The two people responsible for the infamous Best Picture mix-up at Monday’s Oscars will not be permitted to return to the awards.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, told the Associated Press that Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz have been permanently removed from all film academy dealings.
As well as overseeing the counting procedures, the PricewaterhouseCoopers representatives had been tasked with safeguarding the winner’s envelopes. However Cullinan mistakenly handed the incorrect one to Best Picture award presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, resulting in La La Land being announced as the winner.
Speeches were made, Oscars were handed out, until it was revealed the true recipient of the award was Moonlight.
Boone Isaacs said Wednesday that Cullinan had been "distracted" prior to the mix-up, which is being hailed as the biggest blunder in the 89 year history of the awards.
Cullinan has been criticised for tweeting a backstage photograph of Best Actress winner Emma Stone just moments before handing over the errant envelope.
According to People, he was not permitted to use social media during the ceremony, but the time stamp on the now-deleted tweet reportedly showed it was posted at 9:05 p.m., a matter of minutes before the Best Picture blunder occurred.
It was the most boring Oscars ever... Until it wasn't. (Post continues after podcast.)
PwC's Chairman, Tim Ryan, labelled the flub as "human error".
“We made a mistake. What happened was, our partner on the left side of the stage, Brian Cullinan, he handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty," he told USA Today.
"And then the second we realised that, we notified the appropriate parties and corrected the mistake.”
Speaking to Huffington Post prior to the ceremony, Cullinan said it would be very unlikely that the wrong winner would be called.
“We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly. Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signalling to the stage manager — that’s really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen," he said.
“Again, it’s so unlikely.”
Top Comments
So he won't be tweeting and Instagraming his selfies with the stars anymore. He got caught up in the glamour and stardom and thought he was one of them. But he forgot he was only there to do a job. Don't know why she was removed though. She didn't get it wrong. But her removal from future awards is because her character has been besmirched by association.
She was removed because (although this article doesn't explain it at all) there are procedures that both representatives are meant to take in the case of an incorrect winner being announced, and neither of them followed procedure.
It wasn't Martha's fault - why has she been taken off the Oscars job because of her colleague's mistake?
The article doesn't explain that at all, however the reason she has been removed was because there are procedures that both representatives are meant to follow in the case of an incorrect winner being announced, and neither of them followed those procedures.
It was his initial blunder but once Dunaway read out the wrong winner, either one of them could (and should) have stepped in immediately and corrected the error. Neither of them did and the mistake was not corrected until after one person had already given his acceptance speech for the award he didn't actually win. They are both at fault for that.