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Barry Jenkins delivered a portion of his would-be speech after winning 2016's Best Picture for Moonlight at South by Southwest, Variety reports. The director famously wasn't able to give the speech after a mixup sent the movie up to the stage too late. Speaking in a keynote address on Sunday morning, Jenkins, who premiered his first movie at SXSW in 2008, he told the crowd "Tarell [Alvin McCraney, his co-writer] and I are Chiron, we are that boy."
“I have this thing I wanted to say about brick walls,” he said. “I’ve run through a lot of brick walls to get to this stage. I only realized looking back that is what I’d done. I look back and I realize there are friends who are left on the other side of those walls. It’s a very bittersweet thing.”
He went to explain how much doubt he was met with when he first started working on Moonlight, which people told him was "career suicide." He also noted that he believes there are movies just as good that will never get proper recognition.
“If I cried that night, it wasn’t because we won best picture,” he continued. “I cried because I realized I denied myself that dream for so long.”
Watch a snippet the speech via Slate below.