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Year: 1991 (64th) Academy Awards
Category: Directing
Film Title: The Silence of the Lambs
Winner: Jonathan Demme
Presenter: Kevin Costner
Date & Venue: March 30, 1992; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
JONATHAN DEMME:
In the context of my movie-loving life this is very unanticipated. The only way I can really understand this is to recognize that I had the great good fortune to have a chance to work with Ted Tally's great adaptation of Thomas Harris' extraordinarily moral and amazing book, and to have the good fortune to work with the likes of Tak Fujimoto and Kristi Zea, Craig McKay and Tommy Fleischman and Chris Newman and Howard Shore and Howard Feuer and Billy Miller and, and everybody. And also to be able to work with such an ensemble cast of actors: with Jodie and Tony of course, and also Ted Levine for his exceptionally courageous performance as "Jame Gumb," and Scott Glenn and Anthony Heald and Brooke Smith and Diane Baker, and all the other wonderful actors.
I also—this won't take forever, sorry—I also had the extraordinary good fortune to have been embraced by Orion Pictures at a time which, unlike this amazing peak moment of my life, I was at a kind of low-valley moment when Mike Medavoy and Bill Bernstein and Arthur Krim and Eric Pleskow kind of reached out to me and encouraged me and helped create a home for my collaborators and myself. And we made some movies for them. And I'll never forget when Mike Medavoy said, "I think there's a book you might be interested in. I'll send it over." And it's obvious, I know everybody feels the extraordinary irony of what's happened, this terrible thing that's happened to Orion at a moment of re-emergence that included "Silence of the Lambs" and many other things.
Anyway, two other quick things. I'm sorry, this is almost—one, just about directing. I wanted very much to salute John Singleton and Matty Rich and Jodie Foster and Ernest Dickerson and a bunch of new people in the last year that have come on with very exciting, wonderful visions and really breathed tremendously important new life into our whole cinematic landscape. And I really want to salute those people very strongly. I also want to very, very quickly—I had the good fortune of being encouraged and briefed by two great American filmmakers who are no longer with us. And I very much, I'm thrilled to be able to invoke the recent memory of two great men, two great filmmakers: Hal Ashby and Martin Ritt, who were really, really wonderful to me.
And finally, I've obviously got to say, "Hi, Mom," and thanks for transferring your love of movies to me. And thanks, Dad, for making me think I could actually be part of this industry. And thank you. Thank you.
© Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
[Note: All winners are present except where noted; NOT all winners may have spoken.]
