I'm very excited today
to be looking at one of those first Oscar wins. In this case,
Alejandro Gónzalez Iñárritu and his win for best director for the Birdman film.
I'll also be looking at public speaking in a second language through the event
of his speaking at the Oscar Awards, and doing some meta film analysis.
The majority of this video is in English. [Spanish] But I'm
going to speak in Spanish a little bit as well.
Mr Iñarritu was the
first Mexican director to win an Oscar
for best picture. Regardless of language, most people
have a fear of public speaking. Here is
a great example of how to speak in public in English.
I'm SJ
Harrison, Voice & Performance Coach [Spanish] My Spanish speaking friends call me Susana.
I'm a Voice Coach and
I work with clients all over the world
So now let's have a look at the video.
Good luck charms
work, because in the DA awards, I was wearing a Raymond Carver
shirt, Billy Wilder Tie,
and I won.
But today, tonight, I am wearing the real Michael Keaton tighty whities
Okay,
so he gets up on stage and he lets us see
his emotion, and I think that that's a really great way to begin.
He gets up and he goes, oh-fff
and we think he might be about to swear,
but of course, he's in public, so he doesn't.
But he lets us in on what he's feeling and whether you're speaking
your own language or a second language, when you get up to present,
starting off,
actually showing your excitement about being there, letting that fill you,
letting yourself exude that to the audience
is a really good way to put yourself at ease and also the audience.
He also starts with a joke,
a really brilliant way to make the audience feel good.
And then also, as you hear that laughter coming back to you, you feel good as well.
He's doing a brilliant job in English, given that it's not his first language.
He has a strong accent.
It doesn't matter.
We can understand him.
And his accent is part of who he is.
He's expressing himself authentically and very well in English in this speech.
Thank you.
They are tight, smell, likes balls, but it works.
I'm here. Thank you, Michael.
Okay.
The reason I stopped it here is I want you to look at how meta this speech is.
Not only do we have that opening shot in the beginning
of Michael Keaton in his underwear levitating in the dressing room.
But there are a lot of references to underwear, either visually
or even verbally, when it comes to what is the underwear containing?
This happens in terms of not only Michael Keaton but Edward Norton
in the movie.
Here's an example.
This play
is kind of starting to feel like a major
deformed version of myself.
It just keeps following me around and like
hitting me in the balls with a tiny little hammer.
Honestly,
this is crazy in a way, talking about that little prick called ego.
So here's an example of what I love about Iñárritu
he grabs us with this provocative word,
and then, as you will see, he goes on to talk about something more elevated.
His artistic work and this speech are a winning combination
of coarse humour, elegance and a sense of the ridiculous
and to me, as an artist, this is a really winning aesthetic.
Ego loves competition, right? Because
for someone to win, someone has to lose.
This is a really powerful way in which he's connecting
with the audience, I think quite sincerely from the heart,
he's acknowledging that we can all win one day,
we can all lose the next and that we have to remember this.
He's reminding himself to not let his own ego get out of hand.
And this is really very charming, particularly when he's speaking
to people who have just been his competitors for this particular award.
But the paradox is that true art, true
individual expression, as all the work of these incredible
fellow filmmakers
can't
be compared, can't be labelled,
can't be defeated because they exist,
and our work only will be judged as always by time.
Here he does what so many good speakers do in this particular
situation, which is bring everything out to the bigger
picture, the "we", in this case, he's speaking to a room full of artists.
Our work will be judged by time.
And so he's reminding himself again, almost with this,
not to take his award and himself too seriously,
and just to see art and what we offer as art in the bigger picture of time.
This, again,
is a very connective statement because he is presenting in front of some
of the people who were competing with him for this award.
There's so many people that work in this film, and obviously, again,
i forgot so many people,
this is like a slow motion kind of moment in my life.
So forget if I forgot anybody.
I love you and warm greetings to my Mexican compatriots
thank you very much.
So he really continues to let us see what
he's feeling and then touches yet again on the very meta experience
of this moment, winning for a film that was all about
ego.
And it was all about the ego of an artist.
And it was about the insignificance of an artist.
But that artist being so wrapped up in themselves and having so much ego,
they didn't realise they were insignificant.
And so they actually made a play that was very successful.
One of the things that I personally just really love about the title of Birdman
is how baroque it is. By baroque.
I mean, it's "Birdman
or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance"
I've just referenced and what that meant in the film.
And I love that because to me, with my particular English background
going back to Restoration comedy or even Shakespeare, there's often play's names
that have this second title, and it tells us a little bit about what we
need to be looking for when we're watching the film.
And so there's a classic quality
to that now, just to touch on the really cool other meta nature
of this particular film.
We have Michael Keaton, who played Batman and was iconic as Batman -
I'm Batman,
and his voice was iconic - playing an actor who played a comic
superhero called Birdman,
and we see him as Birdman, and he uses his voice in the same way he did for Batman.
So we have Michael Keaton, the actor,
and we can almost frame him in real life as being somewhat like the character he's
playing, although it's also the differences that make it interesting.
We keep getting these shadows, these nods to who he was
in the Batman film and who he is in his
life throughout this movie that is about someone who is not him.
Tremendous appreciation
for this wonderful director's work. Iñárritu is
well known for many films and lets us, in this speech, actually
see some of his own ego, some of his own vulnerability
as a human being and speaking English well, but as a second language.
So for any of you out there that just feel you can't do it.
A lot of it has to do with practise and preparation.
And this is one of the things that I most love helping people with.
So if you are interested in learning more about how you can empower your voice,
please check out the link below this video.
I've got a free guide
message me, if you'd like to know more
about how I could possibly help you, I work online, so distance is not an issue.
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