Wow. "Harvie Krumpet" has been a film that's been in my head for over ten years and I'm so glad he's out. We'd like to congratulate everyone in Australia who have helped "Harvie" come to life, in particular the Australian Film Commission, Film Victoria and SBS Independent. "Harvie" will be screening on SBS television next Monday night at 9 pm. We'd also like to congratulate our fantastic cast and crew, especially our uncle Geoffrey Rush for lending us his most beautiful voice. Finally, we'd like to thank two very, very special people: my friend Juliet and my beautiful boyfriend Dan. Thank you.
Ricky Gervais: 'Accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f*ck off,' Golden Globes opening monologue - 2020
6 January 2020, Los Angeles, USA
Hello and welcome to the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel here in Los Angeles. I'm Ricky Gervais, thank you.
You'll be pleased to know this is the last time I'm hosting these awards, so I don't care anymore. I'm joking. I never did. I'm joking, I never did. NBC clearly don't care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets — hello?
Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they've no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax. Let's go out with a bang, let's have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they're just jokes. We're all gonna die soon and there's no sequel, so remember that.
But you all look lovely all dolled up. You came here in your limos. I came here in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. No, shush. It's her daughter I feel sorry for. OK? That must be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs.
Lots of big celebrities here tonight. Legends. Icons. This table alone — Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro … Baby Yoda. Oh, that's Joe Pesci, sorry. I love you man. Don't have me whacked. But tonight isn't just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They're all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He's coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland, Two Popes. Shut up. Shut up. I don't care. I don't care.
Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about that. Hollywood Foreign Press are all very racist. Fifth time. So. We were going to do an In Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn't diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year. Let's see what happens.
No one cares about movies anymore. No one goes to cinema, no one really watches network TV. Everyone is watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out, going, "Well done Netflix. You win everything. Good night." But no, we got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of Afterlife instead of watching this show. That's a show about a man who wants to kill himself 'cause his wife dies of cancer and it's still more fun than this. Spoiler alert, season two is on the way so in the end he obviously didn't kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he's your friend but I don't care.
Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I've heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie's Choice. I mean, that would just be Meryl just going, "Well, it's gotta be this one then." All the best actors have jumped to Netflix, HBO. And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn't acting anymore. It's going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we'd know who'd win that.
Martin Scorsese made the news for his controversial comments about the Marvel franchise. He said they're not real cinema and they remind him about theme parks. I agree. Although I don't know what he's doing hanging around theme parks. He's not big enough to go on the rides. He's tiny. The Irishman was amazing. It was amazing. It was great. Long, but amazing. It wasn't the only epic movie. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, nearly three hours long. Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like, "Come on, Leo, mate.You're nearly 50-something."
The world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy. He was also in the movie Cats. No one saw that movie. And the reviews, shocking. I saw one that said, "This is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs." But Dame Judi Dench defended the film saying it was the film she was born to play because she loves nothing better than plunking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg and licking her ass. (Coughs.) Hairball. She's old-school.
It's the last time, who cares? Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you're woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you'd call your agent, wouldn't you?
So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.
So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It's already three hours long. Right, let's do the first award.
Joaquin Phoenix: 'I have been a scoundrel in my life. I've been selfish', Oscars acceptance - 2020
9 February 2020, Los Angeles, California, USA
[We have to] continue to use our voice for the voiceless. I've been thinking a lot about some of the distressing issues that we are facing collectively. I think at times we feel, or were made to feel, that we champion different causes, but for me, I see commonality. I think, whether we're talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we're talking about the fight against injustice. We're talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender or one species has the right to dominate, control and use and exploit another with impunity.
I think that we've become very disconnected from the natural world, and many of us, what we're guilty of is an egocentric worldview -- the belief that we're the center of the universe. We go into the natural world, and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then, we take her milk, that's intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal, and I think we fear the idea of personal change because we think that we have to sacrifice something to give something up. But human beings, at our best, are so inventive and creative and ingenious, and I think that when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and to the environment.
Now, I have been a scoundrel in my life. I've been selfish. I've been cruel at times, hard to work with and ungrateful, but so many of you in this room have given me a second chance. And I think that's when we're at our best, when we support each other, not when we cancel each other out for past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow, when we educate each other, when we guide each other toward redemption. That is the best of community.
When he was 17, my brother wrote this lyric. It said, 'Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow.'"
Varun Malavalli: 'Why you should not read books', Toastmasters speech - 2017
November 2017, Nokia Office, Manyata Tech Park, Bangalore, India
A study conducted in Stanford University proves that reading is the workout the brain needs in order to stay in its optimal health. A group of people was asked to read Mansfield’s Park by Jane Austen while being monitored by a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine. The MRI mapping showed that the minute they started reading, there was a noticeable rise in the level of blood flowing to the brain. Not only this, blood was also flowing to those parts of the brain, which were currently not in use. In the Instagram era, one of the reasons people do workout is to flaunt their physique. But hey, can you flaunt your brain image on social networks?? Fellow Toastmasters and dear guests - that is precisely one of the many reasons why you should not read books...
It’s story time!! Our hero’s name is Dan Hurley. When he was eight years old, he still couldn’t read. He couldn’t pronounce the word “THE”... Yes, many of us still don’t pronounce it the right way! Dha or Dhi, we wonder. Hmm. During a parent-teacher meeting, Mrs. Browning told his mother: "Daniel is a slow learner." And a year later, he was rescued by none other than... “Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can. Look out, here comes the Spiderman” (hum the song)... He started reading comic books. By age 11, he was getting straight As! Later in his teens, he scored the equivalent of 136 on an IQ test. This score signifies that he was way above average. Sean Patrick is the author of “Nikola Tesla – The man who invented the 20th Century”. He writes that IQ and success are related only to a point. Throughout the pages of History, many achievers have overcome their average or even below-average IQ, to reach the pinnacle of success. Henry Ford was flat broke five times before he founded the Ford Motor Company. In his youth, Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything”. Beethoven’s teachers believed him hopeless as a composer!! Mark Twain has aptly said, “Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others”. So, please don’t read to improve your IQ...
Many people, who read, tend to behave like snobs. An “intellectual snob” can be defined as a person who takes pride in his/her own knowledge and achievements while running down others. Research says that reading “The God Delusion” serves you better than say “Fifty Shades of Grey”. But Saul Bellow, winner of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize for Literature, thinks otherwise. According to him, “a good novel is worth more than the best scientific study”. Ask a voracious reader in your friends circle, and he would say that reading Half-Girlfriend or Fifty Shades of Grey is a waste of time. I had taken a course in Journalism and Feature writing was one of the modules. The facilitator, a noted columnist, asked us the last book we had read. She stressed, “I would not consider Chetan Bhagat’s books”. My question is, “why discriminate?” As Alex, of Modern Family, coolly states, “One person’s gross is another person’s beautiful”... What is the point of knowledge if we do not adorn it with humility? According to Prof. Robert C. Roberts of Ethics Department, Baylor University, a person without vanity will be fearless in asking what might seem to be “stupid” questions. Please don’t read to be an insufferable know-it-all...
I did a survey on Facebook asking people as to why they read books. The responses ranged from growth as a human being, updating of knowledge, solutions to world problems and eventually because everything on the internet is not true... I agree with most of them. According to George R.R. Martin, yes of GOT fame, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” You can become the character. A consulting detective in the 20th Century London, an architect in the US who does not design as per the conventions of society, a kid with an imaginary tiger or a pregnant COO of a social media giant who breaks the glass ceiling - all while you are reading a book!! In conclusion, fellow Toastmasters, I say, read just for the pleasure of it...
Toastmaster of the Day, the book is open for critique...
Leigh Whannell: 'Let me tell you how a slasher film works generally ... with the famous graph!', 1998
1998, ABC Studios, Ripponlea, Melbourne, Australia
Wonderful rant about horror movies and studio opportunism from a young Leigh Whannell, who was a movie reviewer on the Australian TV show Recovery. A few years later he took his own advice on horror scripting and created the mega successful Saw franchise with friend and fellow Australian James Wan..
It's movie time.
Jane Gazzo: It is.
Let's talk. Halloween, Part Seven. Horror. Horror. What are they saying? …
Okay, let's talk. Horror is a lot like heavy metal. I say this, it is because-
Dylan Lewis: Can you hear me?
Horror is a lot like heavy metal. Because-
Jane: Why?
Heavy metal, sorry, is always there. It never goes away. It's always just sitting there and every once in a while a heavy metal album crosses over and becomes a mainstream hit and everyone goes "Metal's back" and the heavy metal fans are like, "It was always there, man, I was always into it."
The other reason heavy metal is like horror, because only a true metal fan knows all the little subdivisions, black metal blah, blah blah. And the other reason it's like horror is because society genuinely views hardcore horror fans and hardcore heavy metal fans as a little nutsy cow, a little disturbed.
And that's a problem with Halloween 7 (H2O), it comes along after Scream, which was a huge hit and now all the moneymakers are like, "Okay, let's do one of those Halloween films… : It'll be a hit like Scream."
But all the horror fans who've been sticking through six films, well not part three, because that had nothing to do with Michael Myers, that was about a masked bird thing, but anyway, so five Michael Myers films-
Jane: Five!
