For the last few years, the Academy has pleaded with nominated actors to keep their speeches brief. This year, they also hope to convince them to be a little more entertaining, too. “You can either give a laundry list of thank yous and make those 20 people happy,” says Laura Ziskin, producer of the 74th Academy Awards, “or you can make the millions of people watching happy by telling us what it feels like to win an Oscar. What it’s like to stand up there?”
It has become somewhat of an obligatory practice for a winner to mention everyone with whom he or she has ever worked. “Your lawyer, your agent, your business manager, they all say, ‘when you get up there, don’t forget to thank me,’” Ziskin says. “And once you get into thanking two or three or four people, how do you leave off the rest?” Well, they don’t. They ramble off a list of names that no one has ever heard of, as if to punish theatergoers for ever walking out of a movie while the credits were still rolling.
Of course, there is some value in hearing that actors have help in their rise to the top. No one does it alone. “It’s good to be reminded as a viewer that Nicole Kidman is propped up by a dozen people that you’ve never heard of, without whom she would be nothing,” says Paul Glastris, a former Clinton speechwriter and now editor-and-chief of the Washington Monthly.
But usually, the speeches are just a snooze. Julia Roberts’s dress was more memorable than anything she said at last year’s Oscars, except perhaps when she told orchestra conductor Bill Conti to take his baton and sit down, because she was going to be there awhile and thank “everyone I’ve ever met.” “She knew she wasn’t going to get played off [the stage], so she thought she’d make something out of it. It was cute,” says Bruce Vilanch, head writer of the 74th Academy Awards.
When actors forget to name someone, they go to great lengths to make up for it. In 1989, Dustin Hoffman tried to get back on stage after receiving best actor for “Rain Man” because he forgot to thank director Barry Levinson, Vilanch says. Gossips overheated this January when Sarah Jessica Parker failed to mention husband actor Matthew Broderick during her Golden Globe speech. “A persistent rumor started that she is no longer seeing her husband,” Vilanch says.
A few moments in Oscar history do stand out for breaking from the norm with honesty and spontaneity. Sally Field famously shouted, “You like me! You like me,” when she won best actress in 1985. “City Slickers” star Jack Palance showed off the prowess of older actors–he was 71 at the time–by doing a set of one-armed push-ups. “Jerry Maguire” supporting actor winner Cuba Gooding is remembered for his dancing and for shouting about his gratitude in 1996. Actor Geoffrey Rush was there that night (he won too, for playing tortured pianist David Helfgott in “Shine”). “No one really remembers [Gooding’s] words, but there was such a visceral excitement,” Rush told NEWSWEEK.
When Tom Hanks got to the podium in 1994 to accept his best actor Oscar, he gave what is perhaps the gold standard of speeches. The actor took a moment to raise awareness of AIDS, and to pay tribute to the people the movie was about rather than those who put it together. “I know that my work in this case is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels,” he said.
The real quest, speechwriters say, is to both thank an abbreviated amount of people and say something poignant. Rush had a half-dozen people to recognize, but made a point of expressing his admiration for the man he played. “You truly are an inspiration,” Rush said to Helfgott, who was in the audience.
“I knew the rules of the gig,” Rush says today. “You’ve got 45 seconds to say something. And that perhaps could be a list of names, or rather it could be something with a little more resonance.” Let’s hope a few of this year’s contenders know those rules as well.
