The Man Called Oscar

On Tuesday I am making a speech to the Lion's club (which is sort of like a returned servicemen's league, I guess). I need to make a five minute talk on anything I like (along with an interview on current affairs and two impromptu speeches on the night). This is my prepared five minute speech, The Man Called Oscar...


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I'm not sure about you, but for me there's nothing more attractive, no animal, mineral or vegetable quite like a three and a half kilo little golden man standing on a film reel holding a sword. His name is Oscar and I have to tell you, I really have I thing for him. I want to pick him up, take him home, and put him on the mantle.

Every year, in the latter portion of March, Oscar goes home with twenty-five people. He flirts with five times that number but doesn't have much say in who he winds up with. That honour is left to the matchmakers of the cinematic world, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and sciences.

I have been told numerous times that my obsession with secrecy on the eve of Oscar's debutante ball borders on the line of obsessive compulsive. I have also been told that my obsession, nay, my quest to obtain and come into possession of Oscar is unrealistic, once again, obsessive compulsive. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. In fact, I beg to differ. Oscar is the man of my dreams. I just have to earn him, and so I’ve packed by bag and set off on a life long affair, I’ve set of on the yellow brick road to reach the stars.

In July of last year I began screenwriting collaboration with a friend from Canada. Seven months and six and half drafts later, we've come the closest we've ever been to reaching out and feeling the cold golden warmth of Oscar in all his glory. What keeps us going is the same thing that kept David Lean in Jordan for over a year when he did Lawrence of Arabia, the same thing that possessed Peter Jackson in his one and a half year stint shooting Lord of the Rings, the same thing that pushed Francis Ford Coppola to the brink of madness, Stanley Kubrick into anxious stupors and Martin Scorcese within a hair of his Golden Dance with the Golden Man. I can't work out whether it is a desire to create, to share, to inspire or to entertain. I think it's mainly my undying, distracting and often physically painful need to tell a story.

I have always enjoyed standing up in front of a large group of people and simply talking to them. I have always written stories, and made up tales. I've always drawn pictures and, I admit it, had a brief sordid affair with comics. I've even filled many a musical stave with crochets and minums, in hope of forging a melody. But I was always searching for something. I was never going to win the Pulitzer Prize, I was never going to be Picasso, or Rembrandt, or Beethoven, or John Lennon or a motivational speaker. Then one day I picked up a video camera, and said three simple words that changed my life: LIGHTS. CAMERA. ACTION.

Now I mix them all in a bucket. I make moving pictures. I am John Grisham. I am J.R.R Tolkien. I am Wagner, and Vivaldi and Tchaivosky and Michelangelo and Leonardo Di Vinci and Jackson Pollock and Toulouse Lautrec and Quinten Tarantino. I am Lean, Jackson, Coppola, Scorcese and Kubrick. I am a filmmaker. I am a teller of stories. I am in love, with a man named Oscar.

And I have the feeling that we won't be dancing cheek to cheek for a few years yet. But, I don't doubt that one day, he will look down on me from my mantle in Los Angeles, New York, London or Mount Gambier, and smile. Oscar comes to those who wait, he rewards those who devote their lives to the telling of stories, and take it from me, I've already started devoting. Frank Capra once said, “Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays lago to your psyche. As with Heroin, the antidote to film is more film.” And for me, ladies and gentlemen - it’s a terminal illness.

There's nothing more attractive, no animal, mineral or vegetable quite like a three and a half kilo little golden man standing on a film reel holding a sword. Not for me. His name? Call him Oscar.

And as far as I'm concerned, Ladies and Gentlemen, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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www.esotericrabbit.com

That runs you five minutes? Have you timed it?

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Well he has to allot time to pause..and what not...

Ever given a speech Mr Holden!?

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

Five minutes is not a long time, and believe me, I can do it, and yes I've timed it.

Last year I was Australian Runner-up in this nation wide Public Speaking competition, Rostrum, if any of you know it.

Apart from length, what did you actually think?

Sounds mostly like something Bob Hope would read off the teleprompter with music swelling gently behind him, just before Burt Bacharach comes out to sing "The Look of Love", and ten minutes before Best Documentary, Short Subject is handed out before a bored audience.

But maybe that's just me?

Then you're reading it wrong.

HA!

So what happened with your Oscar speech in the Lion's den?

I won.
That's the first round done.

Next it's Zone. Then State. Then National.
If I get that far. And I have before.

I wasn't that happy with it.
I'm modifying it before I go in using it next time.
I'm going add a bit that isn't so "Me" Orientated.

I don't dispute I'll be doing a completley different speech when competitions pop up later in the year. I just had to whip something up fast, and I whipped up this.

I just don't know what to talk about....

well, i used to be a public speaker, too ... the ones that clinch it are usually the funny ones or the ones that argue some difficult topic with amazing clarity and humanity. i did abortion and what it's like to be multiracial.

five minutes is a helluva long time, man! long@ss speech, your butt gets tired and has to keep seeming genuine and engaging. this is probably why i hate crowds and conversations with people i don't care about at parties. but it's good practice for bullsh|tting. and of course, if it gets you some awards ...

this was a charming speech. but yeah, there's something oddly ... well, as if you belittled your passion for your work by the premise - the oscar, you make light of him but then, this is something you're pursuing, which undermines it a bit.

but, seems your changing your story anyway so ... good luck with a topic!