And all of a sudden this movie comes along catering for people who are just walking in there for the first time. And the horror fans are like, "I know all this stuff." They're taking ages, setting up. Laurie Strode, Jamie Lee's character from the first one. All the horror fans they've sat through five movies before horror was cool. They sat through all that and then suddenly Scream comes out, now they have to reestablish a character for those who don't know. And they're sitting there and bleeding, that's what's the problem with this. Let me tell you how a slasher film works generally … This is how it generally works, with the famous graph. You've got a bit of boring stuff, then a death, then another bit of boring stuff and a death. Then another bit of character, in third character, boring stuff, boring stuff, maybe a bit of nookie, a death and then it all goes to the end. Now, what Kevin Williamson did when he wrote Scream was, all he did to make it a mega hit … All Kevin Williamson did to make Scream goodies, he made these bits [points to graph] in between the deaths, interesting! He made them like 90210, he put in good dialogue.
See in your usual slasher films, these bits are all crap and it's like, "Hurry up on the fast forward a bit and then kill." Kevin Williamson made these bits interesting, boom, Laurie goes through the roof. H2O and takes us back 10 years. All these bits are boring again, you're sitting there going, "What's going on? It's taking us back to the eighties." And as a horror fan, I was sitting there and I was very disappointed, they could have done more. The script was just appalling. As I said, those little bits were boring and unfortunately Halloween [H2O] doesn't make the grade. Let's have a look at it. Yo.
Joaquin Phoenix: 'We have to do the hard work to truly understand systemic racism', BAFTA acceptance - 2020
3 February 2020, London, United Kingdom
The BAFTAS have always been very supportive of my career and I’ve always been appreciative. But I have to say that I also feel conflicted, because so many of my fellow actors that are deserving don’t have that same privilege.
I think that we send a very clear message to people of colour that you’re not welcome here.
I think that that's a message that we’re sending to people who have contributed so much to our medium and our industry and in ways that we benefit from.
I don’t think anybody wants a handout or a preferential treatment although that’s what we give ourselves every year. I think people just want to be acknowledged and appreciated and respected for their work.
This is not a self righteous condemnation, because I’m ashamed to say that I’m part of the problem, because I’ve not done everything in my power to ensure that the sets I’ve worked on are inclusive.but I think that it’s more than having sets that are multicultural, I think that we have to do the hard work to truly understand systemic racism.
I think that it is the obligation of the people who have created and benefit from a system of oppression to be the ones that dismantle it.
So that’s on us.
Alex Borstein: 'Step out of line, ladies. Step out of line', Emmy Best Supporting Actor - 2019
23 September 2019, Microsoft Theatre, Los Angeles,. California, USA
Ibid? I don't know. Wow. I know a lot of people were upset last year because I wasn't wearing a bra, so I want to apologize because tonight I'm not wearing any underwear, so you're just going to want to just throw out that chair or clean it pretty good. It looks pretty on TV, but it's like a hot Bikram yoga class in here. A lot of nervous women. I want to dedicate this to the strength of a woman, to Amy Sherman-Palladino, to every woman on the Maisel cast and crew, to my mother, where are you...To my grandmother, Nudgy, they are immigrants, they are Holocaust survivors, my grandmother turned to a guard...She was in line to be shot into a pit and she said, "What happens if I step out of line," and he said, "I don't have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will," and she stepped out of line, and for that I am here, and my children are here, so step out of line, ladies. Step out of line.
Dylan Alcott: 'There's a ramp out the back baby!' Logies Awards - 2019
30 June 2019, The Star Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Thank you everyone. I actually thought I had no chance of winning because when I got here, I only saw stairs and there was no ramp.
I'm like, "I can't win."
There's a ramp out the back baby!
I want to congratulate all the other nominees in this category. You're going to have an incredible career
To the ABC for Invictus Games and the set. Thank you so much for the opportunity to my cohost Lehmo, Chris Barth and Linda Mariano. Thank you for carrying me, because I was absolutely no good.
I want to thank my team, Mark Jones and Georgie Saigus, my family, my beautiful partner, Chantelle, is here with me tonight.
But, this award means a lot to me because I used to absolutely hate having a disability. I've been in a wheelchair my whole life and I hated it. And one of the reasons I did hate it is when I turned on the TV, I never saw anybody like me. And when I did see someone like me, it was a road safety ad where someone, drink, drives, has a car accident and the next scene is someone like me whose life's over.
And I was like, that's not my life. I want to get a job on TV. Because I love sharing stories. But also to show that people with a disability can be talented, funny, humorous, just normal people enjoying their lives.
I've been lucky to go on a lot of networks and to every single person that gave me an opportunity, thank you so bloody much. And there are four and a half million people like me with a disability. So whether it's an education, employment, going on a date, whatever it is, please give them an opportunity too.
Because there are a lot of bloody talented people out there and I promise you, they won't disappoint. So thanks guys, have a great night.
Tim Rogers: 'They could do that big stage thing', On Michael Hutchence and INXS, ABC Arts - 2019
People say he was like Jim Morrison or something, but he wasn't moribund and a bit of a lagoob like Ol' Jimbo was. They both know how to use their hips, and they had good hair. And there's a lot more to it.
But watching performances of theirs, whether it be the US festival in '83, I remember seeing that very soon after it was happening and, "Oh, that's an Australian band playing at this massive festival." I guess as a band, as well, they just wanted it, really wanted it. And they had some real songwriting nous. They could do that big stage thing. And when that got lambasted and looked down upon when oiks like us were coming up, I thought, "But we want that. We just kind of don't know how to do that." To find that, in that pop world, someone who had what people would deem rock 'n roll is, in many ways, a really fantastic combination.
A person like him that's still a great performer at any time, from the get-go until he died... You just couldn't really keep your eyes off him. There was an ARIA Awards, maybe 1996, and INXS were performing. I think they did Elegantly Wasted at the show, I think. And I was excited to see them, I was a fan. And we were being touted as the hot young things, and so backstage I ran into Michael, and he kind of looked drawn and tired, but still very handsome. And I can't remember the exact conversation, because I get starstruck like anybody, and he said, "Oh, good to see you again." And he said also, "I guess it's your year." And I said, "I don't want it to be our year, I'm just glad to be here," or something like that.
But, yeah, the months before, though, were just absolutely pillared. INXS and Michael, if not personally, then a specter of it, was being absolutely lambasted by elements of the Australian press that now go, "Oh, wasn't he just the greatest rockstar?" He got given, and the band, after the Concert for Life, and there seemed to be this feeling that they were of another era, and it was though they were big and flash, and that wasn't what rock 'n roll was nowadays.
Now kind of knowing what went on, the skullduggerous nature of what went on around that, I just think everyone coming out and talking about Michael the way they do now, I think, "Just remember the way you behaved back then. Some of you could hang your heads in shame, really."
Gal Gadot: ' I want to share this award with all the women and men who stand for what's right', #SeeHer Critics Choice Award - 2018
12 January 2018, Los Angeles, California, USA
Throughout my career, I was always asked to describe my dream role. And it was clear to me that I wanted to portray a strong and independent woman—a real one. The irony in this is that later, I was cast as Wonder Woman, and all of these qualities I looked for, I found in her. She's full of heart, strength, compassion, and forgiveness. She sees wrong that must be made right; she takes action when everyone around her is idle. She commands the attention of the world. And in doing so, she sets a positive example for humanity.
Wonder Woman also struggles with her own love and hopes, she gets confused, insecure, and she's not perfect. And that's what makes her real. We wanted her to be universal, to be an inspiration to all people all around the world, and our plan was to make sure we didn't give too much attention to the fact that she's a woman.
The whole process of creating this film inspired me, and I hope we managed to inspire others. Now, when I started acting, there were very few female-led movies, and even fewer female directors. This year, three of the top-grossing films were female-led, and one of them was directed by my wonderful Patty Jenkins. There were eight other films in [the] top 100 which were directed by females. So although this is progress, there is still a long way to go.
Patty just shared an anecdote with me. And she said someone told her that his three-year-old saw the movie, and when the movie ended, the boy said, "When I grow up, I want to be a woman!" So as artists, and as filmmakers, I believe it's not only our job to entertain, but our duty to inspire and educate for love and respect.
In the past weeks and months, we've been witnessing a movement in our industry and society, and I want to share this award with all the women and men who stand for what's right: Standing for those who can't stand or speak for themselves. My promise and commitment to all of you is that I will never be silenced, and we will continue: band together to make strides, uniting for equality.
Millie Bobby Brown: 'If you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say it', MTV Awards - 2018
16 June 1018, Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, California, USA
Since I know there are many young people watching this, and even to the adults too, they could probably use the reminder that I was taught – that if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it.
There should be no space in this world for bullying, and I'm not going to tolerate it and neither should any of you. If you need a reminder of how worthy you are, and to rise above the hate, message me on Instagram.
Andrew Garfield: 'For the right to live and love as we are created to', Tony Awards - 2018
10 June 2018, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, USA
At a moment in time where maybe the most important thing that we remember right now is the sanctity of the human spirit, it is the profound privilege of my life to play Prior Walter in Angels in America because he represents the purest spirit of humanity, and especially that of the LGBTQ community.
It is a spirit that says no to oppression. It is a spirit that says no to bigotry, no to shame, no to exclusion.
It is a spirit that says we are all made perfectly. And we all belong. So I dedicate this award to the countless LGBTQ people who have fought and died to protect that spirit, to protect that message for the right to live and love as we are created to.
