knows what this envelope says.”
Warren is really smart, and he’s
the first to be careful for new nar-
ratives to take over, so he would
not let go of the envelopes.
KIMMEL I walked backstage with
Mike and Jen and Gary. Warren,
I think, was already backstage,
and Faye was gone — she was
probably at home sleeping by
that time. She wisely got the hell
out of there.
HUDSON I said, “Let’s go to
the green room.” Someone said,
“Bonnie left, Clyde stayed!”
MELIDONIAN It was ABC people, too
— [ABC’s vp communications]
Richard Horrmann. It was a bunch
of us.Dunaway actually goes to the
Governors Ball, where she
tells THR, “I’m not going to
speak about it.”
BOONE ISAACS We were like, “What
happened, dudes?!”
MICHAEL DE LUCA, Producer, 89th
Oscars Like a Murder, She Wrote.
KIMMEL Brian kind of stood
in the corner and watched it allplay out. I think maybe he was
secretly hoping that this would
get blamed on Warren.
TODD Warren had both of the
envelopes, and was explaining
what happened. This was
probably 10 to 15 minutes after
the show had ended.
WEISS Jimmy took charge of
the conversation. It was a little
bit of making light, making
fun. We weren’t there to lynch
anyone. We just wanted to
know what happened.
MELIDONIAN Jimmy tried to con-
v ince Warren to be on his show.
KIMMEL Warren said, “That would
be great — for you.” Cu l l i na n
looked guilty.
HUDSON I think he said, “Warren
somehow got the wrong enve-
lope.” Warren was saying, “I have
what was given to me right here.”Each accountant has one envelope
in each category, as a backup,
and so presenters can enter from
either side of the stage.
MELIDONIAN The lead actress
envelope, which Leo [DiCaprio]
handed to Emma Stone, came
from Martha, so it made sense
that Brian would have had the
extra lead actress envelope. The
pro tocol was that he would have
it out until the winner was called,
and then he would put it back in
his suitcase — which he failed
to do because he was distracted
by tweeting [the photo that he
had taken of Emma Stone back-
stage with her new Oscar].
TODD Glenn came with an iPadTODD The Moonlight and the La La
Land people walked through the
backstage, kind of arm-in-arm.
HOROWITZ I hopped off the stage
and my wife was standing there.
There was heaviness everywhere.
KEVIN BROCKMAN, Executive vp global
communications, Disney/ABC No
one died. But barring anything
terrible happening to a per-
son, this was probably the worst
thing, just situationally, that
could have happened.
TODD I didn’t realize I was going
to be talking about Brian from
PwC for the rest of my life.
TA BAC K I must have looked
like a ghost, because in the lobby,
they were like, “Are you OK?”
[Netflix vp global creative market-
ing] Steve Bruno said, “At least
Harvey [Weinstein, their former
boss, who was behind best picture
nominee Lion] wasn’t involved.”
Which made me laugh.
HOROWITZ My wife was like, “What
do you want to do?” I was like,
“I want to go to the Governors
Ball. I want to see Barry and Adele
and Mahershala.” I remember
wanting to find them to talk about
what happened. I was in a daze.
Meanwhile, Beatty begins to take
steps to ensure that he will not
be scapegoated. Backstage, an
investigation is quickly launched.
KELLY BUSH NOVAK, Publicist, repped
Beatty’s 2016 film Rules Don’t Apply
When they said “La La Land,” I
got up and left. As I exited the
garage my phone started ringing.
I learned what had happened
and that Warren had the envelopes
in his hand and wasn’t giving
them to anyone. I just counseled,
“Everybody needs to get into
the producers’ office immediately
to figure out what happened.”
BROCKMAN It was like, “OK. We’re
going to have to issue a state-
ment.” But we can’t say anything
until we know the truth.
TA BAC K I went backstage, and I
see a security guard with Warren
Beatty. Warren is really tall, and
he was holding his arm up as
high as he could — which must
be about seven and a half feet
off the ground — because in his
hand was the envelopes. He was
saying into the phone, I believe
to his wife, “I’m not giving it
up to anybody!” It was dead quiet.
BENING My impulse was to call
him right away. And I did. And he
picked up the phone. And I said,
“Oh my God. You did a great job,
but what happened?!” And he
said, “I have the envelopes, and
I’m not giving them to anyone!”
BUXBAUM I was backstage with
Casey and there was a logjam by
the elevator. I don’t know if it was
the PwC people, but they were
trying to get the envelopes from
Warren, and he was like, “No, I
need to make sure that everybodyREMEMBER ‘GARY FROM CHICAGO’?
Before an epic gaffe made headlines, an unassuming tourist — fresh out of prison — stole the show
when he was paraded into the Dolby Theatre. But it’s been an up-and-down year for the viral starG
ary Alan Coe, aka
“Gary from
Chicago” — a tourist
unsuspectingly
marched in front of
the world at the 2017
Oscars — has had a
roller-coaster year. “It
was great,” Coe, 60,
tells THR. “But two days
later, [the media] triedto make it something
ugly.” Coe, it turned
out, had been released
from prison just three
days earlier, after serv-
ing 20 years under
California’s controver-
sial three-strikes law.
“It was horrible,” he says
of the media coverage.
“I didn’t ask to be puton the Oscars. I was
minding my own busi-
ness. I was like, ‘Wow,
that’s crazy — that’s
America for you.’ ” He
adds, “Look what hap-
pened to Harvey
Weinstein! Come to find
out that the people up
in really high places are
the ones we should’vebeen watching, and
not some poor little
black guy!” Coe and
his then-fiancee, “mar-
ried” on the Oscars
by Denzel Washington,
broke up within a
week of the show. He’s
now engaged to another
woman and living in
Fresno, California. — S.F.Coe (center) with then-fiancee Victoria Vines and
Kimmel on the 89th Oscars telecast.CHERYL BOONE ISAACS,
Academy president 2013-17
“We were like,
‘What happened, dudes?!’ ”The Aftermath
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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 156 FEBRUARY 28, 2018