Marc Platt

Marc Platt was a renowned producer in the worlds of theater and film, who gained some notoriety due to his involvement in perhaps the biggest flub in the history of the Academy Awards. Born in Pikesville, MD, to a schoolteacher mother and a shoe salesman father, Platt first set his sights on becoming a lawyer, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, and getting his masters in law from New York University. Platt spent a few years as an entertainment lawyer before he got the producing bug. He started out in theater, as an associate producer on the play "Total Abandon" (1983), before moving into Hollywood and taking an executive producer credit on the college comedy "Campus Man" (1987). Throughout the nineties, Platt put in time at studios such as Orion Pictures, TriStar Pictures, and Universal Studios, before starting his own production company, Marc Platt Productions. The early 2000s gave Platt some huge successes on both stage and screen, in the form of the smash hit Broadway musical "Wicked" and the Reese Witherspoon law comedy "Legally Blonde" (2001) and its sequel, "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde" (2003). The rest of the decade saw Platt producing a wide variety of titles, from the Anne Hathaway indie drama "Rachel Getting Married" (2008) to the Fellini-inspired musical "Nine" (2009), and from the stylish neo-noir of "Drive" (2011) to the ludicrous shoot-em-up "2 Guns" (2013). Platt hit pay dirt, however, when he co-produced Damien Chazelle's "La La Land" (2016), a splashy romantic homage to classic movie musicals that scored big at the box office and swept the 89th Academy Awards, earning 14 nominations, a record tied with "All About Eve" (1950) and "Titanic" (1997) for most nominations for a single film. On Oscar night, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway declared "La La Land" to be the winner for Best Picture, as almost all awards prognosticators had predicted. However, viewers watched in shock when, as Platt was giving his acceptance speech, it was revealed that the presenters had been given the wrong envelope, and that the actual Best Picture winner was "Moonlight" (2016), a quiet, micro budgeted drama about black LGBT youth. Platt and company graciously ceded the stage to the cast and crew of "Moonlight," unintentionally creating a Hollywood moment that would be discussed and analyzed forever.