The Cove Director's Oscar Acceptance Speech
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Popwatch.ew.com
March 2010

[Ed. Note: First, read Dolphin Hunt Film "The Cove" Wins Best Documentary Oscar.]

Though Fisher Stevens, producer of Best Documentary winner The Cove, kept his remarks well under the suggested 45-second limit, the orchestra played off director Louie Psihoyos just as he was approaching the microphone.

“Fisher and I had this timed perfectly, with military precision, to 45 seconds, not a second longer,” says Psihoyos (pictured, left).

“We actually got it down to 44 seconds.”

Laughing, he added, “I’d spent about a week preparing and fretting over this. I would have enjoyed last week a lot more if I’d known I wasn’t going to get to speak!”

(Psihoyos — whose last name rhymes with “sequoias” — wonders if the show’s producers got spooked when activist/main Cove protagonist Ric O’Barry held up the “Text DOLPHIN to 44144″ sign you see here. The Academy did not immediately respond to EW’s calls for comment.)

In any case, Psihoyos sent us what he planned on saying. Here it is, straight from his email.

The Long version of the world’s Shortest Oscar acceptance speech

By Louie Psihoyos, director of The Cove

• We made this film to give the oceans a voice.
• We told the story of The Cove because we witnessed a crime. Not just a
  crime against nature, but a crime against humanity.
• We made this movie because through plundering, pollution and acidification
  from burning fossil fuels, ALL ocean life is in peril, from the great whales
  to plankton which, incidentally, is responsible for half the oxygen in this
  theater.
• Thank you, Black OPS Team for risking your lives in Japan — and thank
  you Academy for shining the brightest lights in the world on THE COVE……
• Japan, please see this movie! Domo Aragato!

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