It’s a tie!
For only the seventh time in Oscars history, a category ended with two winners after “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva” both nabbed the Academy Award for live-action short film.
Presenter Kumail Nanjiani acknowledged the rarity of the situation as he opened the envelope. “It’s a tie. I’m not joking. It’s actually a tie. So everyone calm down, and we’re going to get through this,” he said. When the room erupted in murmurs and giggles, Nanjiani cracked, “Calm down! Remain calm.”
He announced each of the winners individually — Sam A. Davis and Jack Piatt for “The Singers” and Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata for “Two People Exchanging Saliva” — and brought them up one at a time to give speeches.
In between their moments on stage, Nanjiani joked, “Ironic that the short film Oscar is going to take twice as long.”
“A tie — wow. I didn’t know that was a thing. But we’re happy to be up here,” said Davis. He described “The Singers” as a “simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world.” Davis concluded, “May we keep looking for beauty in unexpected places, and may we all be brave enough to keep on singing.”
In Singh’s speech, he took a jab at Timothée Chalamet’s recent viral comments regarding his thoughts on the state of ballet and opera.
“We believe art can change people’s souls,” Singh said. “Maybe it takes 10 years time, but we can change society through art, through creativity, through theater and ballet — and cinema.”
After their speeches, host Conan O’Brien joked: “I just want to say congratulations to both winners. You just ruined 22 million Oscar pools.”
Prior to this year’s telecast, the most recent tie was at the 2013 ceremony when “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Skyfall” shared the award for sound editing. Other notable ties include 1932 when best actor went to Wallace Beery (“The Champ”) and Fredric March (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”); 1949 when documentary short went to “A Chance to Live” and “So Much for So Little”; 1986 when documentary feature went to “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” and “Down and Out in America”; and 1994 when live-action short film went to “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Trevor.” Perhaps most memorably, Katharine Hepburn (“The Lion in Winter”) and Barbra Streisand (“Funny Girl”) shared the best actress trophy at the 1968 awards.
According to the Academy, the first tie has a major asterisk: March had one more vote than Beery (only three men were even nominated!), but the rules at the time stated that “if an achievement came within three votes of the winner, that achievement would also receive the award.” Since then, it’s been changed so only an exact match in totals would qualify as a tie.
