Barry Jenkins says the Best Picture mix-up at the Oscars was ”messy but kind of gorgeous”.
The ‘Moonlight’ director was left speechless when his movie was announced as the rightful winner of the prestigious award at the ceremony on Sunday after it was incorrectly announced that ‘La La Land’ had taken home the top prize.
He said: ”It’s messy, but it’s kind of gorgeous. You have these two groups of people who came together for a second. There’s a picture with me hugging Jordan [Horowitz, a producer of ‘La La Land’], and Adele [Romanski, producer of ‘Moonlight’] has her arm on his shoulder. That’s what the moment was.”
And ‘La La Land’ director Damien Chazelle – who took home the Best Director gong at the ceremony – thought it was all some kind of ”prank” at first.
He added: ”Everything looked so energized, I at first thought there was some kind of prank going on.”
The 32-year-old filmmaker enjoyed having both casts and crew onstage at the same time as he wanted to ”explode the myth” that the pair have a long-running feud.
Damien shared: ”That’s something Barry and I have talked about. It’s weird to be friendly with someone but to feel like there’s a mano-a-mano thing, which I guess is the nature of the Oscars. So it was nice to explode that myth a little bit on a big stage.”
Meanwhile, Barry admits he had prepared a speech if ‘Moonlight’ was named the winner but says winning was a ”dream he never allowed himself to have”.
He told Variety magazine: ”I had something that I had prepared to say, and that thing went completely out the window. I’ve been saying that [co-writer] Tarell [Alvin McCraney] and I are that kid in the film, and that kid does not grow up to make a piece of art that gets eight Academy Award nominations.
”It’s a dream I never allowed myself to have. When we were sitting there, and that dream of winning didn’t come true, I took it off the table. But then I had to very quickly get back into that place. And my first thought was to get to the stage to give Jordan a hug as quickly as possible.”
