As predicted, Oppenheimer took home the lion’s share of Oscar wins on Sunday night. Although, whilst announcing the film’s win for Best Picture, legendary actor Al Pacino made a minor slip up that broke Oscar’s tradition.
Oppenheimer won seven of the 13 Oscars it was nominated for, Aside from Best Picture, the film scored awards for lead actor Cillian Murphy as well as an award for Robert Downey Jr. for best supporting actor. The award for Best Picture was announced at the end of the ceremony as usual, this year The Godfather actor, Al Pacino was there to announce the winner.
What did Al Pacino do?
Typically the Best Picture award would be given a little bit of a dramatic build up, there would be some tension, all the nominees for the category would be announced first and then after a bit more waiting, the winner would be announced. Although Pacino was having none of that this year as he skipped straight to announcing Christopher Nolan’s biopic as the winner. You can see the clip for yourself here.
To be fair, he built it up a little bit, teasing the audience as he opened the envelope, but it all fell apart when, as soon as he opened the envelope he announced, ‘my eyes see Oppenheimer.’ The whole thing happens pretty fast, and it’s almost underwhelming, you can hear the people in the crowd actually processing the fact that they just heard the winner as the clapping and cheering take a moment to start in full. They were all probably recovering from whiplash thanks to Pacino’s speedy announcement.
Why exactly did he do that? It’s not clear, it seems like in the excitement of the moment he may have just forgotten the usual procedure; or maybe he just didn’t feel like playing the Academy’s game this year. He’s 83 after all, perhaps he just wanted an early night, which he certainly got as his slip-up meant that the awards ceremony didn’t run late for the first time in years, in fact, they were able to wrap it all up a few minutes early.
Mistakes like this seem par for the course at the Oscars
If you know anything about the history of the Academy Awards then you’ll know that this is nothing compared to past dramas at the ceremony. The infamous Will Smith slap took the world by storm a couple of years ago. Although this incident reminded many of the 2017 Best Picture drama in which Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced the wrong winner, claiming La La Land won the award over Moonlight, assuming it was a misprint. Of course, Pacino’s mistake doesn’t come anywhere near the level of sheer second-hand embarrassment many felt watching the 2017 Oscars, but it was still a funny little moment that got people talking.