We are all sacred, so let’s just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked!
Frances McDormand : 'Look around you, because we all have stories to tell', Best Actress, Academy Awards - 2018
17 April 2018, Los Angeles, USA
Okay, so I'm hyperventilating a little bit. If I fall over, pick me up cause I've got some things to say. So I think this is what Chloe Kim must have felt like after doing back-to-back 1080s in the Olympic halfpipe. Did you see that? Okay, that's what it feels like.
I want to thank Martin McDonagh, look what you did. We are a bunch of hooligans and anarchists but we do clean up nice. I want to thank every single person in this building. And my sister Dorothy. I love you, Dot. And I especially want to thank my clan, Joel and Pedro "McCoen." These two stalwart individuals were well-raised by their feminist mother. They value themselves, each other and those around them. I know you are proud of me and that fills me with everlasting joy.
And now I want to get some perspective. If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight, the actors—Meryl, if you do it, everybody else will, c'mon—the filmmakers, the producers, the directors, the writers, the cinematographer, the composers, the songwriters, the designers. C'mon! Okay, look around everybody. Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. Don't talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days, or you can come to ours, whatever suits you best, and we'll tell you all about them. I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: 'inclusion rider.'
Bruce Springsteen: 'They're keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in rock and roll', Induction U2 into Rock Hall of Fame - 2005
14 March 2005, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, USA
Uno, dos, tres, catorce. That translates as one, two, three, fourteen. That is the correct math for a rock and roll band. For in art and love and rock and roll, the whole had better equal much more than the sum of its parts, or else you're just rubbing two sticks together searching for fire. A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.
It's embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens -- the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run -- whoops, I meant to leave that one out (laughter) -- the Sex Pistols, Aretha Franklin, the Clash, James Brown, the power of Public Enemy's "It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back". This is music meant to take on not only the powers that be, but on a good day, the universe and God himself -- if he was listening. It's man's accountability, and U2 belongs on this list.
It was the early '80s. I went with Pete Townsend, who always wanted to catch the first whiff of those about to unseat us, to a club in London. There they were: A young Bono -- single-handedly pioneering the Irish mullet; (laughter) the Edge -- what kind of name was that?; Adam and Larry. I was listening to the last band of whom I would be able to name all of its members. They had an exciting show and a big, beautiful sound. They lifted the roof.
We met afterwards and they were nice young men. They were Irish. Irish! Now, this would play an enormous part in their success in the States. For what the English occasionally have the refined sensibilities to overcome, we Irish and Italians have no such problem. We come through the door fists and hearts first. U2, with the dark, chiming sound of heaven at their command -- which, of course, is the sound of unrequited love and longing, their greatest theme -- their search for God intact. This was a band that wanted to lay claim to not only this world but had their eyes on the next one, too.
Now, they're a real band; each member plays a vital part. I believe they actually practice some form of democracy -- toxic poison in a band's head. In Iraq, maybe. In rock, no! Yet they survive. They have harnessed the time bomb that exists in the heart of every great rock and roll band that usually explodes, as we see regularly from this stage. But they seemed to have innately understood the primary rule of rock band job security: "Hey, asshole, the other guy is more important than you think he is!" They are both a step forward and direct descendants of the great bands who believed rock music could shake things up in the world, who dared to have faith in their audience, who believed if they played their best it would bring out the best in you. They believed in pop stardom and the big time. Now this requires foolishness and a calculating mind. It also requires a deeply held faith in the work you're doing and in its powers to transform. U2 hungered for it all, and built a sound, and they wrote the songs that demanded it. They're keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in rock and roll.
The Edge. The Edge. The Edge. The Edge. (applause) He is a rare and true guitar original and one of the subtlest guitar heroes of all time. He's dedicated to ensemble playing and he subsumes his guitar ego in the group. But do not be fooled. Take Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, Pete Townshend -- guitarists who defined the sound of their band and their times. If you play like them, you sound like them. If you are playing those rhythmic two-note sustained fourths, drenched in echo, you are going to sound like the Edge, my son. Go back to the drawing board and chances are you won't have much luck. There are only a handful of guitar stylists who can create a world with their instruments, and he's one of them. The Edge's guitar playing creates enormous space and vast landscapes. It is a thrilling and a heartbreaking sound that hangs over you like the unsettled sky. In the turf it stakes out, it is inherently spiritual. It is grace and it is a gift.
Now, all of this has to be held down by something. The deep sureness of Adam Clayton's bass and the rhythms of Larry Mullen's elegant drumming hold the band down while propelling it forward. It's in U2's great rhythm section that the band finds its sexuality and its dangerousness. Listen to "Desire," "She Moves in Mysterious Ways," [sic] the pulse of "With or Without You." Together Larry and Adam create the element that suggests the ecstatic possibilities of that other kingdom -- the one below the earth and below the belt -- that no great rock band can lay claim to the title without.
Now Adam always strikes me as the professorial one, the sophisticated member. He creates not only the musical but physical stability on his side of the stage. The tone and depth of his bass playing has allowed the band to move from rock to dance music and beyond. One of the first things I noticed about U2 was that underneath the guitar and the bass, they have these very modern rhythms going on. Rather than a straight 2 and 4, Larry often plays with a lot of syncopation, and that connects the band to modern dance textures. The drums often sounded high and tight and he was swinging down there, and this gave the band a unique profile and allowed their rock textures to soar above on a bed of his rhythm.
Now Larry, of course, besides being an incredible drummer, bears the burden of being the band's requisite "good-looking member," (laughter) something we somehow overlooked in the E Street Band. (laughter) We have to settle for "charismatic." Girls love on Larry Mullen! I have a female assistant that would like to sit on Larry's drum stool. A male one, too. We all have our crosses to bear.
Bono...where do I begin? Jeans designer, soon-to-be World Bank operator, just plain operator, seller of the Brooklyn Bridge -- oh hold up, he played under the Brooklyn Bridge, that's right. Soon-to-be mastermind operator of the Bono burger franchise, where more than one million stories will be told by a crazy Irishman. Now I realize that it's a dirty job and somebody has to do it, but don't quit your day job yet, my friend. You're pretty good at it, and a sound this big needs somebody to ride herd over it.
And ride herd over it he does. His voice, big-hearted and open, thoroughly decent no matter how hard he tries. Now he's a great frontman. Against the odds, he is not your mom's standard skinny, ex-junkie archetype. He has the physique of a rugby player...well, an ex-rugby player. Shaman, shyster, one of the greatest and most endearingly naked messianic complexes in rock and roll. (laughter) God bless you, man! It takes one to know one, of course.
You see, every good Irish and Italian-Irish front man knows that before James Brown there was Jesus. So hold the McDonald arches on the stage set, boys, we are not ironists. We are creations of the heart and of the earth and of the stations of the cross -- there's no getting out of it. He is gifted with an operatic voice and a beautiful falsetto rare among strong rock singers. But most important, his is a voice shot through with self-doubt. That's what makes that big sound work. It is this element of Bono's talent -- along with his beautiful lyric writing -- that gives the often-celestial music of U2 its fragility and its realness. It is the questioning, the constant questioning in Bono's voice, where the band stakes its claim to its humanity and declares its commonality with us.
Now Bono's voice often sounds like it's shouting not over top of the band but from deep within it. "Here we are, Lord, this mess, in your image." He delivers all of this with great drama and an occasional smirk that says, "Kiss me, I'm Irish." He's one of the great front men of the past twenty years. He is also one of the only musicians to devote his personal faith and the ideals of his band into the real world in a way that remains true to rock's earliest implications of freedom and connection and the possibility of something better.
Now the band's beautiful songwriting -- "Pride (In The Name of Love)," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "One," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Beautiful Day" -- reminds us of the stakes that the band always plays for. It's an incredible songbook. In their music you hear the spirituality as home and as quest. How do you find God unless he's in your heart? In your desire? In your feet? I believe this is a big part of what's kept their band together all of these years.
See, bands get formed by accident, but they don't survive by accident. It takes will, intent, a sense of shared purpose, and a tolerance for your friends' fallibilities...and they of yours. And that only evens the odds. U2 has not only evened the odds but they've beaten them by continuing to do their finest work and remaining at the top of their game and the charts for 25 years. I feel a great affinity for these guys as people as well as musicians.
Well...there I was sitting down on the couch in my pajamas with my eldest son. He was watching TV. I was doing one of my favorite things -- I was tallying up all the money I passed up in endorsements over the years (laughter) and thinking of all the fun I could have had with it. Suddenly I hear "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" I look up. But instead of the silhouettes of the hippie wannabes bouncing around in the iPod commercial, I see my boys!
Oh, my God! They sold out!
Now...what I know about the iPod is this: It is a device that plays music. Of course their new song sounded great, my guys are doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old tape operator Jimmy Iovine somewhere. Wily. Smart. Now, personally, I live an insanely expensive lifestyle that my wife barely tolerates. I burn money, and that calls for huge amounts of cash flow. But I also have a ludicrous image of myself that keeps me from truly cashing in. (laughter) You can see my problem. Woe is me.
