Emma Stone "I fucking love Moonlight"
Monday, February 27, 2017 at 1:01PM 
Murtada here. If there is one thing we can take away from last night best picture announcement, hopefully it’s the love and respect the teams behind Moonlight and La La Land have for each other. La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz took charge of the situation on stage and announced Moonlight as the rightful winner while everyone else on stage was utterly confused. He’s already being hailed as “the truth teller we need right now”.
Both Barry Jenkins and producer Adele Romanski started their acceptance speeches by mentioning the La La Land team. Jenkins went further acknowledging the many months the teams behind both films spent together on the Oscar campaign trail:
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.
When Damien Chazelle understandably chose not to speak to the press post his best director win, it fell on the shoulders of this year’s best actress to address the situation backstage. Emma Stone of course handled it with aplomb and her usual charm. She landed her opening joke “Phew… you guys see that?”, delivered with a knowing wink. She sorta tried to start a conspiracy theory “ I was holding my best actress in a leading role card that entire time… I don’t mean to start stuff”. You totally did, Emma. At least for a few hours until Price Waterhouse Cooper took responsibility for the error and said that they had duplicate envelopes for all 24 categories and that they handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty.
The clincher though, as what she said about Moonlight.
And of course it was Emma who verbalized what everyone was thinking last night "Is that the craziest Oscar moment of all time?". Yes Emma, it was. We are still in shock. Comment away with your Monday feelings about the snafu and Emma's win, too.
Reader Comments (42)
What a weird ending. I feel bad for the PwC person who pulled the wrong envelope, if indeed that is what happened.
And no offense to Warren, but instead of standing there perplexed, he should have immediately said, "I think I have the wrong envelope."
Congrats to Emma and Meryl Streep for weathering the crazy Karl Lagerfeld calling her cheap.
I love her so much. Even she is not my pick as BA, she also handled the whole situation gracefully. Just see the reaction of her saying OMG when the she realized the whole mistake to quickly asking the Moonlight crew to the podium, embracing and cheering them just made me love her more.
The whole situation is unfortunate but also shows how gracious Jordan Horowitz is. Epitome of class.
A few notes:
— Her doubling down on the Moonlight love felt really OTT, as if she needed to lift everyone else's spirits. "It's gonna be okay, I promise!" Weirdly patronizing to Moonlight like she was obliged to vouch for it.
— The line about holding her Best Actress card was so shady and accusatory toward Faye and Warren. Obviously she sounds ridiculous because she didn't have all of the facts. And she said she "wasn't trying to start something" but that she wanted to tell the press first. Ick.
—"We've been on the road with these guys." Ugh, spare me. You've been at a selected handful of events in L.A. with these people and one in London. "On the road" doesn't mean what you think it means.
I think Emma Stone is fine (she's never outdone Easy A) and is probably a fine person. This was an uncoachable moment for public relations. I guess she did the best she could. I'm usually not one to play into these petty little gripes but she really rubbed me the wrong way. It was a very clumsy and passive aggressive handling...more in line with Fred Berger than with Justin Horowitz. He should've handled PR for all of them.
She really is gracious and charming. Here's hoping no unnecessary backlash towards her for winning Best Actress.
I think there's a very sweet video from S.Feinberg of Mahershala making his way to Ryan, giving him a good 5 second hug or so during the scuffle, before giving Emma a hug. It's so nice to see how everyone's handling it gracefully. Both teams are getting the short end of the stick, but at least managed to show some love and respect.
I am happy that she won and I liked her speech a lot. She gave a great performance that elevated her film and heightened the aspects of her personality and acting that made her a star. It's kind of like Julia Roberts winning for Pretty Woman, but I hope we still get to see her Erin Brockovich one day.
The post above that analyses every word she said is a bit over the top. I can't really judge how anyone reacted to that situation because it was so unprecedented and I do think she is being sincere.
