In advance of next year’s Academy Awards…
At the recent Academy Awards, there were four Oscars given to actors: Melissa Leo (Best Supporting Actress, The Fighter), Christian Bale (Best Supporting Actor, The Fighter), Natalie Portman (Best Actress, Black Swan), and Colin Firth (Best Actor, The King’s Speech).
I reviewed each of their acceptance speeches and put together this list of people they thanked:
Melissa Leo thanked David O. Russell (director), Mark Wahlberg (actor, producer), Christian Bale (actor), Amy Adams (actor), “Jack and my daughters,” Alice Ward (the person upon who Leo’s role in the movie was based), Micky Ward (the person upon who Wahlberg’s role was based), Dicky Eklund (the person upon who Bale’s role was based), “my beautiful son traveling in South America,” “my mom, my dad, my brother, my friends, my family,” the Academy and the Board of Governors.
Christian Bale thanked David O. Russell, Pamela Martin (editor), Melissa Leo, Amy Adams, Mark Wahlberg, Dicky and Micky (including the URL for Dicky’s website), several producers including Wahlberg, David Hoberman, and Todd Lieberman, Relativity Media, Paramount Pictures, his “team” including Patrick, Boomer, Carlos, Jan (?), Anna, and Julie, “my wonderful wife,” and “our little girl who’s taught me so much more than I’ll ever be able to teach her.”
Natalie Portman thanked the Academy, her parents, her “team” including Aleen Kashishian (manager), Kevin Huvane (agent) and “everyone at CAA,” Bryna (Ryfkin) and Tamar (Salup) at ID (public relations), “my friends,” some person’s name I didn’t catch who “hired me for my first job when I was eleven years old” [UPDATE: Per Francisco in comments, it was Luc Besson, the writer/director of The Professional], Mike Nichols, Darren Aronofsky (director), Mary Ellen Bowers (?), Michelle Rodriguez, Kurt Froman (assistant choreographer), Olga Kostrizky (ballet coach), somebody whose name I totally couldn’t get, Benjamin Millepied (actor & boyfriend), Marjorie Durand (makeup department head), Kate and Laura Mulleavy (costumer designer: ballet costumes), Joe Reidy (first assistant director), “my family, my friends, and my love.”
Each of these acceptance speeches was heartfelt and poignant. It was especially thoughtful of Portman to note, “There are people on films that no one ever talks about that are your heart and soul every day” before thanking the makeup crew, costume designer, first AD, and so on.
Every one of the people these actors mentioned deserves public acknowledgment for their contribution to the making of their respective films.
There’s only one slight problem: None of these actors mentioned, let alone thanked, the screenwriters.
The writers who were responsible for crafting the script that became the blueprint to make the movie.
The writers who were responsible for creating the story universe in which these actors acted.
The writers who were responsible for shaping the roles these actors played enabling them to win their Oscars.
Everything I’ve ever read or heard about the moment they announce your name as the winner of an Academy Award suggests that whatever you had in mind to say pretty much goes out the window. So it’s certainly understandable how a person can forget to thank this or that person. And since screenwriters are most often present at the beginning of the filmmaking process, perhaps not even around during production, it’s also understandable how an actor may let the writer’s contribution to the movie slip their mind.
But the fact remains nobody would be on that stage accepting anything were it not for the writers who created the story, the story universe, and the characters in that story universe.
It’s not hard to do. When Colin Firth accepted his Oscar, he remembered to thank David Seidler, who wrote the screenplay for The King’s Speech. Here is my transcript of that part of Firth’s acceptance speech:
“All the crew and my fellow cast members. All those who are not here. And those we are… Geoffrey, Helena, Guy. And David Seidler, whose own struggles have given so many people the benefit of his very beautiful voice. And Tom Hooper for his immense courage and clearsightedness with which he interpreted that.”
See? Not so hard. Thoughtful, gracious, a simple reminder to the world that somebody wrote the scenes and the dialogue the actors and director worked with to shoot the movie.
Tom Hooper, who won an Oscar for Best Director (The King’s Speech), thanked David Seidler this way:
“To David Seidler, whose extraordinary journey from childhood stammerer to the stage of the Kodak, I find so profoundly moving.”
And the producers of The King’s Speech Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, and Gareth Unwin, who won the Oscar for Best Picture, thanked him as well:
“To David Seidler for trusting us with his heartfelt story.”
So in the future, perhaps nominated actors can take a clue from that famed public speaker Sarah Palin:
On the palm of your hand write these words: “Don’t forget to thank the screenwriter.”
For the record, these are the neglected screenwriters’ names:
The Fighter, screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, story by Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson and Keith Dorrington.
Black Swan, screenplay by Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin, story by Andres Heinz.