So the next morning, I call up Jon Landau -- or as I refer to him, "the American Paul McGuinness" -- and I say, "Did you see that iPod thing?" And he says, "Yes." And he says, "And I hear they didn't take any money." And I said, "They didn't take any money?!" And he says, "No." I said, "Smart, wily Irish guys." (laughter) Anybody...anybody...can do an ad and take the money. But to do the ad and not take the money...that's smart. That's wily. I say, "Jon, I want you to call up Bill Gates or whoever is behind this thing and float this: A red, white, and blue iPod signed by Bruce "the Boss" Springsteen. Now remember, no matter how much money he offers, don't take it!" (laughter)
At any rate...at any rate, after that evening, for the next month or so, I hear emanating from my lovely 14-year-old son's room, day after day, down the hall calling out in a voice that has recently dropped very low: Uno, dos, tres, catorce. The correct math for rock and roll. Thank you, boys.
(applause)
This band...this band has carried their faith in the great inspirational and resurrective power of rock and roll. It never faltered, only a little bit. They believed in themselves, but more importantly, they believed in "you, too." Thank you Bono, the Edge, Adam, and Larry. Please welcome U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Elaine May: 'I'm going to win this guy's Tony', Best Leading Actress, Tony Awards - 2019
10 June 2019, Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA
I've never won a nomination for acting before, so I wanna tell you how I did it.
I got in a play written by Kenneth Lonergan. It was about his family, I played his grandmother. My director was Scott Ellis, my producer was Scott Rudin.
My family was played by everyone you've ever wanted to be on stage with. Joan Allen was my daughter, Lucas Hedges was my grandson, David Cromer was my son in law and Michael Cera was my only friend. And, at the end of the play, I died. Now, my death was described onstage by Lucas Hedges so brilliantly. He described it, so heartbreaking, he was so touching, that watching from the wings, I thought, 'I'm gonna win this guy's Tony.'
Margaret Lindsay Holton: "I learn by doing. This is my basic mantra for life", 'The Act and Art of Writing' - 2019
21 March 2019, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Good afternoon ladies - and gentlemen - Thank you for coming.
First off, I must apologize for reading from this prepared script. Without my 'notes', I fear I would take us on a wildly unpredictable journey to unexpected and unusual places - as is the propensity of my wandering and inquiring mind ...
The problem is: our minds are always 'on' ... We day-dream, we fantasize, we reason, we debate and we chatter incessantly with ourselves. In so doing, we think a lot about a lot of different people and a lot of different things. Visual IDEAS ricochet through various time portals, expanding and contracting, in imagined and real geographic locations. As a result, our imaginations are constantly 'becoming' ... Collectively, our singular imagination is very much ALIVE.
To many, I have what is called, an 'active imagination'. I am sure most of you are familiar with this attribute - or, as some believe - affliction ...
This particular facility has proven to be both a blessing and a curse over my nearly 50 odd years of 'art creation'. An 'active imagination' soothes. It can also hound. An 'active imagination' has propelled me forward into new endeavours. Equally, it has held me back with compounding thoughts of catastrophic fear.
An 'active imagination' ricochets through the prisms of our minds. Ever active, it constantly produces a dazzling cascade of competing thoughts and emotions.
Initially, I was a bit surprised to be invited to speak to you today.
Some of you may recall that I spoke here eight years ago in 2011.
At that time, I gave a overview of my life's work as a practicing artist in the visual arts. I included a demonstration of my black & white pinhole photography, my multi-layered and multi-coloured photo-collages, my international typeface-designs now in commercial use since the 1980s, and I included an overview of my signature 'naive-surreal-folk-abstract' paintings. A slide show of those different disciplines accompanied that talk.
I made clear then, that, in the main, I am self-taught.
I learn by doing. This is my basic mantra for Life: Learn by Doing.
---
Today, I will introduce you to another discipline that I am attempting to do as best as I can - the Act and Art of Writing.
At this point in my life, in my early 60s, I am very lucky that I have the basic financial freedom to do what I want, when I want. I am, thus, at liberty to pursue my own work. That said, I do not, like so many of you here, own my own home on land that I own. There is no husband in my studio and I have no children to look after. I work and live alone, and have done so, for over 30 years. For the most part, this suits me very well.
How did I get to where I am today? --- You will need some background.
In my youth, during my 20s, I was beholden to various employment venues that governed MY TIME. When I was 32, I started my own Canadian fine furniture design practice in Toronto. In this way, I became a 'self-employed' woman at a relatively early age. For the next 14 years, I designed and produced, on commission, signature Canadian fine-furniture for many of the Greater-Toronto area 'nouveau riche'.
I learned a lot about people then and saw plenty. Interior Designer, Brian Gluckstein, who many of you may know, was a regular client. I designed and produced bedroom suites for the children of theater impresario, Garth Drabinsky. I designed artifact boxes for The Royal Ontario Museum and the front entrance of the library for the Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre on Bayview Avenue. I was also involved in the new kitchen design for Indigo Book founder, Heather Reisman. And, all told, I did quite well with this discipline until, quite simply, I got bored. Mainly, I grew tired of continuously having to explain the difference between mahogany, oak and pine ...
In 1998, when I was 43, I wrote my second novel, The Gilded Beaver by Anonymous. That novel documented, in semi-fictional form, much of my previous 'design' journey. It won the Hamilton Arts Council 'Best Fiction' Award in 1999.
Since then, I have devoted a greater proportion of my time to writing - first, in a 'get-wet' amateurish way, for a start-up news blog in Burlington, and then, on a more professional basis, for a larger news blog in Hamilton - Raise the Hammer - under the editorial tutelage of the gifted Ryan McGreal.
During the following decade, I began to hone my journalistic skills, not only as a writer of factual stories, but as a 'photo-journalist'. I started to add photographs to my articles. One, then two, then three. Soon thereafter, I started to add short video clips. I would often spend an hour or more with an engaging personality and video-tape it - first on my Canon camera - then latterly, on my Apple ipod. I learned to edit these single-take interviews down to 8 to 10 minute short films that would accompany my articles. For five years, I organically learned about the tools and language of film - albeit on a very small scale. I was learning by doing.
During that period, I began to craft short stories again, just for the sheer fun of it. I wrote an imagined short story about World War 1. In that tall tale, a broken shell-shock soldier returns from the frontlines of Vimy to a rural family where all are struggling to survive in the aftermath of The Great War. Initially, in the story, it does not go well for him. But the tale does have a happy ending! -- Two years later, I was lucky to have this unpublished work selected as the LAST story of a short story anthology, entitled 'ENGRAVED: Canadian Stories of World War One'. Being the last story in a collection of short stories is a very good place to be. It closes out the volume in both tone and imagery.
I then became intrigued by the conceptual possibility of turning that good short story into a short film.
I proceeded to learn what I had to do in order to do that. This is very much the way my mind works ... The mind is constantly asking - Who, What, When, Where, Why and HOW?
During the early development of my first narrative short film, I joined several local Facebook film-making groups and became a founding member of FAB - the Filmmakers Alliance of Burlington. Our monthly meet-ups at a local coffee shop established a local film production network where newbies (like me), as well as veterans of the trade, could get together to chat about their latest projects.
Within a year, I had finished the final draft of my first screenplay for 'The Frozen Goose'. I then put out a casting call to local actors and actresses - and cast the five needed to tell the story. I hired the film crew: the cameraman, sound recordist, prop master, and borrowed and bought period costumes for the production. I secured insurance permits for the shooting locations on both public and private lands, and began summer rehearsals with the two starring children.
In short, within one brief year, I became a PRODUCER, DIRECTOR and WRITER of 'The Frozen Goose'. Financing for the film was secured from multiple sources: family, friends, associates and an on-line IndieGoGo campaign. I can proudly say, I shot, edited and packaged the final 25 minute film - on time and 'on budget' - for just under $12,000.
The raw digital footage was shot during the coldest week in February of 2016. By the fall of that same year, the commissioned score, titles, credits and final edit were completed. The film poster was designed by me and I transferred the final film onto a 'For Sale' limited-run DVD. It sold out within three weeks.
'The Frozen Goose' premiered at the Art Gallery of Burlington on September 6th of 2016, with the then Mayor, Rick Goldring, and the now CEO, Robert Stevens, presiding. There were two sold-out screenings with a toe-tapping musical interlude performed by the local Celtic trio, Whiskey Epiphany. That gifted trio was fronted by the phenomenally gifted fiddler, David McLean. David's merry music can be heard throughout the film.
'The Frozen Goose' then went on to screen, twice, at the Hamilton Film Festival in 2017. At the end of that year, it aired on COGECO and CABLE 14 and it was finally picked up by a Canadian distributor for the cross-national audio-visual school and library markets in Canada.
DONE!
From start to finish, I believe I made a not too shabby FIRST narrative short film. I knew it wasn't perfect - by an stretch - but, on route, I had learned a great deal more about the Act and Art of storytelling IN FILM.
I tell you this now because I hope to give you a better understanding of how 'words composed on the page' become, 'words and visuals delivered on the screen'.
Every great movie starts with a script.
---
Recently, I completed my third novel, TRILLIUM. I wrote it during most of last year, in 2018.
From February to October, I sat down at my laptop and wrote diligently from 10am to 6pm, five days a week, taking only a one hour break for lunch to clear my head and re-charge. By mid-October, I sent the manuscript off to my chosen printers in Quebec and did a quick proof of the cover design and cover specifications. I was very pleased with myself that I was 'on schedule' when I released it in a limited Canadian produced 'Artist First Edition' at the end of October. -- DONE!
