We all know by now just who was responsible for the catastrophic fiasco that absolutely rocked the Western world to its very foundations earlier this week: Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, partners at accounting firm PwC and, up until today, both very happy to tell everyone and anyone that they were the only people to know the Oscar winners before the rest of the universe.
It has now come to light that Cullinan had tweeted a picture of Best Actress winner Emma Stone backstage just moments before he handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope and sent him to his doom on stage. Now Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the film academy, has told the Associated Press that Cullinan and Ruiz will have to change their Twitter bios, because they will never work on Oscars night again.
“They have one job to do. One job to do!” Boone Isaacs said. “Obviously there was a distraction. Once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner.”
To make matters worse for the hapless duo, PwC are also launching an internal investigation as to how things went so unbelievably and disastrously wrong.
Protocols for handling the winners’ envelopes, Boone Isaacs said, “have worked for 83 years.”
“We are reviewing those protocols, of course,” she said. “Because it never happened before and we never are going to have it happen again. And we are setting new guidelines, new protocols and really re-examining every step to make sure this never ever, ever happens.”
As for Cullinan, the man hasn’t Tweeted since that fateful moment (and even deleted the incriminating images of the glamorous Stone). It’s fair to say he’ll probably be on a bit of social media detox from now until eternity – although Tweeting about the Oscars will probably be easier from the comfort of his sofa…
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