonlight walked to the stage in shock, host Jimmy Kimmel commented that this was a Steve Harvey moment, referencing the time Harvey called the wrong name at the Miss Universe pageant.
Moonlight walked away with three Oscars for the night. Along with Best Picture Mahershala Ali won for Best Supporting Actor and the screenplay, written by the film’s director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, won Best Adapted Screenplay.
Moonlight is based on McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue about a black man’s life growing up in a 1980’s Miami dealing with drugs, family and his sexual identity.
La La Land didn’t go home empty handed, though. Along with Stone winning Best Actress, the Hollywood musical about a jazz pianist and a struggling actress won four other Oscar trophies, including Best Director for Damien Chazelle, making it the most awarded film of the night.
The night’s other big Oscars went to Manchester By The Sea‘s Casey Affleck, who was in a close run with Fences‘ Denzel Washington for Best Actor, and Washington’s Fences co-star Viola Davis, who won Best Supporting Actress.
Kimmel, in the Oscar driving seat for the first time, tried to keep the show light with some of the show’s best moments, including raining down candy, cookies and doughnuts on the audience as well as leading a group of unsuspecting tourists into the middle of the ceremony to have a meet and greet with the stars.
The Oscars ceremony was not without its political moments. Besides jokes from Kimmel that recalled Donald Trump calling 20-time Oscar nominee Meryl Streep “overrated” and a moment that had the host Tweet to the president “U Up?” many of the night’s winner spoke of the diversity in the movies nominated and in America in general.
The Iranian film director Asghar Farhadi, who won Best Foreign Language Film for The Salesman, declined to attend the ceremony in protest of the Trump administration’s travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim nations, including Iran.
For a full list of the night’s winners Oscars.org.
