Posted on 03/06/2006 10:35:45 PM PST by goldstategop
Here's a speech we would like to hear from an Academy Award winner:
I thank you for this wonderful award. Receiving an Academy Award gives the recipient an almost unique opportunity to speak to hundreds of millions people around the world, so I would like take this once-in-a-lifetime moment to say this:
First, I want to thank my country, the United States of America. Every one of us here has this country to thank for enabling us to live lives of unprecedented freedom and unimaginable affluence. Too many of us forget that no other country in history has offered such opportunities to people in our profession or in any other profession, for that matter.
Second, I want to thank the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. While we bask in freedom and spend a good part of our lives going from party to party and award show to award show, tens of thousands of my fellow Americans are confronting a menace to our world as great as that fought by previous generations fighting Nazism and communism.
At the same time, I also want to apologize to these troops for my profession not having made even one motion picture about any of the heroic American fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq. This country is fighting a war, Hollywood. You may think this war is unwise, waged under mistaken, or even false, pretenses. And as an actor in Hollywood, you are overwhelmingly likely to hate this commander in chief. But even the men and women of Hollywood must recognize that America is fighting the worst people of our time, people who hurt every group Hollywood claims to care about -- minorities, women, gays -- people who engage in the sins Hollywood most professes to oppose -- intolerance and violence -- far more than anyone else on the planet.
In another era, when what many have labeled "the greatest generation" fought the German Nazis and the Japanese fascists, Hollywood made movie after movie depicting that great war and our great warriors. And Hollywood showed freedom's enemies as the cruel and vicious people they were. We have not produced one film yet depicting this war in positive terms or one depicting this generation's enemies of freedom as the cruel and vicious people they are.
In fact, the only nominated film about people who slaughter children at discos, blow up weddings, and bomb pizzerias and buses filled with men, women and children is one that attempts to show these murderers in God's name as complex human beings. Just imagine how the Academy would have reacted 60 years ago to a film depicting Nazi murderers as complex human beings. We have descended far.
We in Hollywood walk around thinking we are very important. That is why this year's nominated films for best picture are largely pictures with messages, pictures that relatively few people actually see. But although Hollywood was always concerned with politics, we have let ourselves be taken over by those for whom their message is more significant than the primary purposes of film -- to illuminate life and to entertain. Yes, entertain.
You know, entertainment is actually a noble pursuit. Life is difficult for almost every human being on earth. And if we can offer people an elevated way to divert their attention for a couple of hours from their troubled child, their marital tensions, their ill parent, their financial woes, we have rendered the world a greater service than by making another message-film against racism in America, the least racist country in the world.
My fellow actors, we walk around feeling that we are very important. But we do so only because we confuse fame with significance. We do have more fame than any other human beings in history. Far more people have heard of any actor here tonight than of any of the discoverers of any medication saving billions of lives, of any teacher of the disabled, of any nurse tending the aged, of almost any national leader.
But the truth is that, as noble a calling as acting can be, all we do is make-believe: We portray other people, and we speak words written by other people. Everyone knows our names, but almost no one knows us. All they know are the characters we play.
Thank you again. I hope I haven't ruined your evening.
"I have to say, I don't think a speech we agree with politically is any more appropriate than one we don't agree about."
Well asking the Hollyweird Oscar folk to be appropriate to us, not their peers, is a stretch.
But that aside, the mindset that Prager points out as sadly missing from these people, is a note worth sounding.
I can get along without an acknowledgement or even a small thank you, but I couldn't care less about being preached to about the wonders of liberalism, when I know it's a complete sham.
I feel that an expression of courtesy and reverence is part of high station. It used to be that the famous set an example of good taste and noble conduct for the rest of us because it was an obligation
Yeah, Fatty Arbuckle really fell down on that one...show business people have always been outsiders and prone to the scandals of careless lifestyles.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Kind of hard to escape scandal when you're constantly under the microscope of public scrutiny. It's hell living in a fishbowl, which is why Hollywood stardom isn't so appealing to me.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
It was present in the comedians like Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope... all of whom did not feel it necessary to drop a bunch of f-bombs to make their point or to be funny.
Compare these to Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy or George Carlin... oh well, on second thought, don't bother listening to them.
Not for me, either. But it's their choice. There's a whole industry that supports the fish bowl. A photog takes a picture of a star on the red carpet of a premier, it's worth about 10 bucks. The same guy gets a picture of the same star fighting with his girlfriend in the parking lot of the Silverlake Ralph's, the photo is worth $20,000. That's a powerful motivator...but like I said, it's their choice.
Very good point. The point I got from the author was that it would simply be nice to hear a bit of gratitude for "how" they are able to be there. True, they are there to be recognized by their peers, but they often thank families, executives, make political speeches, etc. So, while I agree with you on the whole, I wish they would realize that they should simply thank their peers and exit the stage --not continue to push their beliefs on hapless viewers.
I certainly hope that in some way, they keep it up, because sooner rather than later, more people are going to wise up to the fact that going to movies is a complete waste of money.
Bubba Bo Bob Brain: "I'd like to thank my momma and Elvis."
Audience member 1: "Well, isn't that nice!"
. . .
Audience member 1: "He ain't half bad!"
Audience member 2: "He ain't half good, neither!"
Most of them do say "thanks, thanks thank bye!" some thank their relatives for getting them into acting. A very small percentage do the political thing...
Ben Stein opines... "No doubt the men and women who came to the Oscars in gowns that cost more than an Army Sergeant makes in a year, in limousines with champagne in the back seat, think they are working class heroes to attack America -- which has made it all possible for them. They are not. Hollywood is above all about self: self-congratulation, self-promotion, and above all, self-protection. This is human and basic, but let's not kid ourselves. There is no greatness there in the Kodak theater. The greatness is on patrol in Kirkuk. The greatness lies unable to sleep worrying about her man in Mosul. The greatness sleeps at Arlington National Cemetery and lies waiting for death in VA Hospitals. God help us that we have sunk so low as to confuse foolish and petty boasting with the real courage that keeps this nation and the many fools in it alive and flourishing on national TV....Thank You, Ben!
I stand corrected. I haven't watched any award shows in decades....too busy being stationed overseas and since coming back to America, I'm reluctant to pay the out-of-control cable fees. The information I get is from several newspapers, Internet, and my favorite website- FreeRepublic.
Have a great night.
Award shows are a waste of time. Three hours of film clips. Better to just rent a movie and enjoy it. I haven't agreed with the Academy Awards in years. And not because of the politics, but because they choose bad movies.
I didn't watch the oscars. I cleaned out the cat box and did my taxes.....a much better use of that time.
The cat box is clean now....and Hollywood...well I don't think anyone every cleans hollywood....it just keeps gettin filled with more and more poop and stinkin up the world. Maybe someday....
In Ben Stein's own words:
"Wow".
Their very existence in safe and happy circumstances has much to do with the American soldier defending that privilege. A small thank you wouldn't hurt. Hollywood consists of mind-numbed robots who have no real feeling for anything beyond their own noses. A pox on them all. They contribute nothing of worth to society. They are dull, brattish children who have no concept of the "greater cause." My prediction: They are fading faster and faster. One day their contributions will be like old wet newspapers in the gutter. Sooner the better. I'm sick to death of them, having everything in a capitalist and democratic system and working overtime fighting everything about that system.
Very succinct remarks about the state of the world in relationship to Hollywood--brilliant, in fact. And down to earth. thanks.
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