MOONLIGHT Wins Best Picture After 2017 Oscars Envelope Mishap
In an Oscar finale that will go down as one of the most memorable ever, MOONLIGHT wins the 2017 Oscar for Best Picture after a mishap occurred during the announcement. Shockwaves ripped through the entire room as everyone wondered what happened. In the end, the people behind LA LA LAND were incredibly gracious as they handed over the Oscar for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards to the folks behind MOONLIGHT! A similar switch-up happened at the 1964 Oscars where presenter Sammy Davis, Jr. mistakenly opened the wrong envelope and named the winner for another category. Fortunately, Sammy was able to correct things before anyone reached the stage and the show continued on. For the 2017 Oscars, you can see the moment everyone is talking about from the beginning of the announcement right through all the action on the stage.
Read the below for the full transcript:
Warren Beatty: And the Academy Award [hesitates] for Best Picture… [hesitates again]
Faye Dunaway: You're impossible. C'mon.
Beatty hands Dunaway the envelope.
Dunaway: La La Land.
Jordan Horowitz (La La Land Producer): Thank you, thank you all. Thank you to the academy. Thank you to Lionsgate. Thank you to our incredible cast and crew. We're all up here right now. Thank you to Jamie Feldman and Gary Gilbert. Thank you to my parents for supporting my choice to pursue a career in the arts, even though it was a little bit crazy. Arthur Horowitz, you are my fantasy baby. And to my kind, generous, talented, beautiful, blue-eyed wife and creative partner, Julia Hart, you have inspired me to become the man I am right now and more importantly, the man I'm still becoming. There's a lot of love in this room, and let's use it to create and champion bold and diverse work — work that inspires us towards joy, towards hope and towards empathy.
Marc Platt (La La Land Producer): Here's to the fools who made me dream: my uncle Gary Platt; my mentor, Sam Cohn; my parents; my children; my wife Julie, on whose shoulders I've stood for 40 years because she insisted I reach for the stars. And to the Hollywood community that I'm so proud to be a part of. And to the Hollywood and the hearts and minds of people everywhere, repression is the enemy of civilization. So keep dreaming, because the dreams we dream today will provide the love, the compassion and the humanity that will narrate the stories of our lives tomorrow. Fred?
Fred Berger (La La Land Producer): To the love of my life, Ali Loewy, I love you. I love you so much, to my family, Mama, Papa, Jeff. Matt Plouffe, you kicked this off — and Damien Chazelle, we're standing on your shoulders. We lost, by the way, but, you know.
Horowitz: What? You guys, I'm sorry, no. There's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture.
Jimmy Kimmel: Guys, this is very unfortunate, what happened. Personally, I blame Steve Harvey for this. I would like to see you get an Oscar, anyway. Why can't we just give out a whole bunch of them?
Horowitz: I'm going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from Moonlight.
Kimmel: That's nice of you. That's —
The Moonlight cast approaches the stage after being announced as Best Picture winner as Warren Beatty explains the mishap.
Warren Beatty: Hello. Hello. I want —
Kimmel: Warren, what did you do?!
Beatty: I want to tell you what happened. I opened the envelope and it said, "Emma Stone, La La Land." That's why I took such a long look at Faye, and at you. I wasn't trying to be funny.
Kimmel: Well, you were funny.
Beatty: Thank you very much, thank you very much. This is Moonlight — the Best Picture.
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight Director): Very clearly, even in my dreams, this could not be true. But to hell with dreams — I'm done with it, because this is true. Oh, my goodness. I have to say — and it is true, it's not fake — we've been on the road with these guys for so long, and that was so gracious, so generous of them. My love to La La Land, my love to everybody. Man.
Adele Romanski (Moonlight Producer): Thank you to the aca—? I don't know what to say. That was really — I'm still not sure this is real, but thank you to the Academy. And it is so humbling to be standing up here with, hopefully, still the La La crew? No, O.K., they're gone, but it's very humbling to be up here. And I hope even more than that, that it's inspiring to people — little black boys and brown girls and other folks watching at home who feel marginalized and who take some inspiration from seeing this beautiful group of artists, helmed by this amazing talent, my friend Barry Jenkins, standing up here on this stage accepting this top honor. Thank you.
Jenkins: You know, there was a time when I thought this movie was impossible, because I couldn't bring it to fruition. I couldn't bring myself to tell another story. And so everybody behind me on this stage said, No, that is not acceptable. So I just want to thank everybody up here behind me. Everybody out there in that room. Because we didn't do this. You guys chose us. Thank you for the choice. I appreciate it. Much love.
Kimmel: Well, I don't know what happened. I blame myself for this. Let's remember, it's just an awards show. I mean, we hate to see people disappointed, but the good news is we got to see some extra speeches. We had some great movies. I knew I would screw this show up, I really did. Thank you for watching. I'm back to work tomorrow night on my regular show. I promise I'll never come back. Good night.
View the full list of 2017 Oscar winners!