I somewhat have to agree with Hayden on this one. While she didn't rub me quite the wrong way, she was all too willing to throw Warren Beatty under the bus with her insistence that she had the card with her name on it the whole time. And while I don't doubt that she loves Moonlight, there was a little too much syrup on that pancake, as if she were trying to convince herself more than anyone else. All things considered, the entire La La Land crew handled the situation with grace and class.
The envelope thing really was tacky, and I'm not the only one who noticed it. She presented facts she believed contradicted Warren Beatty's account and basically said "You do the math." It's right there in the video (not mentioned in this post).
I think that fits the definition of ungracious. Like a schoolgirl who sees some playground drama but doesn't get all the facts and relays bad/incomplete information to get the ear of her classmates. I can't fault her for it but I'm not going to pretend that was a gracious way to play it.
Jordan Horowitz behaved terribley,the way he snatches the envelope from 80 yr old film legend Warren Beatty's hand was awful,you could see Horowitz's hands and body shaking.
Oh, my bad, that line *was* mentioned in the post. There I go like a little schoolgirl who witnessed some drama and didn't have the facts straight!
See? We're all guilty of it. That doesn't make it commendable.
By the way, I fucking love Emma Stone.
Warren should have just said he had the wrong envelope .. instead he shoves it over to Dunaway. I know he is totally blind without his glasses... but he must have had contacts on.
Not the best in the category, but a good speech and a good win for a great performance. It's weird having a Best Actress winner who smiles more than three times in her film. I don't think she was trying to stir trouble by stating that she had her Best Actress envelope and card - I think she was trying to relate what happened on her part before it spiralled out of control - which it did on social media as people were trying to lay the mistake on DiCaprio. Warren Beatty was actually the unprofessional one, he's been in the game long enough and I think he could have handled that way better on several fronts.
It never seemed all that mysterious or crazy to me (except for crazy JOY at the outcome). Duplicate envelopes, an error in the hand-off, Beatty's silence, Dunaway's haste. What was odd was the one LLL producer unable to resist giving an acceptance speech after being told there was an error and then saying "We lost anyway."
Can we just agree to blame Price Waterhouse and The Academy for allowing this to happen instead of throwing shade at the other film's star actress who was obviously perplexed and trying to make the best of this situation?
She's patronizing in the press room to say she loves Moonlight, yet she's shady when she says she was holding her Best Actress envelope (she was, by the way).
I have no idea how PwC didn't rectify this immediately once Warren Beatty walked out with obviously the wrong envelope. Was someone sleeping backstage?
I'm fine with Emma setting the record straight about her own Oscar card and being maybe too effusive about Moonlight. She didn't want to get Marisa Tomeied and her comments were more gracious than can reasonably be expected under the circumstances. Same with Chazelle--he was clearly feeling petty and bitter and, while I would have preferred him to suck it up and be gracious in front of the press, not saying anything at all was the next best thing. Horowitz also did a fine job. Calling him a hero or the truth teller we need right now is a little over the top, but he did a classy thing. Those bits during his acceptance speech (it was his, right?) about his blue-eyed wife and diversity, though? A little awkward.
I also forgive Warren and Faye. Obviously in hindsight, I wish he had spoken up right away about getting the wrong envelope and I wish she had paused to figure out why Warren was hesitant, but what they did seems reasonable considering this completely unprecedented situation. He had no reason to suspect he hadn't received the correct envelope until he opened it. Seeing Emma Stone's name should have tipped him off (and it appears it did), but expecting him to have the wherewithal to break from script and seek stage manager instruction at the most anticipated moment of the night is frankly unrealistic. Everyone was 99.9% sure La La Land was going to win and, again, nothing like this had happened before.
I think everyone tried to do their best in an unfortunate, unprecedented situation. There was little time to prepare a response to this, and I give credit to everyone involved (Moonlight team, LLL team, Warren, Faye, Kimmel) for trying to do the right thing in a baffling situation. Casting blame helps no one and takes the focus away from celebrating the movies. I'm sure everyone has learned a lesson from this (make sure you have the right envelope).