What I really disliked, Thmilin, was how it was too "Me, Me, Me". I really didn't like that.

I'm speaking in a different competition tomorrow, so I'm going to write a new speech for it. I don't know what about yet, I'll come here and enlighten you before I present it.

Five minutes isn't a long time. I've had to go for eight minutes before, I just feel much more comfortable with eight minutes than I do five. Five is so short, you can't say anything. You have go in say a little bit and get the hell out. I'm really not a fan.

Nice to know there's someone like me out there Thmilin!! Hoorah!!

yeah, i was in a speech and drama team and competed with other schools in the Pacific. got two gold and a silver. mwahahaha.

yeah, i agree, it was very about you. but like i said, it's even better when you sell YOU via your ideas on some fascinating topic. what about sex and morality? film and morality? hmm ...

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life without movies is like cereal without milk. possible, but disgusting. but not nearly as bad as cereal with water. don't lie. I know you've done it.

I just passed a speech class with an A last semester. Our speeches were only 2 minutes long, but I like being the center of attention. Some people got up there and looked like they would rather die. I think that natural public speakers are rare...sounds like you have the gift, Silver. I liked your speech, very intertaining.

I've started my new one.
Basically it's about morality full stop.
How we churn our lives away for money and stuff, then die.
So far I think it's pretty good.

I'll post her when she's cooked.

yes. Do.

That's an interesting topic. I remember sort of being freaked out when my dad basically reminded me one day that having a job is really just you selling chunks of your life away. I mean, I'm sure I'd realized it, but not in that way, if you catch my drift. We trade part of our lives away to make a living...though I suppose that IS part of our life.

Now I'm confused.

Yeah, well...
It's the way it goes, I guess.
You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone.
It's about relationships, but you never seem to get a chance to tell someone what you think. That's just who we are, and the culture we belong to.

As the Cheshire Cat says in Alice in Wonderland:
"I'm mad. You're mad. We're all mad here."

oh CAN IT people! Lighten up!

I know, I know.
I need to say that message in a funny way.

I need a funny story.
Who has a funny story I can borrow?

Oh scads!
but you should tell your own.

At the beginning of the play “Pravda”, the villain, Lambert La Reux tells the audience: "You are born into a tragic culture. Tragedy is bred in your bones." Lambert La Reux goes on to be, well, very, very evil, but there is something his opening words that holds a certain amount of truth. We are born in to a tragic culture of fast cars, fast food, reality TV, money, wealth and greed. We learn to cheat and steal as we learn to walk and talk. A few of us are pure souls, few being the operative word -- but the majority of us are less than perfect. When I was two I stole a chocolate Santa. I have no qualms with looking into someone's eyes and lying through my teeth. It is this tragic culture that makes us such monsters, and it makes sense of that old saying: "You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone."

In today’s fast paced world of sex, money and power, one can often forget the true pleasures of why we’re here in the first place. While we rush off to work, to school and worry about deadlines and office politics and tertiary entrance ranks and Brittany Spears and our credits cards and how we’re not getting enough or as much as we used to, we often forget to stop, and as cliché as it is, smell the roses. Of course we can’t blame ourselves for such shallowness, after all we have been conditioned in to seeing the world in the foolish way that we do from day one. From the moment we were convulsed the womb the Western World that we belong to told us what to do and how to act. She told us what to say, when to say it and what words to put emphasis on, how to walk, how to smile, how to dress and how to survive in a dog eat dog world. She told us that there were three steps to survival – sex, money and power. That is our tragic culture, and we never stop to think about it in that manner, because it has told us what to do from the moment we opened our eyes. She told us we were unique – just like everybody else.

Now, no matter how much money you or I make in our lifetimes, ultimately comes down to one small fact. One day, you’re going to die. It’s a terrible thought, that of shuffling off one’s mortal coil, but it is a fact, and one that people put into the back of their minds. One day, all that money, will mean nothing. However, my speech is not all doom and gloom. There is one aspect of our lives that actually means something. We have friends and we have a family and we can fall in love. Each and every relationship that we forge in our lifetime is worth its weight in gold. It goes so fast, life. One moment your young and dashing next you’re looking back on 70 years and the old woman next to you has shared of fifty thousand meals with you – that means something. It’s not what you ate, or where you ate it, it’s who you ate it with. It about holding someone’s hand, and not saying anything and feeling as though you’ve had the greatest conversation of your life. Time goes so fast, and in our tragic culture we don’t stop to look into the eyes of those we love. There will come a time when we will look back and truly realise that we never said what we felt. There’s the remedy – right there. Actually say it. Hold the hands. Look in the eyes. Talk.

But we don’t do that. We won’t do that. We all think that what I’m saying is all very romantic, but ridiculous. You need money to survive, we have been told so, we know so, it is so. In Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” Emily turns to her mother in law and says: “They just don’t understand, do they?” Of course we don’t. We take people for granted. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone, but at the same time, you wouldn’t change your time here for a second. This is life, our Wonderland. I can’t work us out. We’re an enigma.

As the Cheshire Cat tells Alice; “I’m mad. You’re mad. We’re all mad here.” And then he disappears, grinning.