Oscars 2017 live updates: ‘Moonlight’ wins best picture after ‘La La Land’ incorrectly called

After an erroneous announcement, ‘Moonlight’ was named Oscar-winner for best picture. 'La La Land' was announced first.

“Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’ drama is about a young African American coming to grips with his sexuality.

At first, Faye Dunaway announced “La La Land” as the winner, after her co-presenter Warren Beatty studied the card at length.

Producers and castmembers from "La La Land," the candy-colored big-screen romantic musical about two artists striving to fulfill their dreams, were on stage thanking everyone for their win when the mistake was caught.

"La La Land" producer Jordan Horowitz caught the mistake from the stage and interrupted the celebration, calling attention to the discrepancy on the winners card in his hand.

At that point, someone showed the card to the camera, which clearly indicated "Moonlight" had won.

Both a salute to Hollywood and a love letter to Los Angeles, “La La Land” came into the Oscars with a record-tying 14 nominations. The film starts with a traffic jam that turns into an improbable song-and-dance sequence and goes on to follow its young stars as they meet amid disappointing professional moments.

In his review of the film , L.A. Times critic Justin Chang said, “The result is, by any reasonable measure, one of the loveliest things you will experience in a theater this year.”

The other nominees were:

“Arrival”

“Fences”

“Hacksaw Ridge”

“Hell or High Water”

“Hidden Figures”

“Lion”

“Manchester by the Sea”

“Moonlight”

Here’s a complete list of winners and losers.

In case you were wondering, jewelry certainly matters, especially at the Oscars.

With Furiosa-worthy earrings, Charlize Theron shows she's so tough, even her earlobes can support a mine's worth of diamonds.

Chopard supplied the gems, featuring a 25-carat pear-shaped D-flawless diamond and 26-carat heart-shaped D-flawless diamond, plus 4.55 carats of pear-shaped diamonds and 4.35 carats of brilliant-cut diamonds set in 18-karat white gold from the Garden of Kalahari Collection.

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Memes aside, Emma Stone does look really great tonight.

Oscars nominees and past winners are not exempt from the wrath of the Twitterverse. Host Jimmy Kimmel demonstrates.

Linus Sandgren, who marked the first big win of the night for “La La Land,” for cinematography, talked about the innate and unexpected charm of Los Angeles during a quick stop backstage with his statue.

“I think it’s a really beautiful, interesting mix of the urban gritty city and the beauty of nature,” he said. “It’s an incredible mix. Sometimes I drive home on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, and there are lots of telephone poles, but against this lovely sky and sunset. It’s remarkable.”

His favorite scene in the film is Emma Stone’s dream-like audition.

“It’s so simple — no colors, a bit dim, but it was quite complicated to do,” he said. “It can be more interesting to do simple scenes, and in this film, which is so bold all the time, that scene is so intimate.”

Emma Stone’s turn as an aspiring actress working in a coffee shop and going on humiliating auditions won her the lead actress Oscar.

Stone, whose character Mia shares an apartment with three other women and falls in love with a jazz pianist played by Ryan Gosling, was the one to beat. She had won most major awards and was considered a near lock in the category.

Other nominees included:

Natalie Portman , “Jackie”

Ruth Negga , “Loving”

Meryl Streep , “ Florence Foster Jenkins ”

Isabelle Huppert , “Elle ”

Casey Affleck won the lead actor Oscar for his role in “Manchester by the Sea” playing a man overwhelmed by grief and guilt.

Affleck was the critics’ favorite who steamrolled through the early part of the awards season but then lost the Screen Actors Guild award to Denzel Washington.

In “Manchester,” Affleck’s character is named the guardian of his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges, in a breakout performance and a supporting actor nominee), after his brother’s sudden death. He emerges, if briefly, from his self-imposed sentence of solitary confinement and struggles to stick around a world with too many memories.

Other nominees include:

Denzel Washington, "Fences”

Andrew Garfield , “Hacksaw Ridge”

Ryan Gosling , “La La Land”

Viggo Mortensen , “Captain Fantastic”

A year after the #Oscarssowhite outrage dominated awards season, a record-breaking number of African Americans -- five in four categories, left the Dolby Theatre with statuary. The previous record was three at the shows in 2010 and 2014.

Viola Davis won tonight for supporting actress in "Fences." Mahershala Ali took home the statue for supporting actor in "Moonlight," setting another record: the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar. Ezra Edelman who is biracial, won best documentary for "O.J. Simpson: Made in America," and Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney won for adapted screenplay for "Moonlight."

“Zootopia” co-directors Byron Howard and Rich Moore were bursting with pride backstage at the Oscars.

“With this film we got the idea to talk about bias with talking animals — we wanted animals to serve for stand-ins for all of us," said Howard, adding, "we were surprised how timely the film became as the world started to blow up."

Howard and Moore said the film turned increasingly political after the fraught presidential election.

Both were aware of the impact the film could have and worked with an expert on bias for two years. Thirteen versions of the film were made before it was finalized.