And even though this mistake occurred in front of billions of people watching worldwide, I'd still have to say that it probably had less negative impact than the snafu at my sister's high school when they mistakenly announced the five lowest vote-getters as the prom queen court instead of the five highest.
@Cash: I agree - none of knows how we'd act/react in a confusing moment like that, so high pressure and in front of the world. Emma didn't do anything wrong. People are so gleeful in their morning-after judgments. Also: that prom story is amazing.
The drama of the mixup aside, where does Moonlight downing La La Land rank in terms of biggest Oscar upsets of all time?
Also, not here for this rewriting of history that Spotlight winning was an upset. Most people were predicting it, and it was more of a three-way race that whole season and not a David-Goliath dynamic like Moonlight beating La La Land was.
We are all generally supposed to be decent and gracious when we have a good right to be angry and outraged. Do people always succeed at it? Hardly ever. Worth applauding the LLL team even though it was the right thing to do and that Moonlight was better. It was just a such a crazy scenario. Ryan and Emma were ecstatic for the Moonlight team from the stage and I don't think many of their peers in Hollywood would have behaved like them in a similar situation. If Emma had shown one iota of disappointment in that interview she would be criticized.
BTW - Just want to say I love Emma and glad she won even though it feels a bit premature.
I rewatched the presentation and can point out a few things:
1. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are standing at the rear of the stage waiting to move forward when Jimmy Kimmel introduces them. So the broadcast does not tell us from which direction he entered the stage. Could be the same as Leonardo DiCaprio, or not.
2. Beatty gives every visual cue to indicate he knows something is wrong. He looks for another card in the envelope, pauses, looks past Dunaway to the side-stage, and then goes with it. His main mistake was not saying anything before letting Dunaway announce the wrong winner. (A lesser mistake is not reading the front of the envelope itself.)
3. Dunaway has no clue anything is wrong until after she speaks, when Beatty points out Emma Stone's name on the card.
4. When the La La Land group is on stage starting to accept, there's an overhead shot and you can see two red envelopes. One is the offending wrong envelope, up front by the microphone, and the other is in the back. At first I thought it was someone holding the correct envelope, but no, it was Linus Sandgren, the cinematographer who won earlier. (You can also see Emma Stone in the overhead shot, but not her red envelope.)
5. The third person to accept for La La Land, Fred Berger, is speaking with the probable knowledge that he didn't win, and even says something like "But we lost" at the end. Then Jordan Horowitz takes the microphone to clear things up.
I also want to say that someone dropped a red envelope a while earlier when Halle Berry and Damien Chazelle were leaving the stage. It wasn't Chazelle's. The Leading Actor and Leading Actress awards had yet to be presented, so it's probably nothing.
I think it is all hilarious. I also think great actors/directors/producers are just people. We can't expect them all to be super 'gracious' at a moments notice. A good actor is meant to be a good actor not an ace publicist. I would been super fine with Stone expressing disappointment at the sucky situation.
She didn't want to start stuff but just set the record straight. Right after this fiasco started people said she gave her envelope back the the stagehand or crew member and that is how Warren got the envelope as if it was somehow her fault. It wasn't clearly.
I'm willing to bet by now that Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway will get invited back to announce Best Picture next year.
(Well, maybe that's just me hoping it - the sight of the two of them together is too wonderful, so this snafu shouldn't be the last Oscar moment for them.)
It is astounding how the same situation can occur and people have such a different way of perceiving it! Positive people are all "i can feel the love! Emma Stone is adorable! Jordan Horowitz is a hero" - negative people are all "Emma Stone is over the top! Jordan Horowitz is no white savior! Heads are turning at PwC". Fascinating shit!
Regardless of your take, it made for exceptional memorable TV. And if I was oscar producers i d be giving myself a huge congratulatory gift!
