(...Story Continued from Previous Page) It was like the Big Bang in reverse: "Oh, my God. Oh, my
God. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me," blubbered Berry, trying
desperately to make the moment big enough for her.
"This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll," she continued, in a
name-dropping paroxysm that cried out, instead, for Lloyd Bentsen. "It's for the
women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it's for every nameless, faceless woman of
color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened." Yes,
because now all nameless, faceless women of color could grow up to be Best
Actress Oscar winners, just like their universal idol, Halle Berry!
"Thank you. I'm so honored. I'm so honored," Berry further honored herself.
"And I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel for which His blessing
might flow." Which brings us to our next piece of advice ...
2. Don't Assume That God Voted for You
No incarnation of
the Creator of All Things is registered as a member of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, and nowhere on the Academy ballots is there a
category for Best Vessel Through Whom God's Blessings Might Flow. (There remains
some question, however, about whether Jesus Christ personally chooses the Grammy
winners.) Winning an Oscar does not make you a special agent of God's will or
the divine favorite over your fellow nominees -- or, for that matter, over the
lepers in your category who must suffer the enduring shame of not even being
nominated. (Didn't Jesus say that the un-nominated would inherit the earth?) Do
not demean the concept of the Almighty by implying that either you, or the
members of the Academy who voted for you, are somehow helping to implement God's
Mysterious Plan so that you all can bring about the End Times. Even if it's
true, don't. It's just bad form.
3. Brevity Is Good
Do you want to be remembered for
making everyone resent that you won? If so, be like Greer Garson (Best Actress, "Mrs. Miniver," 1943), who took the stage at approximately 1
a.m., blabbered on for a record five and a half minutes and whipped up a room
full o' hate that made her the butt of long-winded jokes for the rest of her
career.
Otherwise, you could let your filmed performance speak for itself by
graciously refusing to hog the spotlight. Like Clark Gable (Best Actor, "It Happened One Night," 1935) who said, memorably: "Thank
you." Or Joe Pesci (Best Supporting Actor, "GoodFellas," 1991), whose entire speech was: "This is an
honor and privilege. Thank you very much."
4. Prepare
You're not fooling anyone. We all know you've
been hoping, fantasizing, rehearsing. Winners who get up there and say they
didn't prepare anything because they didn't expect to win should be yanked
offstage and whisked by limo to the nearest Jamboree, where they should be
forced to write the Boy and Girl Scout motto 1,000 times on 1,000 separate cue
cards until they've memorized it: "Be prepared." (If you're a gay man, the Boy
Scouts wouldn't allow you at their Jamboree but, if you're out, you already know
that nobody would believe you hadn't prepared an Oscar speech, anyway.)
Picking up the award for Best Director (for "A Beautiful Mind" in 2002), Ron Howard confessed: "I'm not a good enough actor anymore
to be able to stand up here and make you believe that I haven't imagined this
moment in my mind over the years and played it out over a thousand times." If
Opie isn't a good enough actor anymore, then neither are you -- even if you win
an Oscar.
For those genuinely "unprepared" Oscar moments, when you really didn't think
you were going to win and suddenly you do, see Joe Pesci's ideal speech in the
previous item.
5. Don't Overprepare (In Other Words: No Lists)
All
persons entering the Kodak Theatre should be frisked for 8 1/2-x-11-inch sheets
of paper. Nothing larger than a 3-x-5 card should be allowed into the
auditorium. If there's anything worse than a "spontaneous, unprepared"
acceptance speech, it's a monologue delivered, head down, by someone (say, Jennifer Connelly?) who probably couldn't even read
convincingly off a teleprompter. At most, your index card should have three
items on it. For example:
1. One-liner joke
2. Suck up to X (director, studio exec, casting agent,
soon-to-be-ex-spouse -- choose ONE)
3. Thank Academy
At least when Maureen Stapleton (Best Supporting Actress, "Reds," 1982) proclaimed that she wanted to thank "everybody
I ever met in my entire life," she had the decency to refrain from mentioning
them by name. Not even Cuba Gooding Jr. cited everyone he loved individually. If
you know people who want to get mentioned on TV, tell them that's what your
local news is for. Tell them to send in a digital photo of their cat or commit a
mass murder and your local FOX channel will probably say their name on the air.
