Glenn Weiss was the director in the control booth during one of the most famous moments of live-televised chaos in history: when La La Land was mistakenly announced as Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards instead of the rightful winner, Moonlight. He’s since cracked that the mix-up had its upsides in making the show memorable. “Yeah, I’ve been joking about the fact that I’ve spent a whole career staging breathtaking, beautiful moments on television, and the shot that I’ll be remembered for is a guy holding a card,” he told the Los Angeles Times, referring to the La La Land producer who famously held up the slip reading “Moonlight.”
At Monday’s Emmys, Weiss paid the unpredictability forward by turning his acceptance speech for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special into a tear-jerking, confusion-making marriage proposal.
It started on a sad note. The 57-year-old industry vet Weiss said that the person who’d have been most proud of him would have been his mother, but she had died just two weeks earlier. “Mom always believed in finding the sunshine in things, and that’s why she adored my girlfriend, Jan,” he said. “Jan, you are the sunshine in my life. And Mom was right: Don’t ever let go of my sunshine. You wonder why I don’t like to call you my girlfriend? Because I want to call you my wife.”