It is clear to me that the eff up is the accounting company's alone. They had ONE job after all. If I was Warren & Faye I'd be confused too. You open the envelope from the back after all, so you don't see if it says Best Actress on it. Does it even say that? If I opened it I might think, huh, didn't know Emma Stone produced La La Land, but that's not unheard of either.
We all make mistakes and even screwing up the envelopes is probably forgivable, but the accountants should have rushed that stage and cut it off in 15 seconds max. I always thought they had a "script" in mind for different kind of errors. This one would have been "Ladies & Gentlemen, the wrong envelope has been read. Please take your seats so that the correct envelope can be read."
It's the fact that you've had long enough for two speeches to be given before it's all straightened out. Yikes. But in any case, like Emma said, it's the only thing people will remember in 50 years from this ceremony. Heck, by next year this might be the only thing people remember.
I am perfectly fine with Emma winning. Sometimes it's just a perfect blend of role and actor that allows someone's personality to shine. To me it's better to win for this sort of Roman Holiday type role rather than to have to watch Emma collect an Oscar for gaining 20 pounds, wearing a fake nose, or going without makeup. :-)
PS Jordan Horowitz for President!
@Hayden - I normally really like and appreciate your comments here - and I'm sure I will continue to in future...
....but I gotta say right now I'm picturing you in a bathrobe with curlers like a mid-career Shelly Winters on a night she wasn't nominated but felt she should have won.
Oh my god man.
Emma Stone was approximately my fifth favourite of the performances nominated for actress - and my sixth favourite of the lead actresses nominated (ahem Viola for the win!)
But holy hell. The girl handled a horrific horrifically uncomfortable situation with all the grace she could possibly muster
Of course she has to say she loves Moonlight but she also needs to make it sound convincing with hundreds of reporters studying every mini-flicker of her eyes eager on reading something ugly into it. She handled the whole thing like a pro and the adorably inhumanly nice person that she is.
The line about the card was obviously just a random joke to relieve a tense moment.
Give her a goddamn break.
She's probably about to undergo decades of therapy about feeling inferior to Isabelle Huppert. Unlike the rest of humanity, the vast majority of which - unlike the still-pretty-great Emma - doesn't even realise how inferior they each are to Isabelle Huppert
Completely agree with Hayden that her OTT praise for MOONLIGHT sounded disingenuous.
But it's great to see an Asian actress finally win an Oscar.
Slightly OT, but my Dad referred to 'Hidden Figures' as 'Hidden' today. I can almost guarantee you he's never heard the phrase 'Hidden Fences' - he just gets movie titles wrong.
I'm happy she won - I'd rather she win for something she's great in than wait to give it to her for something not in the top tier (but, then, maybe she has an even bigger role in her future). It's nice when actors get awards for films that actually feel like defining movies of their careers.
People complaining that she was "starting something" with the envelope comment? That I don't understand. She was setting the record straight about something that had been broadcast live to tens of millions of viewers. I don't think we need to feel bad for Warren Beatty getting thrown under the bus like it's a Project Runway team challenge. And the truth eventually came out about the duplicate envelopes that I don't know how many of us actually knew about.
And, please, Warren could have had a funny goof moment on stage in saying he got the wrong envelope. "The best picture is Emma Stone, apparently!" But instead he pawned the card off to Faye who clearly only saw the words LA LA LAND and went with it.
Idk everyone handled it the best they could.
Oh my God... do you have ANY idea how many people probably asked her about the Best Actress envelope? SHE HAD TO ADDRESS IT since Beatty pretty much mentioned HER name on stage as an explanation so yeah she was just setting the record straight in her own smirk smirk Emma Stone way.
As for Jordan Horowitz "snatching the envelope" as someone mentioned, you can tell he was obviously angry and frustrated, but handled everything with extreme grace towards the rightful winners. Clearly at that point he also didn't know what happened only that Beatty (and Dunaway) read the wrong name.
