If Stars Hire Stylists for their Hair, Make-Up, Jewelry and Gowns, Why Not for Their Words to Spare Us Such Uninspired Drivel?

I'm not worried about Sally Field's Emmy award speech being cut since she should have censored herself after the first rambling "umm." With all the time, money and effort that Hollywood stars spend on finding the right dress, haircut, jewelry and make-up, couldn't they spend a little effort on creating acceptance speeches that are not insipid, stupid and uninspired drivel?

Of all people, Sally Field should have considered this as priority number one. After all, her Oscar speech in 1985 where wide-eyed and delirious, she sputtered, "I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" was so ridiculed that she became comic fodder. A little preparation could have prevented a repeat episode.

It's not as though she doesn't know capable writers to help with a little dialogue. They're obviously the ones who wrote the scripts that earned her an Emmy on "Brothers & Sisters."

Having interviewed many of these stars at CNN, I know that it is not beneath them to have spiked sound bites in their Prada pocketbooks. With a cheerleader's practiced drill, a star is paraded on the talk shows with anecdotes that may seem spontaneous but are in fact given to the show prior to airtime. Are the Emmys, Oscars or Grammys not more important? They certainly have more viewers. It would be in their best interest for their handlers to also craft an amusing or intelligent response at award shows since they will have to open their mouths to either accept an award or explain away their disappointment. And thoughtful prose would give them top billing in subsequent reviews and spare viewers moans and groans.

Perhaps James Spader was particularly prescient when in his last lame Emmy acceptance speech, he said to his brethren, "You have made wonderful choices in shoes and dresses tonight and you all look beautiful." To many, style is enough.

This is not to say that some stars do not sparkle not only in dress but wit.

Helen Mirren was able to charm and delight within the predetermined time limit. It wasn't hard for her. Why was it for the stumbling Sally Field?

George Clooney, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tina Fey and Meryl Streep are other examples who have managed to string together inspired sentences that impress viewers vs. repel them. Why can't more stars follow their lead?

As my friend Tom Shales, the Pulitzer winning TV critic for the Washington Post, said to me when I called to lament, "As much as they need a bodyguard, they also need a brain guard from making them sound ridiculous."

Comments

[TJS]

Why are we always surprised that seemingly glib and witty actors -- who deliver smart lines with snappy repartee in TV and movies -- are babbling and incomprehensible at awards ceremonies? We always seem to forget that actors are not the articulate characters they play on screen. Actors are trained to say words crafted by others. Their lines are carefully scripted by writers. It is the rare actor who speaks as intelligently as the character he plays. Actors have generally overinflated the value of their own words. We should watch actors to entertain us. But we should not take their pronouncements any more seriously than the average citizen, who does not have the luxury of a team of writers putting finely crafted words into their mouths.

[rexxy]

I have noticed over the course of several years watching the Emmys and Oscars, that the British actors consistently speak intelligently and entertainingly, while the majority of American actors, with the exception of Streep, Benning, Eastwood,and precious few others, sound embarrassingly bad.
In my opinion, the American actors inability to speak intelligently, men and women alike, reflects the dismal quality of our American educational system compared to the British.

[GenericBlogger]

You are correct. The British also have national education standards and take their education seriously. Students are rigorously tested on the local and national levels. Their education system doesn't allow dropouts unless truly exceptional circumstances prevail. More people in UK take pride in good communication skills with proper grammar. The British also have on average, better trained teachers and pay them decent wages for their economy. They don't slash their education budgets like our politicians slash our budgets.

On the whole, they respect a good education and their system works towards that objective on the entire population.

As for the articulate British actors, one benefit they have is seasoned theater training that hones their communication skills.

[the chrome nun]

So this is where we're at.... a person can no longer speak his/her mind freely anymore unless he/she is perfectly calm, cool, collected, physically perfect, intelligent enough to have some sort of culturate employee write out a statement which he/she will have no trouble memorizing ahead of time......
Yeah, perfect plastic world with perfect plastic people all saying the same stereotyped plastic phrases.....
The trouble with people is that we no longer even just try to understand....we weigh out each and every word and spend hours, weeks, months arguing about some of the most stupid things....
Maybe we should try to look and see more with our heart than with our eyes...

[ohfarr]

I couldn't agree with you more - such inane, bumbling speeches do not help the already tarnished image of Hollywood.

[SouthJerseySteve]

"You hate me...you really, really hate me!" LOL
Poor Sally--shut up and take your Boniva meds. I love your show Brothers & Sisters, I love your acting, I even agree 100% with your politics, BUT I hate it when ACTORS get political on ANY award show! Not as much as I hate Brittany... but that's for another blog.

[kpod]

I can't wait for the awards show wherein an actor or actress responds to the inevitable "Who are you wearing?" with: "The blood and sweat of a thousand orphaned underage sweatshop workers. With Loboutin heels."

THAT would be some politicizing worth talking about.

[rodriguezlsr]

It wasn't just the way Sally said it, it was exactly what she said. If mothers were in charge, we would have no more war? Has she ever heard the names Margaret Thatcher, or Golda Meir? How about Mariam Farahat, who when elected to the Palestinian Parliament, after sending three of her six sons on suicide bombings for Hamas, said that she was only sorry she didn't have 100 more sons to send. Most of these Hollywood people read brilliant lines written for them and then start to believe they really are as smart as their writers.

