Friday, March 29, 2024

Here’s the Best Picture Oscar Speech ‘Moonlight’s’ Barry Jenkins Originally Planned

US writer/director Barry Jenkins poses with the Best Adapted Screenplay award for 'Moonlight' he arrives to the Vanity Fair Party following the 88th Academy Awards at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, on February 26, 2017. / AFP / JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX
US writer/director Barry Jenkins arrives to the Vanity Fair Party following the 88th Academy Awards at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, on February 26, 2017.

*Amid the mixup that saw “La La Land” mistakenly win the Academy Award for Best Picture before the announcement of real winner “Moonlight,” its writer-director Barry Jenkins attempted to fashion together a coherent acceptance speech through his shock and confusion.

Now, several days removed from the chaos, Jenkins tells The Hollywood Reporter the words he originally planned to say with a best picture win.

“Best picture is a producer’s award, so I didn’t plan to say much,” he said. “Given the possibility of going up for adapted screenplay, I assumed there was a chance I wouldn’t speak at all, that I would have already said my piece. The plan was to have Adele Romanski speak first, then Jeremy Kleiner and, finally, briefly, myself. I planned to keep it personal, repeating and evolving a story I’ve told throughout the season:

Tarell [Alvin McCraney] and I are Chiron. We are that boy. And when you watch Moonlight, you don’t assume a boy who grew up how and where we did would grow up and make a piece of art that wins an Academy Award. I’ve said that a lot, and what I’ve had to admit is that I placed those limitations on myself, I denied myself that dream. Not you, not anyone else — me. And so, to anyone watching this who sees themselves in us, let this be a symbol, a reflection that leads you to love yourself. Because doing so may be the difference between dreaming at all and, somehow through the Academy’s grace, realizing dreams you never allowed yourself to have. Much love.”

“That came out much differently onstage,” Jenkins told THR. “Given what happened in those last 10 minutes of the ceremony, I don’t know how I managed any words at all. It is what it is.”

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