“When I watched movies and heard stories as a kid, I thought stories just entertained us, but as I got older I realized we were giving back,” said Moore.

“Animated films don’t have to be just for kids,” said Howard.

The win marked Disney’s fifth straight one in the category.

“Our studio employs artists from all over the world,” Moore said. “There’s no way we could make these movies without the talent of international artists.”

The escalating rivalry between Jimmy Kimmel and actor Matt Damon was expected to heat up on Sunday and Kimmel did not disappoint.

The Oscars host capitalized on several opportunities to burn his arch-rival, who is attending this year's ceremony as a producer for best picture nominee "Manchester by the Sea." Kimmel took aim at Damon during his opening monologue, ribbing Damon's massive flop "The Great Wall."

“When I first met Matt, I was the fat one,” Kimmel said, before calling Damon "unselfish" for casting childhood friend Casey Affleck in "Manchester" instead of himself.

“Then he made a Chinese ponytail movie instead,” Kimmel quipped . “And that movie, 'The Great Wall,' went on to lose $80 million. Smooth move, dumbass."

Another bit, featuring Kimmel walking the aisles, the host pretended that Damon tripped him.

But the best barb came after the "In Memoriam" segment and featured Kimmel reflecting on Damon's 2011 film "We Bought a Zoo," doting on his "effortful" performance.

When Damon and collaborator Ben Affleck were set to present the award for original screenplay, Kimmel introduced them as "Two-time Academy Award winner Ben Affleck and guest."

As soon as Damon started speaking, the orchestra started cutting him off.

"I'm presenting, you can't play me off," Damon cried.

Then the camera cut to the pit where Kimmel was conducting the orchestra.

"Wrap it up. We want to go home," the host insisted.

In 2002, Halle Berry made history. She was the first black woman to win the lead actress Oscar for her role in Marc Forster's "Monster's Ball." In her acceptance speech, she dedicated the win to "the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett [Smith], Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox."

"And it's for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened," she said. "Thank you. I'm so honored."

But 15 years later, the door allegedly opened that night has not seen another woman of color enter it since. That's not because lack of talent or nominations.

Since Berry's win, eight women of color have been nominated in the category, from Salma Hayek ("Frida") the year following to Gabourey Sidibe ("Precious") in 2010. This year, Ruth Negga of "Loving," is the eighth.

In total, in almost 90 years of the Academy Awards, only 16 women of color have been nominated in the lead actress category. See them all below:

• Dorothy Dandridge, "Carmen Jones"
• Diana Ross, "Lady Sings The Blues"
• Cicely Tyson, "Sounder"
• Diahann Carroll, "Claudine"
• Whoopi Goldberg, "The Color Purple"
• Angela Bassett, "What's Love Got to Do With It"
• Fernanda Montenegro, "Central Station"
• Halle Berry, "Monster's Ball"
• Salma Hayek, "Frida"
• Keisha Castle-Hughes, "Whale Rider"
• Catalina Sandino Moreno, "Maria Full of Grace"
• Penélope Cruz, "Volver"
• Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious"
• Viola Davis, "The Help"
• Quvenzhané Wallis, "Beasts of the Southern Wild"
• Ruth Negga, "Loving"

Damien Chazelle won the best director Oscar for his film “La La Land,” a candy-colored musical romance starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. At 32, Chazelle became the youngest person to win in the director category.

Last year, his film “Whiplash” was nominated for five Oscars, including best picture.

In an essay on musicals for The Times, Chazelle wrote, “I wanted to make a movie that would embrace the magic of musicals but root it in the rhythms and texture of real life. I wanted the dances to feel like honest extensions of the characters’ feelings. I wanted to make it seem as though breaking into song were the most natural thing in the world. I wanted to make a movie about how life feels when you're in love and full of dreams in the big city. “

The other nominees were:

Denis Villeneuve , “Arrival”

Mel Gibson , “Hacksaw Ridge”

Barry Jenkins , “Moonlight”

Kenneth Lonergan , “Manchester by the Sea”

Unlike the Golden Globes, which is centered on a boozy dinner, there's no food or drink allowed inside the Dolby Theatre. Hence the emergency rations of candy that host Jimmy Kimmel has been dropping from the rafters to hungry stars.

The show's producers planned a candystravaganza for the 89th Academy Awards after the Emmys scored a meme-able moment by having the "Stranger Things" kids pass out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the air.

But at the Oscars there isn't a PB&J; in sight -- only Junior Mints, Red Vines and other assorted candies to get guests through the long haul, passed out once every four commercial breaks to those inside the theater.

That means that nominees have to sneak out to the bar area to keep their blood sugar -- and their booze levels -- up.

Those looking to nosh, however, don't have many options.

Most hobnobbers made a beeline for one of two open bars in the Dolby Theatre lobby as soon as the show began. Halfway through the show in the more intimate side bar, Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard had a mini "Empire" reunion while in line for drinks.

