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"The weirdest TV ending since Lost": Jimmy Kimmel's take on his very strange Oscars

“Whatever confusion there was about who won – Matt Damon lost.”

IT’S PROBABLY SAFE to assume Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue pretty much wrote itself last night as he returned to his late night TV show one day on from his Oscars hosting stint.

The awards ceremony was overshadowed by a massive blunder as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway presented the Best Picture award.

In a sequence of events likely to live forever as part of TV blooper clip shows, Beatty at first seemed uncertain about what was on the card in the envelope he was given. He showed the card to Dunaway, who had appeared to think he was joking around up to that point.

‘La La Land’ was read out as the winner by Dunaway. The producers and cast took to the stage to celebrate before realising what went wrong and graciously handing the coveted prize over to the creators of ‘Moonlight’.

ABC News / YouTube

“Except for the end it was very fun,” Kimmel said, as he returned to his late-night ABC show.

Starting his monologue with a battery of one-liners about the mix-up, he said it was “the weirdest TV ending since Lost,” and compared it to paternity-testing segments that used to feature on daytime shows like ‘Maury Povich’.

‘La La Land’ was both “the biggest winner and loser” of the night, he told his audience.

Noting that Beatty and Dunaway were asked to present the main prize of the night as they were marking the 50th anniversary of their classic crime movie ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, he said of the envelope mix-up:

Clyde threw Bonnie under the bus.

Explaining how he witnessed events develop, he said he was supposed to end the show from a seat in the audience next to Matt Damon.

We’re sitting there and you’re thinking – you know, the host will go on stage and clear this thing up. And then I remember – oh, I’m the host!
Whatever confusion there was about who won – Matt Damon lost.

(Kimmel and Damon have a long-standing comedy feud. Find out more here. If this is the first you’re hearing about it, it’s funnier than it sounds).

Jimmy Kimmel Live / YouTube

PwC partner

Separately, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers has been identified as the culprit for a mixup.

Brian Cullinan handed the wrong envelope to Dunaway and Beatty, according to reports citing the firm and other unnamed sources.

Cullinan had posted a backstage photo of actress Emma Stone on Twitter just moments before the error, according to several reports, and had reportedly been tweeting frequently all night. By yesterday afternoon, the photos had been taken down.

Cullinan, one of two PwC partners charged with holding the envelopes, mistakenly gave Beatty a duplicate copy of Stone’s best actress win for ‘La La Land’.

He hasn’t spoken openly about the error but PwC was quick to circulate an apology vowing to investigate what had gone wrong.

Cullinan and his colleague Martha Ruiz, who have personally handled the Oscars in recent years, recently explained in an interview that two sets of envelopes were on site during the event.

“We stand on opposite sides of the stage, right off-screen, for the entire evening, and we each hand the respective envelope to the presenter,” Cullinan said in the interview published on medium.com.

It doesn’t sound very complicated, but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope.

After Ruiz furnished presenter Leonardo DiCaprio with Stone’s best actress envelope, Cullinan was supposed to ditch his duplicate but mistakenly gave it to Beatty in the place of the best picture envelope.

Tim Ryan, PwC’s US chairman, told trade magazine Variety he had spoken at length to Cullinan, who was stage left throughout the evening.

“He is very upset about this mistake. And it is also my mistake, our mistake and we all feel very bad,” Ryan was quoted as saying.

With reporting from © – AFP 2017

Explainer: The double envelope mix up that led to that Best Picture mess at the Oscars >

‘Hey Trump, are you up?’ There was a political edge to the Oscars last night >

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28 Comments
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    Mute Beachmaster
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:07 AM

    Lowest viewing figure since 2008.

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    Mute Bairéid Rísteard
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:16 AM

    @Beachmaster:hopefully them numbers will continue to dwindle. Apparently 70% of Hollywood’s revenue comes from outside the U.S. interesting statistic when you consider the amount of Americans they’ve managed to p1ss off, I guess they aren’t too bothered about the domestic market.

