Help a Warren Beatty out, people. Following Sunday night’s Oscars snafu, in which Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway accidentally announced the wrong Best Picture winner, Beatty would really appreciate it if the Academy would take the reigns on this one, explaining to everyone, especially reporters who keep asking Warren Beatty about it, what happened. “Rather than for me to respond to questions from the press about the Academy ceremony, I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible,” Beatty said in a statement today. The Academy apologized for the gaffe yesterday, saying in part: “We deeply regret the mistakes that were made during the presentation of the Best Picture category during last night’s Oscar ceremony.”
Meanwhile PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm in charge of tabulating Oscar votes and delivering their results to the awards’ venue, has accepted the blame. “The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected,” PwC explained. “We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred.” It eventually came to light that PwC partner Brian Cullinan, who handed presenters their envelopes on stage right, accidentally gave Beatty and Dunaway a duplicate Best Actress card left in his care after Best Actress presenter Leonardo DiCaprio entered from the opposite wing. DiCaprio received his envelope from PwC partner Martha Ruiz at stage left. So, if Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs could summarize this whole situation and explain to everyone real quick, that’d be great, especially for Warren Beatty.