But as the night wore on, hungry bellies that had been starved for weeks to fit into tuxes and evening gowns drove guests to the lone snack table, where tiny bags of Japanese rice crackers and cookies provide the evening's only sustenance. (This just in: They're now out of rice crackers and have added small bags of trail mix.)

"Where's the REAL food?" grumbled one well-dressed gentleman, surveying the limited spread.

"This is it, until the Governors Ball!" answered a cheery Oscars staffer. Then again, not every attendee gets a ticket to the official (and catered) Oscars after party.

He begrudgingly grabbed a bag of three miniature cookies and walked off -- toward the bar.

Barry Jenkins’ script for “Moonlight” won for adapted screenplay. The movie about the coming-of-age of a gay black boy in a drug-infested Miami neighborhood was based on a stage play by Tarell Alvin McCraney.

Other nominees include:

“Lion,” by Luke Davies

“Arrival,” by Eric Heisserer

“Hidden Figures,” by Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder

“Fences,” by August Wilson

The story of "Moonlight" began long before director Barry Jenkins' involvement propelled the film to eight Academy Award nominations. In fact, it began in 2003 while then budding-playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney was applying to grad school.

As part of his application to Yale's School of Drama, he wrote the play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.” But unlike the film it would eventually become, it played out in a circular motion with life happening for the youngest, middle and oldest versions of the character all at once. (Imagine a kid waking up and brushing his teeth, followed by his adolescent self and adult self doing the same actions.)

“I was trying to figure out what little me and middle me and grown me were doing that was the same and not the same,” McCraney said about the play’s structure and inspiration. “What patterns I was repeating, what is this life?”

The play came out of “a strange time, a time of endings and then new beginnings,” he said. He'd graduated from DePaul University in June with a degree in acting and his mother, who struggled with addiction when he was young and had suffered from AIDS-related complications for the prior 10-year period, died that July.

After enrolling, he put the “Moonlight” play on the shelf knowing that it could not be staged because he had written in visual cues, like cut to’s, that only film allows an artist to do. When he finally picked it back up and gave it to a film professor who told him to finish the script, McCraney responded: “It’s not done? Hm.” (He graduated in 2007.)

Jenkins, who eventually got his hands on the play through mutual friends in the Miami arts scene, was immediately struck by the way McCraney had depicted the mother-son relationship. “Because that happened to me [too],” he said.

Though Jenkins originally wanted McCraney to adapt the unproduced play for the screen, when the playwright won one of the prestigious MacArthur grants in 2013, he became too busy. Luckily, the two had shared enough of their expectations of each other for Jenkins to confidently adapt the play on his own. And though Jenkins is straight, the "Medicine for Melancholy" director said he wanted to maintain the queer voice of the play about the lived experiences of a black gay man written by the black gay man who lived it.

“I felt like the only way to do the translation and have it have the same power as Tarell’s work onstage was to preserve his voice,” Jenkins said. “There were certain scenes and experiences in the play that I had not lived.”

Years later, both Jenkins and McCraney are nominated for an Oscar for the adaptation, for the screenplay and story, respectively.

Motion picture academy member Samuel L. Jackson sees all the nominated movies, but he admitted that he did not quite make it through all of this year's nominees.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW >>

Kenneth Lonergan won the Oscar for original screenplay for his nuanced and devastating "Manchester by the Sea," about a man coming out of grief-stricken solitude to deal with the loss of his brother.

Other nominees include:

“Hell or High Water,” by Taylor Sheridan

“La La Land,” by Damien Chazelle

"20th Century Women," Mike Mills

The Lobster,” by Efthymis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos

Among the many things "La La Land" has been chastised for, the movie musical's casting of two non-singers in Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone ranks pretty low on my list .

But that's the criticism the Oscars seemed to push back on by having John Legend perform the movie's two nominated songs, "City of Stars" and "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)."

So how'd he do?

Well, Legend certainly proved he's a singer, flexing a vocal range that surpassed Gosling's and Stone's put together.

But to my ears this super-smooth crooner also milked the music's emotion a bit more than was necessary, which made the songs feel kind of glib.

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In their near identical tuxedos, Alan Barillaro and Marc Sondheimer were the dynamic duo of humility and cool, backstage in the press room after winning animated short for Pixar’s rite-of-passage story “Piper.”

“It’s quite an honor,” Barillaro said, "and four of those [other] nominees, we’re so proud to have our names next to those colleagues. It’s nice to celebrate short films with them.”

About the technology that made the film possible, Barillaro added: “When you talk technology, the art form is the pencil … we ignored the world of realism and went for the artistic choices. A lot of the work was looking at classical paintings.”

Animating baby birds – grown up birds too – is tricky business. And Barillaro and Sondheimer stressed the research they did to prepare.

“The challenge as an animator is you need to understand something before you can animate it,” Barillaro said.

“We studied those birds and that really helped,” Sondheimer said. “For three long years!

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