"Last year’s Oscars screw-up was the most unforgettable moment in all my decades of awards show viewing," says Jason Gay. The Oscars, he says, "did something magical: They screwed up. They literally gave the Best Picture award to the wrong film (La La Land, not Moonlight), and more incredibly, they figured it out in real time, with everyone on stage, as if it were an episode of Scooby-Doo. It may have been mortifying to the show’s producers, not to mention the La-La-Landers who had to skulk off stage. But at home, I had a completely opposite reaction: Finally!" Gay adds that the debacle was "like inviting the wrong team to the Super Bowl—and it turned an utterly skippable TV event into something you’d wished you’d seen live. Why not market the potential for more of this? The greatest sensation any form of entertainment can sell is: You have no idea what’s coming next. The Oscars should embrace ineptitude and declare all bets off: Winners may become losers. Losers may win."
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TOPICS: 90th Academy Awards, ABC, 89th Academy Awards, Saturday Night Live, Corey Feldman, Faye Dunaway, Glenn Weiss, Jordan Horowitz, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Beatty, Award Shows