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    Mute Tony Skillington
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    Feb 28th 2017, 11:34 AM

    As one person tweeted after…M Night Shamalan did a great job directing the Oscars”..

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    Mute Daisy Daisy
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    Feb 28th 2017, 12:15 PM

    Shamalan went one better and tweeted that he wrote it! https://twitter.com/MNightShyamalan/status/836084032798670848

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:42 PM

    @Beachmaster: 2008 the year or those who watched it lol.

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    Mute LITTLEONE
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:13 AM

    Ratings down before this fiasco.. talk about making a##es of yourselves.

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    Mute Bairéid Rísteard
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:48 AM

    @LITTLEONE: the cynic in me says it was purposely done for the sake of controversy, and to get people talking .More than likely not, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

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    Mute LITTLEONE
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:33 AM

    Purposely done I doubt it. They have just made themselves look like complete twits . Out of touch with reality…

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    Mute Jamie Lyons
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:55 AM

    ““I became an artist and thank God I did,” she continued “because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.” — Viola Davis

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    Mute Titus Groan
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:04 AM

    Is anyone else sock of hearing about the Oscars? You’d swear it actually mattered…

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    Mute Joe Conlon
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:10 AM

    @Titus Groan: I’m sock of it too!

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    Mute Titus Groan
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:15 AM

    Like… the envelopes were mixed up and they all lost their mind. Some, their jobs. It’s a joke. It doesn’t matter!!!!

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    Mute Joseph Siddall
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:17 AM

    Jamie, and Viola Davis gets the Award for ‘Most Pretentious BS of The Century’. Proof, if proof were needed that these peoples learn scripts without understanding the meaning of the words.

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    Mute Mick Tobin
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:18 AM

    @Titus Groan: You’d be hearing about it for a lot longer in case it’d been the other way round – if La La Land had actually won and Moonlight erroneously read out.

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    Mute Gary Caffrey
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:16 AM

    @Mick Tobin:

    Why do you think that?

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    Mute Gary Caffrey
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:27 AM

    @Joseph Siddall:

    Maybe it was pretentious, but I am pretty sure after graduating from college, spending four years at Julliard and then performing the play on Broadway for 13 weeks, she understands the meaning of the words she is saying.

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    Mute Mick Tobin
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:38 AM

    @Gary Caffrey: Remember last year’s hashtag? http://www.thejournal.ie/oscars-so-white-2016-2549939-Jan2016/ Vice versa the failure would have been all the more epic.

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    Mute Gary Caffrey
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:47 AM

    @Mick Tobin:

    You are really trying hard to find a racial side to this. I think that says more about you than anything else.

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    Mute Mick Tobin
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:53 AM

    @Gary Caffrey: Absolutely not. Just saying the cockup would have been rather more significant. I’m happy with more diversity now and glad it didn’t go the other way.

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    Mute Tony Skillington
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    Feb 28th 2017, 2:55 PM

    They put a sick it it at this stage..

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:47 PM

    @Titus Groan: Turns out those in the porn industry have their own award ceremony and the funny thing is that they wear more on their bodies as in clothing than those Hollywood actors, funny that?

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    Mute Emmet O'Keeffe
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    Feb 28th 2017, 12:35 PM

    Haha.
    The Donald has them rattled.

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    Mute Keiko
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    Feb 28th 2017, 2:03 PM

    And the winner of best propaganda goes to…. White Helmets /Al Queda.

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:45 PM

    @Keiko: Who killed the Syrian Civil Defence force and stole their equipment and who rob the dying of what they have as well as shoot others on sectarian grounds. Funny how in fact Hollywood has really given a reward to the same ones involved in 911 Al Queda really.
    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=white+helmets+caught+faking+a+rescue&qpvt=white+helmets+caught+faking+a+rescue&FORM=VDRE

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    Mute Alois Irlmaier
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    Feb 28th 2017, 11:11 PM
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    Mute Ned O Mahony
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:43 PM

    Did they get any chance to bad mouth The Trumper

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