Finally, I heard that Chazelle has been sick all week (though only from one source so grain of salt). I did notice he looked sickly on the red carpet. But that COULD be one explanation why he left early and didn't stay for the press. The twist ending may have just pushed him to decide that being under one's sheet was the best alternative at that moment. Was he at any of the parties?
Anyways... so MOONLIGHT and LA LA LAND were both great films. Yay great films!
@RyanT agree that Horowitz did not "snatch" the envelope. He seemed like he had heightened emotion (it didn't seem like anger to me, and believe me, I've watched it at least a dozen times, but I can see how it would play like anger) and wanted the situation to be corrected ASAP. He also seemed to have genuine affection for not just 'Moonlight' but the people involved, as demonstrated by his genuine hug of Jenkins and other 'Moonlight' players.
LLL team, Beatty, Dunaway n Emma are the victims! They are as confused as everyone else n trying their best to explan n make sense of the situation, given their situations.
The one to blame is Brian Cullinan o PWC!! It's inexcusable what he did. He shld've done his duty n checked tt he had given Beatty the correct envelope. Dude, u have one job!!!
I bet he's taking the 1st flight outta Hollywood now, maybe to Russia or China 😂
Geez, people are harsh. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The girl merely answered questions, and in my opinion, was hella gracious in lieu of what happened.
If she had been disappointed and bitter, she'd still have venom flung her way, so whatever.
She probably didn't know there were two envelopes, so she was just as confused as everyone, and letting them know that she had her envelope the whole time. She was probably a bit miffed that La La Land was teased, and Moonlight lost their real moment, so she wanted to address the weirdness with the envelope situation. She's only human.
I kind of thought Horowitz snatched the envelope out of a little frustration and a lot of desire to set the record straight. I doubt it was any kind of anger aimed at Beatty, just an overall frustration with an insane situation.
I believe Emma probably likes Moonlight, but I'm not sure she'd ever say "I fuckin' love Moonlight" except in a situation where she felt like she had to defend its Best Picture win. Whatever, they're human beings and no one acted badly in a weird situation.
@ Claran
Yeah, it was Brian Cullinan of PwC who handed Beatty the wrong envelope because he was too distracted -- busy tweeting a pic of Emma Stone right after she won her Oscar rather than focusing on his job responsibility of making sure Beatty had the correct envelope.
I very much agree with Glenn's statement that he'd prefer to see Stone win for a defining film of her career. I thought she was tremendous in La La Land and am very happy for her win. I don't think this win will age poorly. I think the film and performance will age tremendously well. La La Land has a VERY high re-watchability factor. And, frankly, it's nice to see someone win in the lead category for a musical!
I don't really feel sorry for saying this, aloud.
I LOVED that the La La Land crowd already gave speeches and THEN had to hand the Oscar to the Moonlight team.
I seriously don't get why La La Land isn't openly and widely criticised for what it is: a competently manufactared Oscar bait product. Nothing else. It's really difficult to find a single review that manages to do what art criticism is: DECONSTRUCT the object of the review to its core. It's a film that makes heart and centre, an struggling actress in her quest to stardom. A character that happens to talk DIRECTLY TO THE HEART of the average SAG member and 1/3 at least of the Academy. Let me get this straight... how many Oscar Best Picture winners, just recently have revolved their conflicts about movies/performing?
The King's Speech: A recently crowned monarch has to PERFORM the most important speech of the nation. Mmmm....
The Artist: An actor struggles to survive the birth of sound in movies.
Argo: A escape plan that revolves about faking a film.
Birdman: The quest of an actor for credibility.
Since 2010, all but TWO Best Picture winners had spoken directly to the AMPAS. The only 2 winners that had overcome this trend were revolving about truly undeniable subjects like slavery and pedophilia. And as we al remember, 12 Years a Slave ONLY won Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay in addition to the Best Picture award, and Spotlight did only win Original Screenplay, becoming 2 weak Best Picture winners in front of - like La La Land - some Oscar sweepers... Gravity and Mad Max... 2 films that because they were genre, just couldn't win Best Picture. When you consider La La Land was following the trend of the winners and can't be compared to Gravity nor Mad Max in terms of conception, "Moonlight"'s victory is more of a miracle.