But Live and LEARN.
That 'Artist First Edition' is - regrettably - far from perfect. I had goofed big time.
After a much-needed break and breather, I casually went back to look at the then published book. I was dismayed to discovered I had made numerous silly mistakes, too-many-to-mention. Ashamed at my gaffs, I immediately withdrew the book from the marketplace and began an intense clean-up.
The FINAL work has just been released as an updated 340 page paperback and e-book in January of this year. Today, I continue to kick myself at my prior impatience 'to-get-it-to-print'. I had made an embarrassing error. BUT, there is no point in crying over spilt milk. What's done is done. ...
We live and we learn ...
Today, I am offering you the remaining IMPERFECT 'Artist First Editions' for just $20 per copy. Ironically, for a serious collector, that's a surprisingly good deal for a 'first edition' novel.
Otherwise, I have promo cards available for you on the so that you can find it on-line.
---
This new written work of mine, this 340 page historical novel, TRILLIUM, is very different from my prior attempts at factual and fictional story-telling. Instead of a standard protagonist and antagonist, or a somewhat predictable love triangle, I crafted an extended multi-generational cast of colourful and challenging characters who cover 250 years of settlement and growth in the wine-making district of Niagara. It is a full-fledged 'adult' novel that concerns itself with on-going topics of concern to adults. I wanted a broad palette to explore a number of different and timely issues.
This wide-ranging story - with all its up-and-downs and roll-a-rounds - in love, lust, revenge, larceny and a mysterious murder - cloaks the real purpose of any story.
And what, you might wonder, is that?
What is the purpose of any story?
Fundamentally - every story - ever told - has a moral - be it focused on Virtue or Vice.
TRILLIUM, the novel, isn't just about lip-smacking wine-making, salacious and furtive lusting, bug-eyed young love or the alluring glimmer of gold. No. Trillium is about morality. It is about the Good in people. It is about the Bad in people. It is about the choices people make about the Right Way and the Wrong Way of living a human life. How we, as people, LIVE is amplified by preceding generations who, covertly and overtly, shape and nurture the next generation ...
TRILLIUM is about Life.
The underlying theme of TRILLIUM, from start to finish, focuses on my growing concern about our apparent diminishing capacity to survive as a healthy and compassionate species on this amazing planet. Yes, heavy and heady stuff. ... But this singular and primary thought did guide me in the writing of this new work.
TRILLIUM deliberately weaves in and out of an assortment of moral dilemmas. Some are heart-breaking and tragic. Some are comical, witty and wise. Some are downright diabolical and evil, while some are pure and angelic. I wrote TRILLIUM to share a broad perspective about humanity. It is filled with the capricious, the colourful and the careless - all kinds of real-time personalities.
---
I would now like to dive a little bit deeper into the ACT and ART of 'writing a story. What MAKES a Writer Write? --- What compels a person to do set down and put words to paper? --- Why bother?
---
It's a bit of a long-winded answer, but please, bear with me.
Ever since I can remember, I have had a writing box. Most writers do.
This box is a compost heap of peripatetic ideas and sideswiped observations.
Something will catch a writer’s eye or ear or fancy and it will get jotted down, then, later, tossed into the box. Stubby pencil scratches on found bits of paper, full-length manuscripts of fluttering foolscap, half-composed computer print-outs or verdant wet-pen epistles - ALL these items get tossed into the box.
There, IDEAS will sit for a time to germinate. Two days - or two decades - per item is not an uncommon gestation period. Why? Because IDEA SEEDS vary.
My writing box is a living ‘WORDS-in-progress’ garden.
When I return at different times to view my young shoots, I often find that some ideas have not taken root (pithy but pointless) --- or that others must be zealously weeded out (verbose ravings). Yet, I will also often see the formation of a healthy new bud- especially when a single word reverberates. New growth struggles on an old growth IDEA. One thought - or one IDEA - may pollinate another. With these latter discoveries, I will start to feverishly prune-edit, cultivate-rewrite and otherwise happily tend to my quixotic word garden.
Some tales began long ago and have only recently come to final fruition. TRILLIUM was just such a story. I wrote the preliminary outline for this work over 10 years ago. Back then, I had an inkling that I needed to write a long, involved, rooted, yet evolving story - about rural family life ...
Other stories in my writing box have been grafted onto different ideas creating hybrids. 'The Frozen Goose' short story then screenplay falls into this category.
And some stories, I know, to a seasoned and urban urbane editor, may still need some heavy pruning .... However, I have kept these scraggly 'wild ones’ because they still radiate an exploratory and experimental sheen. I find they have their own rare merit - and honest beauty. And I know, if left longer to germinate, those struggling seeds will eventually sprout too.
...
Well-told stories are a delight to our senses. Our listening imaginations discern certain features repeated in pattern. Certain repeated words shimmer in different contexts. When words reverberate through us, they give us meaning. Like the word, 'colour', heard often here today. That word is reverberating in our collective mind ...
Stories are also ephemeral. The stories we hear, read, see or think today will be gone tomorrow. They will have grown and gently morphed into something else overnight as we artfully re-arrange them into our own personal perceptions and root them in our muddy memories. In this way, scintillating private stories, shared by others, become linked to intimate and well-loved stories of our own.
Soon, a good story, well told, becomes everyone's story.
...
So, how does one become a writer?
I believe it starts at a very young age when the joy-filled discovery of words is so fresh and intoxicating. Learning a new word suddenly explains, very clearly, what we are struggling so hard to say. -- Yes! No! - and then - Maybe ....
There is an immediate resonance with a new word discovery. New words sharpen our perceptions and refine our feelings. Developing vocabularies help us to better understand who we are becoming ...
In my case, I gave my first hand-written poem to my mother - 'Flowers In May' - when I was 9 years old. At the time, it was a bold act. I was showing and giving her a testament of my deep love of language. "See mum? -- Read what I have just written!"
At a very early age, I became a ferocious reader and, thanks to my parents, I discovered the attendant pleasures of owning a well-thumbed dictionary and a good thesaurus.
Words, in and of themselves, became sparkling phonetic jewels of wonderment.
I read and read and read ...,.
...
In my late teens, in the mid 1970, when thrust from the gentle rural countryside of South-western Ontario into the heady cosmopolitan environment at the University of Toronto to do a B.A. in Literature and Philosophy, I was instantly seduced by the surprising rhetorical possibilities of language.
I had long known there was emotive logic and persuasive argument - but to learn that ‘rhetoric’ itself was a studied and applied linguistic ‘science’ - well - that was eye-opening. I immediately wanted to understand what differentiated the written word of lawyers, say, from those of a journalist, or a writer of science fiction, or a passionate playwright or an enigmatic poet. I soon learned that each sub-discipline within the writing realm had its own particular rules of conduct and delivery.
It also seemed to me that the worlds of politics and commerce constantly erupted in all these types of writing. Politics and commerce shaped the tone of the language used. When a lawyer spoke or wrote of law, it was very different than when a playwright or poet spoke or wrote about law. To this day, Shakespeare remains the indisputable Master interpreter of these different shades of meaning according to their different roots of usage. He knew well that a speaker's role implies different meaning .
...
Playing with language became an obsessive preoccupation. Bawdy and cheeky limericks, ethereal and dainty haikus and popular pop-song lyrics jostled with the playfulness of words. As a concrete example, The Beatles group of the 1960s understood this playfulness very well. --- They invented - 'coo-coo-ca-choo' .... 'I am the Walrus' ... and re-worked 'I wanna hold your hand' to beguile us.
At university, I also began to understand that men and women DO experience and interpret the world very differently. It is evident in the different tone and choice of words used to express differing points of view. I explored a diversity of these sex-based ‘voices’ in my first book of published poetry, 'On Top of Mount Nemo'. Throughout that very early work, I played with these different sexual points-of-view and twirled them within the multiple refractions of our common perceptual prism. Words were such fun.
After graduating with a four-year Lit & Philosophy degree, with an independent study year at the University of Edinburgh where I focused on the history of the English language, and dusty too from several continental sojourns - I then settled down to the onerous task of ‘working-for-a-living' from 'dawn-to-dusk’.
I naturally gravitated towards entry level jobs that dealt with words, and was particularly drawn to Advertising and Copywriting. I started out as an Assistant Editor at an radio industry magazine, the FM Guide, under the supervision of Andrew Marshall, the proprietor, married to Canadian labour historian, Heather Robertson. Andrew and Heather were didactic wordsmiths who helped sharpen my ear.
Other short term jobs followed that allowed me to perceive and evaluate what I increasingly considered to be a loosely federated Advertising Empire that psychically dominated North America ...
I worked, for awhile, as a production assistant for a busy commercial film house and ran scripts and story boards back and forth to advertising clients.
Within this advertising empire, I soon learned that we think and become what we watch and consume. In this instance, the connecting and resonating link is the language of ‘sales’.
Sales is generated by believable or catchy advertising copy. Punchy slogans and riveting sound bites still seduce even the most wary and wry.
During the decade of the 1980′s, while setting up my own fine furniture design business in Toronto, my mind continued to race forward to find those literary nuggets that endured beyond the advertising hype.
When the 1990′s were upon us, the surround-sounds of multi-media seemed intensely focused on the emerging cyber-sphere and its nascent McLuhan-esque offspring: the internet.
