Oscar Speeches 2.0

So, after reading that great article on Slate yesterday about Oscar speeches and blogging about it yesterday (and watching 2 plus hours worth of Oscar speeches on youtube last night), I've discovered I'm not the only one unreasonably obsessed with this topic. (Google news search "Oscar speeches" right now and see how many articles from legit news sites pop up).

The most interesting thing I've come across though, is that a grad student in the US is doing a major research project on this as it relates to the idea of gratitude. Check it out:

From Time magazine:

"Rebecca Rolfe, a Georgia Institute of Technology graduate student [is] conducting a research project on human gratitude and how it’s expressed. Gratitude is a hard thing to parse, both because it typically comes so swaddled in the crinoline of manners that all of the life is choked out of it, and because when it does emerge in its genuine form there is rarely a scientist around to see it."

Rolfe's Oscar speech/gratitude website has, in the words of Vulture, "every Oscar acceptance speech stat imaginable" represented in info-graphics, as well as an interactive tool that helps you create your own Oscar Acceptance speech depending on who you want to thank. 

Here is the speech the website generated for me:

"Oh my. Wow. It is such an honor to receive this. Such an honor. (clears throat) I would like to thank the Academy. I am so touched by the work of my amazing fellow nominees. The real-life character from this film is so inspiring and so courageous. We honor that voice with this film. Thanks to my director. Ma - I love you. Dad - I love you. I would like to dedicate this to our craft of filmmaking and the love of art. Thank you. Thank you very much."

Not bad eh? What would yours sound like? See for yourself here.

The site also told me that based on my selections, my speech would be most like (86%) Geoffrey Rush's 1996 acceptance speech for Best Actor for his performance in Shine.

And, I'll take it! Rush's speech is the perfect combo of gratitude and sentimentality, with a joke thrown in for good measure. And it's short!

He looks pretty good with that hair doesn't he?

One last thing...my brother Alex told me that he thought the best Oscar acceptance speech was Michael Caine's for Best Supporting Actor for the Cider House Rules. It's pretty great (and as a bonus, there is a one second clip of John Irving getting teary-eyed about the win which makes me irrationally happy!)

Go to the 1:54 mark to skip the hullabaloo.