Every decision made in the production and staging of "La La Land" is clearly taken to make the film as likeable as possible, rather than focusing on making a film that doesn't feel forced. The very opening number is embarrassingly obvious... it's a damn superbowl advertisement... everyone is beautiful, young and healthy till the very last second in which the truck opens and then we're allowed to glimpse a fat man, a fat woman and a grey haired man. Like, wow, the movie is telling us how joyful and YOUNG and FRESH it is. That's kind of subtle, isn't it?
But it does not stop there, everyone seems to be hip and cool and fresh, and the only negative character is basically JK Simmons (old, ugly man) and every single time any character receives a bad new or a denial, is a white person - if I remember correctly - and not specially handsome/beautiful while when our heroine FINALLY receives the best news, she receives them from a "mixed race character", beautiful and gentle. Like, a film that uses conscious inverse racism to portray itself as accepting.
I can understand that critics are considering "inspiration" and "homage" and "tribute", the constant plagiarism of the films and age it supposedly pays tribute to. However, this is completely killed by the onanist, horrid scene in which Gosling's character basically winks at the audience about how the same film is comparable to jazz... "free". When everything till that point and after that is obviously so faked and artificial and unnatural that it becomes distracting. Yeah, I know it's a musical, but compare it to "Hairspray" or "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" or "Moulin Rouge!", three masterpieces that were doing a similar stunt/tribute than "La La Land" is making.
And of course, there's the resolution which basically makes ALL DECISIONS BY THE MAIN CHARACTERS POINTLESS. Heck, they would have BOTH succeeded equally with or without each other. Wow. I mean, wow. So the mere fact that they are not living together and their child is not in common, is completely pointless... is this the message of the film to its AMPAS audience? A pat in the back, to not really thing about the things they left behind in their way to professional success? It's not that I don't like the message itself - I don't - but it is the fact that this ending and delirium just make the whole arch of the characters completely void, pointless and even reinforces the artificial, forced feel of the film, already underlined by the (ab)use of the most laughable Hollywood cliche ever conceived... that you're forced to choose wether a commitment to your own career and you have to be there at the very same time to your loved one/child/whatever.
Compare it to "Moonlight". A film that has heart, soul, with a crew and cast talking directly from the heart and that used a personal story to tell an universal one in such a masterful - filmmaking wise - way, allowing their characters to flow rather than forcing them into situations.
That's why I'm so happy, the baiters had the honey in their lips and were forced in front of a live audience, to hand the award to the people that NEVER did their film thinking of the Oscar, and just wanted to share a great little story.
(I posted "thing" instead of "think" but I think it is understandable)
Plus, it's ironic that the only masterpiece of that trend of "performing" Best Picutre winners, happens to be the most vilified (basically because people wanted the hip "The Social Network" to win, over a more classic looking film that was baity indeed, but happen to be MASTERFULLY directed and acted).
Off topic: rewatched "Mad Max: Fury Road" in Black and White. Contrast pumped up. It's like watching a whole new movie, George Miller seems to have recommended to watch it like that, and now I understand why.
I will say that, in addition to the other bits of praise thrown his way for reacting with such grace and class, Jordan Horowitz's demeanor and actions seem very reflective of someone who is very good at his job - producing. I read that much-discussed "snatch" of the card from Warren Beatty as someone doing exactly what a good producer does: think on his feet, respond to a high-pressure situation, and be sure that the show goes on. And it wasn't even his show! Amid all the chaos and stagehands and pwc employees and Warren Beatty sloppily running around and putting off taking any real action for minutes upon minutes - there was Horowitz to step up and move the whole thing along. So good on him.
Jesus Alonso, I LOVE you!