Writing, and even reading, took on new dimensions as the lines slowly started to blur between the Real and the Un-Real. Television and Photography increasingly replaced the Printed Word. Vision soon dominated. The once prized and eloquent use of language became the cheap side-kick to a riveting photo image.
Think of 'Tony the Tiger' or 'the Tiger in your tank' based on an unbelievably engaging visual. Written words became spit as needed. In North America, we were increasingly being sold the IDEA that we needed everything – our body urges and our emotional needs – instantly gratified - with no thought of consequence. Plugged in, we sucked it all in, and soon every last one of us became addicted.
Computers, (with their oddly-named 'mice'), were soon added to our already plugged-in homes that housed those flickering tell-a-vision windows of fabricated reality.
...
In the middle of the 1990′s, the explosive Bre-X gold fraud scandal, (of salting a gold find in Borneo), was one of many riveting news items. We watched as 'Canada the Good' quietly fell from grace in the global business community. Ordinary investors lost faith and trust in the hustlers and hustle of the markets. Dot and telecom technology stocks floundered. Many collapsed overnight. Research-in-Motion and Nortel went bankrupt. Insider trading scandals and continued corporate-accounting fraud rattled the cages of commerce. Enron became a household word. And then, Dolly, the sheep, was cloned ...
Yet, it seemed to me, that even then - underlying this hurly-burly consumption and destruction - there were certain immutable Truths.
The Earth continues to revolve around the Sun.
This fact is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Towards the end of the 90′s, as I was entering my fourth decade on this planet, I began my second novel, The Gilded Beaver By Anonymous. Yes, it encapsulated much of what I had gleaned over the past decade as a designer. But also in that work, I was exploring and writing like a psychic geologist. ... I was constantly looking for noteworthy nuggets to pass along ... After winning the writing award for that work, I knew I was on to something ... I quietly kept at it and wrote when I could, tossing more SEED IDEAS into my writing box garden.
...
Something marvelous seemed to occur when we tipped into the twenty-first century. Remember? The century clocked over from 1999 to 2000. -- Aside from the doomsday clock-watchers, we were filled with a fresh new optimism and a sincere hope for our global future. All the dilapidated debris of the previous millennium momentarily disappeared and there was this unexpected gush of euphoria. -- We seemed to be on the right path, moving in the right direction ...
And yet.
Here we are today, in the final year of a second bloody and anxious decade, 2019.
We seem to have lost not only our footing but our moral centers.
The prospect of a new nuclear war and the continuous threats of ‘terrorism’ hang over our heads like threatening storm clouds. Outrageous atrocities – man’s inhumanity to man – unimagined even a short time ago – are now routinely reported. We addictively watch global events unfold on our televisions or scroll and swipe our way through social media on the internet. We're permanently plugged into our preferred apps and constantly engaging on our preferred social platforms. We hunger and we thirst for MORE.
Meanwhile, men - and yes, it is mostly men - continue to fight territorial squabbles over precious and diminishing natural resources on our finite planet.
Everyone is shoving, pushing and grabbing.
Camps of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are erupting everywhere. ---
It's starting to look like it's all going to explode soon ....
We seem to be on the edge of a cataclysmic melt-down ...
And yet – I ask you ----
Are these media-generated stories the real stories?
Are they the enduring stories that we all need to survive?
As a mature and aging woman on this planet, I do not think so.
We do not need to self-destruct.
...
To my mind, the time has come to re-discover the precious precision of words.
From my end, to sharpen my pen and strengthen my voice, I entered the Humber School of Writer's 'Graduate Creative Writing Program' in 2004. For the next eight months, I corresponded with two-time Giller Prize winner, M.G.Vassanji: a very seasoned Asian-Indian writer, best known for his Tanzanian-Toronto-centric novels - 'The Book of Secrets' and 'The In-between Worlds of Vikram Lall.'
Vassanji and I slowly worked back and forth through the unfinished snippets and short stories smoldering in my writing box.
Some seed IDEAS he liked, and some SHOOTS he didn’t. His periodic question marks in the columns of my manuscripts made me re-think my structures, my use of styles and my intentions. His attentive and thoughtful readings helped me to refine my essential reason for writing.
He helped me further define my future responsibility as a writing artist.
--- In many ways, it is the oldest story in the book. ---
Any true writer - any real writer worth their salt - is - at core - a CARETAKER.
Today, it seems this early story-telling Truth must be told again and again, in every language, in every medium, and with every voice: We are ALL Caretakers.
As a writing artist, I have planted my thoughts in a variety of different ‘voices’ to reflect the manners and mores of our times.
I now pass them on to you in my latest novel offering - TRILLIUM.
Please let my thoughts ricochet within you.
Cross-pollinate. Re-cultivate them.
Find again the sweet joy of warbling words.
And then, CARE TAKE …
Use the potent power of our shared stories.
Thank you.
TRILLIUM, released in January 2019 in an e-book and trade paperback, can be found on Amazon.CA > https://amzn.to/2q0iEeL
Alternate e-book formats - (Kobo, Indigo, Apple etc) - are here > https://books2read.com/TRILLIUM
The FROZEN GOOSE film & trailer, referenced in the lecture, can be seen here > https://thefrozengoose.vhx.tv/
Margaret Lindsay Holton
Golden Horseshoe Artist & Canadian Author
T Bone Burnett: 'We are in a battle for the survival of our species', SXSW keynote - 2019
13 March 2019,. Hilton Austin, Texas, USA
I am going to begin today with a quote from Marshall McLuhan from his 1962 book, “The Gutenberg Galaxy”:
“Instead of tending toward a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”
I would like to come to you today with a message of unity and love and peace, and I will try to get there by the end, but I have to begin by stating a fact that must be becoming obvious to most people by now- the fact that we are in a battle, a battle for the survival of our species, and our enemy, is within.
Three weeks ago in a landmark report on disinformation and fake news, the British parliament said that Facebook and other big tech companies “should be subject to a compulsory code of ethics to tackle … the abuse of users’ data and the bullying of smaller firms.”
The report says, “Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law.”
The Guardian wrote that this is the first “comprehensive attempt of a major legislative body to peer into the … economy of data manipulation and voter influence.”
Damian Collins, chair of the parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said, “The guiding principle of the ‘move fast and break things’ culture [is] that it is better to apologize than ask permission. We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people.”
In The New Yorker’s Feb. 25, 2019 report titled “Private Mossad for Hire,” Uzi Shaya, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, said, “Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds. You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. It’s a place where wars are fought, elections are won, and terror is promoted. There are no regulations. It is a no man’s land.”
Marshall McLuhan began his work as a follower of the French Catholic idealist philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard believed that the electronic universe was an extension of our nervous systems and would knit us together into a godhead, which he called “the Omega Point”. McLuhan, also a Catholic, started there, but by the end of his life, he believed that the electronic universe was a “blatant manifestation of the Antichrist.” Satan, he said, “is a very great electric engineer.”
The Internet has failed.
Here is a quote from Tim Berners-Lee, who drew the original diagram for the world wide web on a napkin, and who now has Dr. Frankenstein’s remorse.
“We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places. [The Web] has ended up producing—with no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform — a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.”
As the Internet pioneer Ethan Zuckerman of MIT recently wrote, “It’s obvious now that what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble.” What they wanted to do was to create a communication system that was decentralized and cooperative. One of the early networks that Stewart Brand and Ken Kesey built was called the Whole Earth Lectronic Link. That’s how utopian their aspirations were. But today there is a growing understanding that the internet has morphed into an insidious surveillance and propaganda machine.
Berners-Lee has said he is “devastated” by what his creation has become, and he is working to “re-decentralize” the web with a new project he calls Solid. I sincerely wish him the best of luck, but from where I stand, we would do well to scrap this first internet project- we should break up these advertising platform monopolies, and we should start from scratch to build an electronic communications system founded on hard and fast ethics rather than utopian fantasies.
(Thomas More coined the word Utopia from two Greek words- eutopia, which meant a good place and outopia, which meant no place at all.)
By now, it is clear that what was begun as a mission to connect and unite mankind has mutated into a pernicious distortion machine that has disconnected mankind and put us at each other’s throats, and in doing so has destroyed and is destroying institutions and knowledge that have taken centuries to develop.
As my friend Roger McNamee says, at this point it is all the rest of us against the 130,000 or so employees of Facebook and Google, whose objective it is to hybridize us with machines. Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, predicts that humans will be hybrids by the year 2030. Their goal is to automate us.
In the beginning of the last century, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, realized that he could use his uncle’s concepts- such as the understanding that we are driven to act by unconscious impulses- to control and manipulate mass culture.
At the beginning of the first world war, Bernays was the press agent for Enrico Caruso, plying the trade that was then called propaganda. He had run many successful campaigns, and as the United States entered the war, he worked for Woodrow Wilson to promote the idea the we were fighting not to restore the old empires of Europe, but rather to “Make the world safe for democracy.” By positioning Wilson as the “Liberator of the people, who would create a new world were the individual would be free”, he was able to make Wilson a hero of the masses.
The throngs that greeted Wilson upon his arrival at the Paris Peace talks gave Bernays the insight that if this sort of mass manipulation could be used during war, it could be used during peace.