And there's always call-in radio. But not at the Academy Awards, please.
Next year nobody will remember that you won an Oscar, anyway. If you want to
make sure that nobody remembers it tomorrow, just start reciting a bunch of
names most of your listeners don't know. Every time somebody starts thanking
their agent and their lawyer and their illegitimate offspring, the water
pressure in major cities drops precipitously from all the flushing.
6. Enough With the Flowery Speechifying
Too many actors
think they can write. And too many of those who think that think "writing"
involves grandiose rhetoric. One of the worst speeches ever was Laurence Olivier's 1979 honorary Oscar acceptance, which
began:
"In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosity, this
particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle
eccentric, but the mere fact of it -- the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it
-- must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me at
this moment, dazzling me a little, but filling me with warmth and the
extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first
breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow."
That's two firmaments in one sentence, which is at least two firmaments too
many. Cut to 18 years later and the insufferably calculated ebullience of Roberto Benigni, who bounded over the seats and seemed to
crib from Olivier's English-as-a-Second-Language soliloquy: "I feel like now,
really, to dive in this ocean of generosity. ... I would like to be Jupiter in
the firmament ... lying down and making love to everybody. This is something I
cannot forget from the bottom of my heart."
Even famous Regular Guy Tom Hanks went all firmamenty when he accepted his first
Oscar for Best Actor in "Philadelphia" in 1994: "I know that my work in
this case is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded
with angels." (Precisely how many angels can crowd the streets of heaven to
magnify Hanks' work has yet to be determined.) "We know their names. They number
a thousand for each one of the red ribbons that we wear here tonight. They
finally rest in the warm embrace of the gracious creator of us all, a healing
embrace that cools their fevers, that clears their skin and allows their eyes to
see the simple, self-evident commonsense truth that is made manifest by the
benevolent creator of us all." Beautiful sentiments (I think), but the
overwrought language and self-important delivery made many of us cringe,
momentarily longing for the tiresome, moronic "Brokeback Mountain" jokes of the future.
7. If You're Going to Make a Joke, Make It a Self-deprecating
One-Liner
When George Burns won the Supporting Actor award in
1976 for a Neil Simon movie ("The Sunshine Boys"), it was not one of the Academy's
proudest moments, but 80-year-old Burns cut to the heart of the matter when he
said, "It couldn't have happened ... to an older guy." (Indeed, it hadn't.)
Contrast this with, say, James Cameron, the director of "Titanic," who awkwardly and unconvincingly exclaimed: "I'm
the king of the world! Woo-hoo!" Not self-deprecating enough, really.
Stubby songwriter Paul Williams (star of Brian De Palma's "Phantom of the Paradise") actually got an Oscar in 1977 for
penning some of the worst lyrics ever in "Evergreen," for Barbra Streisand's "A Star Is Born": "Love, soft as an easy chair ..." He almost
made up for it by quipping: "I was going to thank all the little people, but
then I remembered I am the little people." I'm sure it worked just as well when
he used it on "Hollywood Squares."
Yes, these are corny jokes, and they are obviously prepared in advance. But
they work to relieve the tension in the audience, caused by everyone's
nervousness that you're going to get up there and make us all suffer by forcing
us to watch you behave like an imbecile.
What speech tips do you have for Oscar winners? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com.
Sound off: Comment on this story
Jim Emerson is the former editor of Microsoft's online/CD-ROM movie
encyclopedia, Cinemania. He has written a lot over the years, mostly about
movies, for many publications and Web sites, and is now the editor of
RogerEbert.com, where he also publishes his blog, Scanners
(blogs.suntimes.com/scanners). |
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