Thursday, March 02, 2017

Wrong Envelope

Millions of people watched the Oscar telecast on Sunday. If you stayed up late to watch all the awards, you know that there was some confusion right there at the end as to which of the best picture nominees won the award for Best Picture. The playful interchange between Bonnie and Clyde, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, gave way to perplexed looks and stammering. Warren seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to get from the words, "Oscar goes" to the name of the night's big winner. This could be because a lot rides on such an announcement. Millions of dollars in box office can be banked on putting "Academy Award Winner for Best Film" in front of your movie's title on the marquee. It was also a great opportunity for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to shed their hashtag of "Oscarssowhite." Handing the envelope to Ms. Dunaway did not make things any more clear, when she did as she had rehearsed: she read the card.
It was the wrong card. Somehow Warren was given the spare Best Actress envelope, and as he vamped in an effort not to milk the moment or the proceedings, he and Faye let it fly. The moments that it took for the La La Land cast and crew to assemble on the stage was the approximate amount of time that it took the producers of the evening's show to rush onto the stage amid the hoopla to correct the mistake. When the producer of that film then congratulated the real winner, Moonlight, there was a full-fledged snafu that will live on forever. Or next year.
The following morning, I wondered if there wouldn't be some similar moment when news anchors around the country would look back at their notes from November 8, 2017. Embarrassed looks all around as they realize they had hired color blind techs to read the electoral map and it turns out that Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida had all actually been won by Hillary Clinton, but once the balloons and confetti had already fallen, there was no way to get it back into the rafters. I give full props to the Academy for going ahead and admitting their mistake and fixing their issue, now isn't it about time for the country to come together and ask that we be given the correct envelope? The winner for Best President of 2016 is...

1 comment:

Kristen Caven said...

Blame the typesetters! https://medium.freecodecamp.com/why-typography-matters-especially-at-the-oscars-f7b00e202f22#.59k1xcv16