After the war, with the Germans giving propaganda a bad name, Bernays rebranded his practice, opening the Council on Public Relations — a phrase he coined — and began working for various corporations including the American Tobacco Corporation. At the time there was a taboo against women smoking and Bernays was asked to break that taboo so that the company could sell more cigarettes.
During the 1929 Easter parade around Central Park in New York, Bernays arranged for a group of debutantes to hide cigarettes under their clothes and, at an arranged corner, pull out and light what he called “Torches of Freedom.” Having notified the international press of the event, there were scores of photographers — including ones hired by Bernays — at that corner, and the pictures went out all over the world. In that one symbolic act, he was able to link a woman’s right to smoke with a woman’s right to vote — with the Women’s Liberation Movement. He linked a woman smoking a cigarette with the Statue of Liberty. Those pictures snapped the world.
This devious process has now been mechanized and automated.
Until England recently joined the fray, Germany had been leading the world on the extreme dangers of the Facebook and Google monopolies, because Germany in the 1920s, was the first country to fall into a propaganda created mass hypnosis. The Germans have felt it.
Historian Robert Ensor wrote at the time that “Hitler puts no limit on what can be done by propaganda; people will believe anything, provided they are told it often enough and emphatically enough, and that contradicters are either silenced or smothered in calumny.”
This, of course, is all too familiar.
To stay human, to survive as a species, we have to wrest our communications out of the control of the lust for power, the avarice, larceny, hubris, deceit and self-delusion of the heads of Google and Facebook
I am confident that we can do this. Six years ago my friend Jon Taplin and I spoke at a conference at MIT. We caused a lot of trouble because of our assertion that musicians have the right to determine how and where their music is distributed. The Free Culture sect was in ascendance on campuses then, but things have changed.
The chronicle of reform movements demonstrates that history is made by abrupt transitions. The 1890s are remembered as the Gilded Age, where plutocrats like J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller asserted control over the U.S. economy and politics. By 1906, both Rockefeller and Morgan were being forced by antitrust regulators to break up their vast holdings. When I gave the keynote address at the Americana Music Festival addressing the problem of the tech monopolies in the fall of 2016, I thought we were in 1896, not 1906.
But today, just three years later, we are, in fact, at the beginning of a profound change in how we view tech monopolies. Since that time, the German led European Union has fined Google 7.7 billion dollars (American), the largest antitrust fines in history, for abusing its search monopoly, the British parliament has picked up the torch, and there is increasing evidence that American politicians and regulators are open to new regulation of these tech monopolies. Within the next six months the FCC will probably fine Facebook billions of dollars for the Cambridge Analytica breach. This is in part because the mounting evidence of the destructive role that both Facebook and Google played in the American election of 2016 proved to be one of the primary causes of Individual One’s so called victory.
But the crisis Facebook and Google have created goes way beyond the election. We have come to the realization that we have entrusted them with our most intimate data, and that they are not worthy of that trust. They have betrayed our trust by engineering their platforms to be addictive, and by making enormous fortunes selling — monetizing “in the parlance of our times,” to quote Maude Lebowski — surreptitiously selling those data that we have unknowingly handed over to them for free, for nothing.
Stewart Brand is often quoted as saying. “Information wants to be free.” The other half of the quotation, always omitted by the Free Culture sect is, “Information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place changes your life.”
I have come here today to this right place to bring you a right piece of information.
Your information is extremely valuable.
To realize that, all you have to do is look at the valuations of the companies that have been confiscating your information and making vast fortunes without compensation to you, the owners of that information, companies that have instead manipulated you and your friends and families by that information.
If we search the internet we find that Facebook is worth somewhere around $475 billion. Google is worth about $785 billion, give or take a few billion — together, about a trillion and a quarter dollars.
This — and much, much more — is what your collective information is worth. In fact, there is no way to put a monetary value on something such as privacy for which the intrinsic value is immeasurable.
Mark Zuckerberg tells us the age of privacy is over. At Harvard, he started what was then called Facemash as a place to rate girls by their pictures — which had been stolen from student housing directories — girls who were, I am certain, thrilled to be rated by the Ivy League incel community. Here is part of a text conversation between him and one of his friends outlining how he was planning to deal with his competition, the website Harvard Connect:
FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites?
ZUCK: yea i’m going to fuck them
ZUCK: probably in the year
ZUCK: *ear
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucks
Having been exposed, he now claims to have grown and changed, but by now we have profound evidence that he has not, and in fact, his lust for power has made him worse, has made him into a James Bond villain.
He may be Zuckerberg, but make no mistake — you are the mark.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States asserts that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. Well, unreasonable searches and seizures are Google and Facebook’s business models.
There are laws against phone tapping, yet on the internet, all communications are tapped, at all times, with impunity.
This has been an epic invasion of privacy.
While he buys up all the houses around his house to protect his privacy, neither he nor any of the other one dimensional Randian intellectual lightweights in Silicon Valley gets to declare that the age of privacy is over.
It is time for him and them to get out of our lives, out of our private lives, out of our common life.
Theirs is a fundamental miscalculation. They don’t know the difference between connection and disconnection. They don’t know the difference between information and disinformation. They don’t know the difference between creation and destruction.
Information does not want anything. We want information.
But as the tech companies have made vast fortunes selling our information, they have hidden from us the crucial information we need to survive as a species.
These technologists lack humanity.
This era — an era marked by a new field of economics called Surveillance Capitalism — has been a global revenge of the nerds.
For those to whom surveillance capitalism is a new term, here is Shoshana Zuboff’s definition of that term from her mighty book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:
1. A new economic order that claims human experience as free material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales;
2. A parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modification;
3. A rogue mutation of capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge, and power unprecedented in human history;
8. An extrapolation of critical human rights that is best understood as a coup from above: an overthrow of the people’s sovereignty.
The goal of technology is to create efficiency.
The goal of art is to create conscience.
Art is not efficient.
Efficiency is not an attribute of the good.
Efficiency can be efficient for good or evil, but as it has worked out in practice, efficiency would seem to be a prime attribute of evil.
Without conscience, efficiency has the potential for apocalyptic evil.
These surveillance capitalists do not have the ethical foundation to be able to order society as they have presumed to do.
They lack conscience.
I will stay with the artists. Artists contain the accumulated knowledge of generations. Artists create conscience. The artists are our only hope.
The sciences have failed us. The churches have failed us. The politicians have failed us.
I am here today to strongly encourage all of you artists to not give in to the extreme intimidation of a sad group of very rich, emotionally and intellectually stunted people who threaten to destroy centuries of human experience and hard won knowledge, who threaten to destroy our race — the only race we have, the human race — but instead to stand up for yourselves, to stand up for humanity.
Abraham Lincoln said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Dr Martin Luther King, Jr said, “And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.” We must ask ourselves, are we sleeping through the Surveillance Capitalism Revolution?
Our understanding of the Internet as a propaganda machine rather than simply a benign, ever-flowing source of information changed in 2016. Jacques Ellul defined propaganda this way, “an inner control over the individual by a social force, which means that it deprives him of himself.”
Please think of this talk as a prayer that we become reunited with our selves.
At about the same time as Bernays was fusing his uncle’s innovations with propaganda, the Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov, began researching the responses of dogs to being fed that led to our understanding of conditioned responses. If the dog would be fed accompanied by the ringing of a bell, soon the dog would begin to salivate merely at the ringing of a bell, if no food was present.
We are also susceptible to this sort of manipulation.
On social media, the like is the bell ringing.
In 1938, Orson Welles produced a radio play of the HG Wells novel, “War of the Worlds,” which led to a national panic that we were being invaded by aliens (from outer space), demonstrating the power of media to manipulate the mass unconscious, or to put it more clearly, to manipulate masses of people without their being conscious they were being manipulated. With the mechanized, automated electronic programming capabilities of today, we can see how easy it has become to fabricate — for millions of credulous people — an alien (not from outer space) invasion.
Rush Limbaugh’s rise paralleled that of Ronald Reagan. Fox News was launched in 1996 and was in enough markets by 2000 to help elect our boy, George Bush. But the hijacking of social media as a propaganda organ is distinctly different from partisan radio and television.
Our smartphones are with us every waking hour, whereas television and radio are not regularly ingested in our workplaces. We check our phones 150 times per day and Facebook alone gets 54 minutes of our time per day.
But big changes will happen if we approach the problem of monopolization of the Internet with honesty, a sense of history, and a determination to protect what we all agree is important: our cultural inheritance. We all need the access to information the Internet provides, but we need to be able to share information about ourselves with our friends without unwittingly supporting a corporation’s profits.
Facebook and Google must be willing to alter their business models to protect our privacy and help thousands of artists create a sustainable culture for the centuries, not just make a few software designers billionaires.
In the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA §512), the telecom giants, AT&T, Verizon, et al, negotiated a liability shield for copyright infringement called the Safe Harbor Provision, which stipulated that the digital platforms were not responsible for the material posted on their platforms. This was an unwise decision.
Among other serious problems, it allowed YouTube to become a massive infringement machine that made tens of billions of dollars for its owners while returning between nothing and a small fraction of that money, to the owners of the material posted on their platform. It also led to the posting of tens of thousands of Isis and Ku Klux Klan recruitment videos, as well as thriving pedophilia communities with untold thousands of photographs and videos of schoolchildren, among other horrors.
The Safe Harbor provision needs to be amended. Now.
