The La La Land Oscars mix-up
You might remember it as envelopegate, Moonlight Best Picture announcement
The archive has not found a surviving copy.
Famous internet fails2 of 11
2017·The platform era·shocking
The wrong film won Best Picture live on air, and the correction happened on stage in front of everybody.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- envelopegate
- Spread in
- 2017
- Began as
- A television broadcast
- Where it started
- broadcast
- Format
- Event
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
At the 89th Academy Awards on 26 February 2017, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope and announced La La Land as Best Picture. Its producers were partway through their acceptance speeches before the mistake was established on stage, the cast of Moonlight were brought up, and the correct winner was declared in front of a live worldwide audience.
It is the single most-screenshotted two minutes of live television of the social-media era: an unfolding error that everybody could see happening, in real time, with the participants' faces available in close-up. The reaction was not really about the films — it was about watching an enormously formal institution fail in public with nowhere to cut away to.
The accountancy firm responsible changed its procedures and the two partners involved were removed from the assignment. "Envelopegate" became shorthand for any live administrative catastrophe, and it is the reference point every awards show has been measured against since.
Why it is here: it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This began as a television broadcast, not as a video upload. Originally published on broadcast.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a television broadcast, not as a video upload. Originally published on broadcast.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