[GenericBlogger]

I commend Sally Fields for speaking her mind against the war but she should read the history on Boudica, Catherine the Great and other female warriors in the last few millenniums. She might take back her comment about leader mothers and no wars.

Does Sally Fields really think if Hillary becomes president she won't order our military into combat?

[xenubarb]

If vacuous stars hired people to make them sound intelligent, the next thing you know, they'll be running for office.

People will believe they're intelligent. They're stars. They memorize scripts and regurgitate them in a believable fashion.

That's what stars do. They're good at it. That's why they're stars.

[UnrulyWoman]

I'll take Sally Field's passionate spluttering over well-polished words any day. What she said came from her heart - when are going to stop punishing people, and in particular women, for showing any sign of being human?

And hey, it's not like she's President of the United States...

[texastrixie]

How old are all of you? Sally Field is a menopausal woman. This mumbling, stumbling discourse comes right along with the hot flashes. These little brain farts - where you lose your train of thought in an INSTANT - that's all it was. Plus, the emotion of just winning an award doesn't help your brain synapses. As to her views, I think anytime one has an avenue to express your views, and you really care about a subject, you owe it to yourself to speak up. We need more public discourse, of every kind, not less.

[ConnieInCleveland]

I'm 52 year old menopausal woman. I call it "Sometimer's". Sometimes I remember and Sometimes I don't. I think too many things wanted to come out of her mouth at the same time. Sometimes when I post, I have so many things I want to say, I forget how to spell the words. Oh well, I just have to live with it. People may want to correct my spelling or my grammar, I say go for it. If they don't have an original thought of their own then it's fine if they spend their time critiqueing mine.

[Jey]

Go Sally Field. She's human and in touch with reality. Maybe her post irked those who didn't like her censored comment. Oh yeah you didn't hear it there in America did you? Sally Field is real and if makes you feel better and look better to down her...go for it. For me I don't buy it! Funny how one person, Sally Field, can bungle her words on one night, and we've had to listen to Dubya bungle his for the past seven years and no one has said a G*d damn thing about that! Sickening. Sally if your reading this - you are absolutely right if a mother ran the U.S. there wouldn't be a G.D. war!

[enoughalready]

I would much rather listen to Sally Field's heart and passion than to some rehearsed script that was a sound bite written for the actor.

Sorry, Sally gets the "guts" award and speaks what most mothers and grandmothers across this nation may be thinking.

God help us when the media begins to criticize those that actually stand up against this war and the rotten politics this country has endured with the Bush administration. If you want to criticize, look deeply into the soul of every person in the media and ask why they didn't ask the important questions when and where it counted - maybe we would have had the impeachment, the outrage of voter suppression, etc. The media was absent and they are the ones that deserve the hard questions.

[Jenvee]

Cut Sally some slack...her verbal meanderings aren't any worse then those (usually men) who thank everyone for their success, from the family dog to the doola that delivered their last born.

[wmholt]

What I don't understand was Sally Field squeezing her eyes tight while moving her arms up and down, and then talking so fast from her semi-memorized set of remarks that it was hard to understand what she was saying.

There was no reason to appear as panicked as she did. It seemed to me that she wanted to pass for an 18 year-old who is not used to being in front of an audience, and we were supposed to all join in the fun of how cute she was.

If she had left the expletive out of her anti-war remark, then Fox would have been hard-pressed to censor her, despite not liking the content of her remark. If they had still censored her because of speaking out against the Iraq war, then we could have called Fox on it.

Instead, we had to agree that Fox was probably in their rights to censor her so that they did not get fined by the FTC.

I am pro-feminist and pro-women's rights. However, I think that there are better examples of the value of women than the squealing, foot-stomping, arm-flailing, swearing Sally Field.

[missette]

Thank you for a note of sanity here. Although I would be inclined to agree with her sentinment, she acted liked a crazed fool, something the pro-
Sally writeups have conveniently left out. I feld embarrassed for her. Besides, I don't need Sally or Rush or any self-appointed mouthpiece to tell me what to think. And she clearly should have stopped before she go to the part where she said, "Wait, I have more to say, but I forgot what it was...." Yikes!

[tcolberg]

Jill Brooke's criticism is valid. It's not anti-woman, or pro-war, it's anti-stupid. She's asking for these actors, who obviously put a great deal of effort into polishing their appearance for these events to put a little polish into what comes out of their mouth.

It's not what Sally Field said, but how she said it. For something that was so important to Ms. Field, she should have put more effort into making sure it made sense. If you're going live before millions of people and are going to take your sixty seconds to speak out about something, please speak intelligently. If you can't organize your thoughts to speak coherently for 60 seconds, it would be more productive to go home and either save up the gusto for a blog, op/ed, or at least a widely broadcasted TV interview.

[Yourtalkingtoyourself]

Wow, the (barely) repressed anger from some obviously unhappy women is amusing. You know ladies, you have to learn to love yourselves and stop blaming all the big bad men out there, pout! Pout! If you are so unhappy, why don't you change your lives? Waiting for some man to tell you it's OK? You're so smart and strong...roar!...why don't you get out and do something about it?