SANTA MONICA: An estimated 33 million worldwide viewers watched in stunned silence on Sunday while “La La Land” mistakenly received the Oscar for Best Picture. Unlike the viewers who were glued to the screen, one person might not paying close enough attention.
PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant Brian Cullinan was responsible for handing off the envelope to presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway backstage. However, Cullinan was pre-occupied with his oh-so-important tweets that he couldn’t be bothered to confirm whether or not he had the right envelope before passing it over to Beatty and Dunaway.
In a post that has since been deleted, Cullinan tweeted out a photo of best actress winner Emma Stone just minutes before the best picture mix up occurred.
Ironically, just last week Cullinan told the Huffington Post that it was “so unlikely” for the wrong envelope to be handed off, that besides signaling the stage manager, there was no clear protocol for dealing with such a mix up.
“Once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner,” PwC said.
Although it only took a few minutes for “Moonlight” to correctly be announced as the Best Picture winner, it may very well take PricewaterhouseCoopers years to recover.
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