Academy bans phone use for PwC accounts at the Oscars

Accountants from PwC have been banned from using mobile phones at the Oscars, following this year’s historic blunder.

Though the accountancy firm, formerly known as Pricewaterhouse Coopers, has been retained in its duties collecting and counting up the votes and organising the winner’s envelopes on the night, certain conditions have been put in place.

As well as the phone ban, a third member of staff will help oversee the envelope logistics, while the US chairman of the company will also provide additional oversight.

In a statement, Oscars president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said: “From the night of the ceremony through today, PwC has taken full responsibility for the mistake.

“After a thorough review, including an extensive presentation of revised protocols and ambitious controls, the Board has decided to continue working with PwC.”

It comes after Brian Cullinan, the Matt Damon look-a-like who caused this year’s incident, was busy taking pictures and tweeting backstage.

Then, after posting a picture of Emma Stone online, he gave Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope for Best Picture.

It resulted in the pair announcing that Damien Chazelle’s ‘La La Land’ was the winner, when it was actually Barry Jenkins’ ‘Moonlight’.

Boone Isaacs has blamed Cullinan’s distraction on the night for the blunder, and that he and PwC partner Martha Ruiz then failed to follow the correct protocols to correct the error.

Cullinan – who has called the job he’d done for several years at the Oscars ‘as much fun as you can have as an accountant’ – and Ruiz were said to have had to hire bodyguards following the debacle, while Boone Isaacs called the 89th ceremony ‘the most extraordinary and memorable Oscars ceremony in decades’.

It was most certainly that.

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