Writer/director Barry Jenkins accepts the 2017 Academy Award for Best Picture next to actors Jaden Piner and Alex R. Hibbert, February 26, 2017, Kevin Winter/Getty Images
The botched presentation of the Best Picture award at the 2017 Oscars saw the producers of La La Land come onstage to deliver speeches before and after it became clear the award was meant for Barry Jenkins's Moonlight instead. Jenkins, the film's co-writer and director, told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday what he would have said if things had gone more smoothly.
Jenkins intended to give the film's co-producers, Adele Romanski and Jeremy Kleiner, most of the stage time. But when it was his turn to speak, he wanted "to keep it personal, repeating and evolving a story I've told throughout the season."
Read his planned speech below.
"Tarell [Alvin McCraney, the film's co-writer] and I are Chiron. We are that boy. And when you watch Moonlight, you don't assume a boy who grew up how and where we did would grow up and make a piece of art that wins an Academy Award. I've said that a lot, and what I've had to admit is that I placed those limitations on myself, I denied myself that dream. Not you, not anyone else — me. And so, to anyone watching this who sees themselves in us, let this be a symbol, a reflection that leads you to love yourself. Because doing so may be the difference between dreaming at all and, somehow through the Academy's grace, realizing dreams you never allowed yourself to have. Much love."
"Given what happened in those last 10 minutes of the ceremony, I don't know how I managed any words at all," Jenkins concluded. "It is what it is."
Moonlight also won Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor.