I cannot tell a lie...from the tender age of whenever it was that I first watched the Academy Awards (my first solid memories of this begin around age 9), I've envisioned the golden man's sculpted ass cheeks cradled in my hands and the masses at the Kodak Theater and the world beyond watching my ascent to the podium. With bated breath, the world awaits my acceptance speech. The lights twinkle as I begin.
"I'd like to thank my mom and my dad and my nana and my papa and my grandma and my grandpa and my cousins and my bestest friends Sarah and Kimmy and..."
Well that was the glib poetry I had planned at first. To thank everyone, because everyone loves me! Even though I'm a fucking superstar, I don't forget the little peeps. But at my pubescent turning point, my speech evolved after much mental writing and rewriting.
"You love me! You really really love me!!!"
For I was feeling immense gratitude that Tinseltown could love a girl who still hadn't grown boobs. My words morphed further still as I embraced my pubescence and discovered boys.
"Thank you to the Academy and to everyone who believed in me. And to all the jackasses who have dumped me in my short dating life, look at me now, motherfuckers!"
And because by then the producers of the show had gotten smart enough to broadcast with a five-second delay, I could get away with that last bitter bit.
During my collegiate and grad school years, I buried my dreams of acting glory beneath real world ambitions like medical school (an idea that died on the floor of the OR after I fainted while observing surgery), psychology and journalism. But dreams never die. And once I joined the union and entered the industry, it creeped back into my conscious.
Like any real-world pursuit I'd undertaken, hard work was rewarded with advancement in one way or another. Studying for tests usually resulted in a better grade. Going the extra mile on a story usually got me more cred as a local journalist. Working overtime earns more money. So as I sat on set during the first day of my SAG life, I worked out the speech in my head.
"I started out as a grunt background actor, living on ramen noodles and sacrificing the sanity of consistent employment. I worked hard and today I can finally say it was worth every struggle. Thank you!"
It was meant to be inspirational, like the "feel-good movie of the year" in which I would subsequently star, still riding the wave of my triumph.
But after about a month of work, my speech changed again. Quite drastically, in fact.
"This whole fucking thing is a sham! You should all be ashamed of yourselves, you selfish prick superstars! You don't give a shit about anyone but yourselves, and you step on the people who do all the hard work that makes you a fucking sucess. I'm the only one here who gets that, so it's a real tribute to my acting skills that I fooled you into giving me this gilded piece of shit."
Paradoxical...hypocritical...whatever you want to call it, that's what I was feeling. There was a great conflict in me, brought on by the realization that a legitimate dream of mine had been a quest of the most selfish, shameless nature--which is entirely distinct from the morals rolling around inside of me. I had always wanted to believe that the most talented actors, those I looked up to, would be of the highest moral fiber. That they worked hard for their success and knew where they came from. It's not that all of them don't, but I was shocked at some of the horrid behavior I witnessed from particular superstars: hissy fits, screaming, insulting BG actors just because, the vanity and the self-righteousness. I was looking up to a lot of people whose success was the result of luck and privilege, two things that no matter how hard one works for, there is no guarantee of ever achieving them. And instead of humbling themselves to their fortunes and trying to inspire others, they bask in the tanning booth UV rays of their undeserved glories.
The six-month period of my life as a working actor had its ups and downs, roller coaster moments of delight in my success and of bitterness in failures that had nothing to do with me or my talent. In the end, I took a "he's just not that into you" approach--a way of liberating oneself from a psychologically abusive significant other, which in this case, was "the industry." In other words, I'll keep working when I have a day off from my very rewarding "real-world" job, but I won't hinge it all on a misguided dream.
So having brought the reader to the present, here's my most updated Oscar acceptance speech:
"Thank you for honoring me with this award. I accept it on behalf of everyone who worked on this film and for all of the nominees for the Academy's science and technology awards. The science behind movies makes the magic happen. I'm just a walking prop compared to the work they do to make movies come alive for the world. So thank you. And I want world peace."
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