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Oscars Best Picture Fiasco Unfolds Onstage at Academy Awards
"Moonlight" — not, as it turned out, "La La Land" — won best picture in a historic Oscar upset that saw a winner swapped mid-speech.

Actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announce the best picture winner at the 89th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 26, 2017.
Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight" — not, as it turned out, "La La Land" — won best picture at the Academy Awards in a historic Oscar upset and an unprecedented fiasco that saw one winner swapped for another while the "La La Land" producers were in mid-speech.
Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway apparently took the wrong envelope — the one for best actress winner Emma Stone — onto the stage. When they realized the mistake, representatives for ballot tabulators Price Waterhouse Coopers raced onstage to try to stop the acceptance speeches.





Jordan Horowitz holds up the winner card reading actual best picture winner "Moonlight."
Horwitz then graciously passed his statue to the "Moonlight" producers. "I noticed the commotion that was happening and I thought that something strange had occurred," Jenkins said backstage. "The last 20 minutes of my life have been insane."


Horowitz holds up the winner card saying best picture winner "Moonlight" with actor Warren Beatty and host Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel had come forward to inform the cast that "Moonlight" had indeed won, showing the inside of the envelope as proof. "I knew I would screw this up," said Kimmel, a first-time host.






Barry Jenkins and the cast accept the award for best picture.
"Even in my dreams this cannot be true," said an astonished Jenkins, once he reached the stage. "Moonlight," released by indie distributor A24, also had some major muscle behind it, including Brad Pitt's Plan B, which also backed the 2015 winner "12 Years a Slave."
"It was unfortunate that things happened as they did but, goddamn, we won best picture," the still cool and composed Jenkins told reporters.

