The Oscar telecasts notwithstanding, one must concede that actors are the most effective public speakers we have.
The stellar public career of an actor named Ronald Reagan is certainly testament to that.
But with rare, mostly British exceptions, this is true only when the actors are provided with a script — as I think the career of Reagan also attests.
More Top Picks Air Fryers
Forgetting this, film critic Roger Ebert recently seized upon a talk-show appearance to exhort the producers of the annual Academy Awards to outlaw “thank-you speeches” and confine Oscar winners to talking about their work.
I know not how the potential dreadfulness of this prospect escaped the estimable Ebert, but I think he might have thought better of this suggestion had he been among us at the gala, black-tie award dinner for the American Museum of the Moving Image earlier this month at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
The museum, though located in Queens, is one of the most interesting cultural institutions in New York, with groundbreaking film frames of pioneer Eadweard Muybridge’s moving horse, every political TV ad made since 1952 and Linda Blair’s 1973 “Exorcist” vomit in its vast collection.
Its annual award dinner, honoring every year a giant of the screen, is one of New York’s most glamorous evenings.
But it lamentably provides occasion for ample demonstrations of how our stars, when lacking a prepared text, can be painfully unaccustomed to public speaking — their $20-million-a-picture salaries notwithstanding.
This year’s honoree was the inestimable Mel Gibson, a right nice bloke, actually, but no Demosthenes. The same, alas, was to be said for those who stepped to the banquet microphone to pay tribute to him, as the following, typical snippets make clear:
Glenn Close: “Um, gosh . . . on stage, `Hamlet’ is the final exam for a great actor. On film it’s that and more, because on videotape and DVD and late-night TV, a film follows to the end of your days . . . I was Gertrude, his [`Hamlet’] mother. His very, very young, young mother. In fact, my Gertrude was a mere child. . . . He said something that truly I have never forgotten. He said, `Some people are questioning the audacity of a barbarian attempting the bard. I’m going to give it my blood.’ With a passion and a simplicity of his words, the chemistry in that room was immediately transformed.”
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell:
Goldie: “He [Gibson] got me. He got me. In `Bird on a Wire,’ you remember? That was complicated, because we were once lovers, and then we got back together, he was . . . so then, we were forced. We got undressed, and we were forced . . . [giggle] . . . we were forced to share a room together.”
Kurt: “And then what happened?”
Goldie: “I forgot.”
Dame Edna: “I’ve written a special poem, `Ode to Mel.’ `A wonderful career, my pet, which hopefully is not over yet; How often have you called my cell phone, on your golden Motorola Mel phone . . . I knew your mother, it’s no joke; I was there when her waters broke.'”
Jodie Foster: “From the first moment I met him, I looked across the table and said to myself, `If anybody tries to do something to him, I’m going to knock his block off.'”
Gary Sinise: “Gosh, these [film] clips are amazing. It shows how incredible Mel really is. He’d be goofin’ off, screwin’ around, right up until the director calls `action’ and then all of a sudden he snaps into it and he’s the character. If you’re not used to that, and you start playin’ with him and goofin’ off, too, all of a sudden you find like you’re drawing a blank when the cameras start rolling. It’s a rare gift. A rare gift.”
He then awarded Gibson “for a distinguished performance by an actor wearing a cup,” a golden athletic protector.
When Gibson himself took to the microphone, I felt a little trepidation. I recalled when, a decade ago, he was honored with the (Washington) Shakespeare Theatre’s Will Award and gave an acceptance speech that included his congratulating singer Patti LuPone “on a fine pair of lungs.”
Again he did not disappoint:
“Well, heck, or hell, or damn, or gosh, whatever your persuasion, I’m proud and honored to be the recipient of, uh, this award — hey, it has my signature on the back. I don’t remember seeing that before. It’s a funny thing about my signature, isn’t it? I think I was born to be a doctor. . . . But the wonderful thing, and the wonderful people that I met along the way, and many of them are here tonight, and I do love you all and thank you for your kind remarks and your friendship. I didn’t know much, to tell you the truth, about the museum here when I was asked to do this, so I started out to educate myself and I find it has a lot to do with education, and, you know, having kids and stuff, it’s a great thing, uh, uh, more paramount, if you pardon the expression, to look at education and value it.”