An Upset-Filled Oscars Recap

The Oscars is my favorite show of the awards season. I order pizza, I judge the red carpet looks, and I compete in a fantasy football type pool with my parents, betting on who will win each category. But not even I could predict the astonishing turn of events last night when “La La Land” was wrongly announced as Best Picture.

While producer Fred Berger’s was giving his thank-yous, he was interrupted by another producer, Jordan Horowitz. Horowitz had been given the envelope that had the Best Picture name listed on it- but when he looked down, “La La Land” was not written on the card- “Moonlight” was.

While the “La La Land” crew gracefully handed over their awards to the crew of “Moonlight”, presenter of the award, Warren Beatty, came back to the microphone to explain what happened. Apparently Emma Stone’s name was on the card for “La La Land”, and I can only assume he thought they mistakenly put her name on it and that the award was for “La La Land”, not Best Actress, which Stone had just won for.

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Of course, the “Moonlight” cast and crew happily accepted their award and there were a lot of Steve Harvey jokes made. While nothing can top this mishap, in case you missed anything else, here is a list of the rest of the winners.

Emma Stone won for Best Actress, beating Meryl Streep, who was there on her 20^th nomination. “La La Land” also took home five other awards, which included Best Original Music Score, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Original Song for “City of Stars”. Damien Chazelle won Best Director, making him the youngest to win in this category at 32 years old. It was everyone’s first time winning for each award.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in “La La Land”

Casey Affleck won Best Actor for “Manchester by the Sea”, and even though I predicted he would win and I bet on him for the pool, I was secretly still hoping Andrew Garfield would get the Oscar. Kenneth Lonergan, fellow Jewish writer/director, won Best Original Screenplay for the film as well.

“Moonlight” won Best Adapted Screenplay as well as Best Picture, and Mahershala Ali took home the award for Best Supporting Actor.

Best Supporting Actress went to Viola Davis for “Fences”, who now has an Oscar to go with her Emmy and Tony, and became the first black actress to do so. Too bad she probably won’t be releasing an album any time soon, or she could have won the EGOT.

Best Animated Feature went to one of my favorites, “Zootopia”, and the winner of the Best Animated Short was “Piper”, which was shown in front of “Finding Dory”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth a watch.

For the people who do all the work but are rarely thought of by audiences, all of the winners for behind-the-scenes work are: “Hacksaw Ridge” for Best Editing, “The Jungle Book” for Best Visual Effects, “La La Land” for Best Production Design, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” for Best Costume Design (yes!), and “Suicide Squad” for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, which means now we have to say “Academy Award winner Suicide Squad”, a sentence none of us ever thought we would utter.

Andrew Garfield in “Hacksaw Ridge”

In the categories that everyone pretends to know about, the winners are: “Sing” for Best Live Action Short, “The White Helmets” for Best Documentary Short, “The Salesman” for Best Foreign Language Film, “Hacksaw Ridge” for Best Sound Mixing, “Arrival” for Best Sound Editing (aren’t those the same thing?), and “O.J.: Made in America” for Best Documentary.

If you read my previous article, Everything Jewish About Oscars, you’ll know that I only predicted 3 of the winners correctly. But I can’t win them all, especially against my mother, who won 14 categories in our pool. Oh well, there’s always next year.

At least I beat my Dad.