Without the Safe Harbor provision, these Surveillance Capitalists would have to protect and defend their platforms, and in doing so, protect and defend us.
If artists do not want their work on YouTube or Facebook for free, they should be able to file a takedown notice, and then it would become the responsibility of the platform to block that content from ever being uploaded. All the tools needed to make this happen already exist.
Second, we need to reform our privacy regulations. The EU is taking the lead on this with their General Data Privacy Regulation act (GDPR) which went into effect in early 2018. The U.S. should follow the European leadership on this front.
But we also must understand that the people who run Google, Facebook, etc., are just at the beginning of a long project to change our world, so this battle has only just begun. Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, calls their project Dataism:
“Dataists further believe that given enough biometric data and computing power, this all-encompassing system could understand humans much better than we understand ourselves. Once that happens, humans will lose their authority, and humanist practices such as democratic elections will become as obsolete as rain dances and flint knives.”
We need to confront this techno-determinism with real solutions, before it is too late. An autonomous technology has taken over the traditional values of all our cultures and rendered the differences among them superficial. This has led to disruptions and schisms in crucial parts of our lives- the arts, education, journalism, politics, and others, but most alarmingly, in our selves. Marshall McLuhan said that a medium surrounds a previous medium and turns the previous medium into an art form, as film did with novels, as television did with film, and as the internet has now done with television.
Through the technological advances of the last century, from radio to film to television and now to the world wide web, we have become deft at the treacherous processes of programming and conditioning.
As you know, programmers make programs, and what they do is called programming. Today, we have programs and programmers everywhere. Where we once had radio programmers and television programs, billions of people now are turning themselves into programmers, and- more significantly- into programs.
As one result of this programming pandemic, we are losing the ability to discern fact from fiction.
Another result is that large segments of our societies are subjects of mass hypnosis.
I undertake the pursuit of the solutions to these problems with optimism, because I believe in the power of music, paintings, theater, books, and movies — the power of art — to change the world. As the writer Toni Morrison observed, “The history of art, whether it’s in music or written or what have you, has always been bloody, because dictators and people in office and people who want to control and deceive know exactly the people who will disturb their plans. And those people are artists. They’re the ones that sing the truth. And that is something that society has got to protect.” I know that brave and passionate art is worth protecting and is more than just click bait for global advertising monopolies. Art is not information. Art is above information. Art changes everything.
The last 10 years have seen the wholesale destruction of the creative economy — journalists, musicians, authors, and filmmakers — wrought by parasitic tech monopolies. The monopolies’ dominance in Artificial Intelligence will extend this creative destruction to much of the service economy, including transportation, medicine, and retail.
There is not a single politician in America talking about this and, when the flood of unemployment brought about by the Artificial Intelligence revolution is upon us, we will not be ready. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was recently quoted as saying that the robotics and AI revolution would not arrive for 100 years. He said, “I think that is so far in the future — in terms of Artificial Intelligence taking over American jobs—I think we’re, like, so far away from that that it is not even on my radar screen.”
His radar screen is blank. In actual fact, he has no radar screen. That is an imbecilic statement.
Mnuchin’s former employer, Goldman Sachs, recently reported that self-driving cars could eliminate 300,000 jobs per year starting in 2022. Both sides of this argument cannot be true, but we are forging ahead with a vision of an AI universe with almost no political debate. We know this is true because of the deafening silence from the politicians in the last ten years, as 50 percent of the jobs in journalism were eliminated and revenues at both music companies and newspapers fell by 70 percent. Who was there to speak for the creative workers of the world?
The companies that will win the AI race will be the companies that are already in the forefront: Google, Facebook and Amazon. As AI venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee recently wrote, “AI is an industry in which strength begets strength: The more data you have, the better your product; the better your product, the more data you can collect; the more data you can collect, the more talent you can attract; the more talent you can attract, the better your product.”
These companies are already pushing out of tech into other sectors of the economy, as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods demonstrates. Google’s life sciences division, Verily, is producing glucose-monitoring contact lenses for diabetics, wrist computers that read diagnostic nanoparticles injected into the blood stream, implantable devices that modify electrical signals that pass along nerves, medication robots, human augmentation and human brain simulation devices. Google’s autonomous car division is already working with Avis to manage their forthcoming self-driving car fleet. As for Facebook’s brand extension plans into video, they recently bid $800 million for the worldwide rights to broadcast Indian Cricket on their platform, only to be outbid by Rupert Murdoch’s Star India. These are just the start of many initiatives to extend the tech giants’ technologies into many parts of the American economy.
We need a communications system that is not dependent on surveillance marketing and that allows creative artists to take advantage of the zero-marginal-cost economics of the Web. I have no illusion that the existing business structures of cultural marketing will change and/or go away, but we can build a parallel structure that will benefit all creators. The only way this will happen is if, in Peter Thiel’s “deadly race between politics and technology,” the people’s voice (politics) wins. The leaders of Google and Facebook may seem to some like benevolent plutocrats, but, in fact, they are malevolent and without ethics. On top of that, the time for plutocracy is over.
Neil Postman wrote, “Those who cultivate competence in the use of a new technology become an elite group that are granted undeserved authority and prestige by those who have no such competence.”
Orwell feared that the truth would be hidden from us.
Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
They were both right.
We cannot and will not allow the tyranny of the programs and programmers of these electronic philistines to destroy us.
So, understanding the lesson of the propagandists that people are driven to act not by information, but rather by emotion, I pray that this talk has touched your emotions. To that end, I will leave you with two short poems by Czeslaw Milosz, the first is “You Who Wronged.”
You who wronged a simple man
Bursting into laughter at the crime,
And kept a pack of fools around you
To mix good and evil, to blur the line,
Though everyone bowed down before you,
Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,
Striking gold medals in your honor,
Glad to have survived another day,
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.
And you’d have done better with a winter dawn,
A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.
Now, I’m going to reprogram you. Here is Milosz in a better mood in his poem, “Gift.”
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
Poetry rings to the high heavens.
We cannot and will not trade art, privacy, and our souls for the banal trivialities that the surveillance capitalists offer us.
In 2012, when we first raised these issues at MIT, no one was listening. Now, people are paying attention. We are advancing to higher ground. But the journey is not finished. As Dr. King said, “I may not get there with you, but I believe in the promised land.”
The goal of art is to create conscience.
You are equal to the task.
Thank you, love to you, and may God bless and keep you always.
Stanley Donen: 'In musicals, that's when we do a song', Academy Award Life Achievement - 1997
23 March 1998, Shrine Auditorium and Expo Centre, California, USA
Marty, it's backwards, I should be giving this to you, believe me. And I want to thank the Board of Governors for this cute little fella which to me looks titanic. Tonight, words seem inadequate. In musicals that's when we do a song, so... [music begins, singing:]
Heaven, I'm in heaven,
and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak,
and I seem to find the happiness I seek,
when we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.
[Does a brief tap dance; continues speaking with the music.]
I'm going to let you in on the secret of being a good director. For the script you get Larry Gelbart, or Peter Stone, or Huyck and Katz, or Frederic Raphael -- like that. If it's a musical, for the songs you get George and Ira Gershwin, or Arthur Freed and Herb Brown, or Leonard Bernstein and Comden and Green, or Alan Lerner and Fritz Loewe -- like that. Then you cast Cary Grant, or Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Sophia Loren, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman or Frank Sinatra -- like that. When filming starts you show up and you stay the hell out of the way. But you've got to show up, you've got to show up. Otherwise you can't take the credit and get one of these fellas. Thank you very much.
Olivia Colman: 'Done that bit. I think I have done that bit', BAFTA acceptance, Leading Actress - 2019
10 February 2019, London, United Kingdom
Thank you so much. It's really big.
I don't know -- I do know what to say. I have actually written something down. I do know.
To my fellow nominees, to be in the same company as you is such an extraordinary honour. I think the work you all did was so beautiful.
Very shaky. Sorry. I can't read it either.
All the producers. Fox and Element and everyone therein. And Nadia and Sandy and all of your teams. Hi. We're having an amazing night, aren't we? We're going to get so pissed later!
Yorgos Lanthimos -- I don't know, I can't think of the words to thank you enough for letting me do this. My most favourite time ever.
The thing I really want to do is, Emma and Rachel -- must keep it together -- not just for your performances but for what you did after the cameras stopped rolling. And we've never talked about this, and I find it very emotional, but you were the best and classiest and coolest honour guard any woman could ever have, and I love you. Ems isn't here, but we love you too, Em, somewhere in America.
Oh, God, what else am I meant to say? Done that bit. I think I have done that bit ...
Yes. So this is -- sorry. I swear I'm going to go in a minute!
This is for -- not for the lead, it's for a lead, and as far as I'm concerned, all three of us are the same and should be the lead, and it's weird that we can't do that. But this is for all three of us. It's got my name on it, but we can scratch in some other names.
Thank you so much.
Lady Gaga; 'So if you see someone who's hurting, don't look away', Grammy acceptance, 'Shallow' -2019
10 February 2019, Low Angeles, USA
If I don't get another chance to say this, I just want to say I'm so proud to be a part of a movie that addresses mental health issues. They're so important. A lot of artists deal with that. And we gotta take care of each other. So if you see somebody that's hurting, don't look away. And if you're hurting, even though it might be hard, try to find that bravery within yourself to dive deep and go tell somebody and take them up in your head with you.