LOS ANGELES – Come Thursday, newly announced Emmy nominees will have two months to think about the acceptance speeches they might get to deliver.
A bit of advice: Start acting British. Please.
British award winners offer short, witty, self-deprecating remarks. Or, if they’re in Laurence Olivier’s league, they might recite lushly poetic monologues that leave us both agog and entertained.
Americans, on the other hand, can be garrulous, humorless and intent on thanking every one except their dog sitter and the valet who parked the limo.
Freed of scripts and cue cards, finally given the chance to speak for themselves, they appear intent on demonstrating why writers will always have a job in Hollywood.
The viewer, hoping for a spontaneous flash of personality from a favorite, is left to ponder just who Media 8, PMK, Newmarket and Toni G. are, and why they mean so much to lovely Charlize Theron. They all made it into her best-actress Oscar speech this year.
Lucky them. Unlucky us.
“Winners need to give a performance at the podium equal to the one they’re being honored for, otherwise (voters) will think they made a terrible mistake,” said Tom O’Neil, author of “The Emmys” and host of goldderby.com, an awards prediction Web site.
Perhaps we’re being too hard on our homegrown artists out of some misguided deference to accented English. Maybe the British themselves find the comparison unfair.
Actually, no, according to one.
“I think they are quite different,” said Welsh-born Hilary Mckendrick of Los Angeles, who worked in media and the arts.
American speeches are “much more personal and people do seem to stretch back in their memories to find people they’ve known from kindergarten to thank,” she said. “The European habit is to be a bit more professional.”
Just so, agreed another Brit.
“It’s something I think we do better,” said journalist Richard Evans, an Englishman who works for the BBC and lives in Virginia.
Veteran Academy Awards producer Gil Cates diplomatically suggests another reason for the differences.
“The Brits are visitors, and visitors tend to be a little more careful,” suggested Cates. “They’re in our living room and Americans are at home.”
The foreign eloquence makes our stars’ uninspired, laundry-list approach even more conspicuous. And the trend is entrenched.
In 2002, best-actress winnerHalle Berry’s speech began with an emotional recounting of the role of black women in cinema, then devolved into a recitation of 17 supporters, including her lawyer, twice. And she still risked offending people by not naming them.
Spontaneity can be a distinctive hallmark of American performers.
Sometimes it’s charming. “This is for all the fat girls!” exclaimed Camryn Manheim as she accepted an Emmy for “The Practice” in 1998. Manheim’s speech was “genuine and reflected her attitude and personality,” said Don Mischer, who will produce the Sept. 19 Emmy Awards airing on ABC. He advises nominees to speak “about how you feel … what the award means in your life.”
He also likes to remind potential winners the greatest speech in U.S. history, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, didn’t break 300 words.
Still, the inclination to thank an endless array of family and friends is certainly American, noted Evans.
“There’s a natural British reticence about one’s personal life. All of us have moms and dads and Aunt Lucys, but you don’t have to be so public about those kinds of emotions,” he said. “You Americans wear all that on your sleeve.”
Mom, and Media 8. Sounds like a winner.
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