DAILY DOSE OF HOPE – BLOG – NAIMA LETT
What’s Your Academy Award® Speech?
LENT DAY 8 of 40, © NaimaLett.com/blog
© AP, Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock accept Academy Awards®.
Joy! Tears! Gratitude!
Julia, Halle and Sandra (pictured above) captured those.
What would your Academy Award® moment look like?
What impression would you leave on the millions watching around the world?
The 85th Academy Awards®
… are this Sunday, February 24th. It’s arguably Hollywood’s biggest night of the year.
Millions have been spent on advertising campaigns lobbying the 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who are, according to the LA Times, mostly male, Caucasian, average age 62). Tons of designers and stylists are working around the clock to finish assembling their clients’ looks. Red carpets are being situated at the Kodak Center off Hollywood and Highland.
We all want to see who will win.
And more importantly, what they’ll say when they win!
Some, who understand how valuable the moment is (in terms of establishing their legacy in an ever-changing industry that could soon forget them), will inevitably work with a professional speechwriter and their management team to come up with the best representation of their thoughts. But some kind of just fly off the cuff. You never know until they approach the mic.
Remember Halle?
I looked through several “Oscar’s Most Memorable” lists, and Halle’s speech always makes the cut. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend Monster’s Ball, but I do understand how the “Halle like you’ve never seen her before” campaign to the Academy voters worked. That’s neither here nor there when it comes to her speech, I suppose. Remember how it began?
“Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened. Thank you. I’m so honored. I’m so honored. And I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel for which His blessing might flow…”
That’s one for the ages, right?
Remember Jesus?
Jesus is so much bigger than our Academy Awards®, but I think one of His most memorable moments was with His disciples before His betrayal, recorded in John 17:
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began…”
Beyond the ages, right?
What’s your Academy Award® speech?
Your turn. What’s your speech?
What would you say? Who would you thank?
Go ahead, have fun! Take a couple of minutes and write it out.
If you’re an artist, and you’ve already written and placed it in your dream journal, go get it. Dust it off. Update it. Give yourself permission to play!
And if you’re feeling really fancy, pull out your ‘nines’ on Sunday with your fam or friends, and give ’em your speech. You don’t have to wait until millions are watching. Go ahead and thank them. Roll out a red carpet (or blue or green or purple!), pose, take pictures. If you have kids, they’ll love it. Or you can be a big kid and love it.
We have a lot of fun here in Hollywood.
Won’t you have some too!
Let’s make this one for the ages,
Naima
What’s your speech?
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