Thursday, December 26, 2024

Oscar Disaster: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway Were Not to Blame for Public Fiasco

I’m writing at 3am after a great Oscar telecast and a weird weird night.

First of all, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were not to blame for the public fiasco of the wrong movie being called for Best Picture.

The blame lies with the production people and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Beatty was given the wrong envelope, a duplicate of Emma Stone’s winning one. He didn’t know what was going on and deferred to Dunaway, who just winged it.

Faye told me at Vanity Fair’s insanely celebrity packed after party: “I’m not to blame!” And she’s right.

So many people at the Vanity Fair party were Monday morning quarterbacking the whole event. But really, when you’re on live TV, at the end of a four hour show, with no food or drink, you do exactly what Bonnie and Clyde did: you just do it to get it over with.

More later today about all the parties, and everything that happened off screen…

 

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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