HOLLYWOOD, CA – Responding to last night’s now infamous Oscar Best Picture mix up, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has gone through their past records overnight and released a full list of movies and people who were wrongfully given Academy Awards over the years.
“Last night Warren Beatty was given the wrong card and announced La La Land before our staff corrected the mistake [for Moonlight] during their acceptance speech,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs.
“We were lucky to have caught it so quickly this time. In the past we have not been so fortunate.”
The list goes back to 1927, and states various reasons for the mix up. Here are some examples:
In 2006, the Best Picture Award went to Crash, directed by Paul Haggis, upsetting the favoured Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. However, the Academy members petitioned a strong write-in campaign for a movie of their choice. But when presenter Jack Nicholson opened the envelope and saw the words, Big Mamma’s House 2 by Josh Whitesell, he said years later that he simply made the executive decision to give the award to Crash.
The 1991 Best Picture was supposed to go to JFK, however a second envelope delivered by a unknown production assistant in a nearby grassy knoll switched it to Silence of the Lambs. Rewatching the footage years later, it’s clearly demonstrable that the mysterious PA comes out, makes the handoff, and exits the stage back and to the left.
1965’s winner was meant to be A Thousand Clowns, the horror story of one scared child trapped in a circus and being constantly attacked my exactly 999 clowns. Most viewers took the meaning to be that the audience themselves was the 1000th clown. However when presenter Jack Lemmon, who although made a career starring in many comedies yet had a lifelong fear of clowns, had a panic attack on stage which brought up horrifying childhood memories of his traumatic 10th birthday, he kept repeating, “I can hear them. The sound. The sound,” to which everyone assumed the winner was The Sound of Music.
1959’s Best Picture envelope opened with the words “The Diary of Anne Funk” written on it. Due to a technicality in the rules at the time, since no such movie existed, Best Picture was to be chosen by the director sitting closest to the podium and the Academy gave it to Ben-Hur. The AMPAS would like to now like to correct that error and is reportedly sending an award statue to the estate of director George Stevens, who directed the picture based off of the well known book, The Diary of Anne Gunk.
At press time, the Academy was covering up the fact that Best Picture was actually won by Hacksaw Ridge last night.
