Al Pacino Blames Oscars Producers For Awkward Best Picture Announcement

Al Pacino is blaming Oscars producers for hanging him out to dry.

The legendary actor released a statement earlier today explaining his side of the debacle in which the 83-year-old awkwardly announced Oppenheimer as this year's Best Picture winner at the conclusion of Sunday's award show.

Pacino says that producers flipped the script on him and told him just as he was walking out on stage that he would not be mentioning any of the nominees but rather, just the winner. 

It was definitely bizarre considering it was the most important award of the night.

For those that haven't seen it - watch the clip here:

CONFUSING END OF THE OSCARS

"And my eyes see Oppenheimer, yes… yes!" Pacino said as the audience and those watching at home had no idea what was happening.

It took a good amount of time before those in attendance even started clapping - and most telling, the orchestra didn't start playing music. And as we all know, once you lose the orchestra, you've lost the whole show!

But good ol' Al, who I remind you was in both The Godfather AND Scarface and should not be messed with ever, says he didn't do anything wrong.

OSCAR PRODUCERS TAKE THE BLAME - SORT OF

"There seems to be some controversy about my not mentioning every film by name last night before announcing the Best Picture award," Pacino told The New York Post in a statement.

"I just want to be clear it was not my intention to omit them, rather a choice by the producers not to have them said again, since they were highlighted individually throughout the ceremony. I was honored to be a part of the evening and chose to follow the way they wished for this award to be presented," Pacino continued while also congratulating all the nominees.

Oscars producer Molly McNearney apparently didn't want to wake up with a horse's head in her bedroom. She took blame on behalf of the entire show's producers, admitting it was their call for cutting Pacino short and sending him onto the stage without having him read all 10 of the Best Picture nominees.

"It was a creative decision we made because we were very worried that the show was going to be long," McNearney told Variety. "By the time you get to the end of the show, you’ve seen all 10 Best Picture clip packages. People just want to hear who wins, and they’re pretty ready for the show to be over. At least that’s what we anticipated," she continued.

"So, we did not give him [Pacino] a clip package. We did not give him nominations to read. I apologize if our decision to not have to read through all those nominations put him in a tough spot."

… Since when the hell do they care about going over? In fact, the show ended EARLY - literally I watched live - it ended 4 minutes ahead of time! 

Also, that is quite the bold move to let people like Jimmy Kimmel do a WAY too long monologue or the winners for Best Sound, Best Hair, Best Location-Finders or God knows what other awards are given out earlier in the night to take more precedent, then ya know, the biggest award of the entire night.

All in all, Sunday's Academy Awards did what it needed to do - despite Pacino's snub. For the second year in a row, ratings went up with over 19.5 million tuning in this past weekend. 

Thanks to Barbie and, as Al Pacino now knows all too well - Oppenheimer.