Onstage Speech Transcript | 81st Academy Awards
Achievement in directing
CATEGORY: Achievement in directing
INTERVIEW WITH: Danny Boyle
FILM: "Slumdog Millionaire"
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(Bouncing up and down) My kids are too old to remember this now, but when they were much younger, I swore to them that if this miracle ever happened that I would receive it in the spirit of Tigger from "Winnie-the-Pooh" and that's what that was. You've been so generous to us this evening and I wanted to thank you for that and also for an extraordinary, what a beautiful show you've done. I don't know what it looks like on television, everybody, but in the room, it's bloody wonderful, really. So, well done, everyone.
Just to make, my, um, Grace, Gabriel and Caitlin, my kids, and their wonderful mom. Gail, thank you so much for letting me be Tigger for so long. And to my dad, Frank, and to my sisters Maria and Bernadette and everybody in St. Mary's Social Club in Radcliffe. Big, big, big shout-out to you. I've got to thank Tessa Ross. I've got to thank everybody at Celador. I've got to thank François and Cameron at Pathé. I've got to thank everybody at Warner Bros. for having the great grace to pass the film on to the extraordinary guy at Fox Searchlight, Peter Rice, and all his team. Thank you so much. Peter, wherever you are, thank you so much for bringing all our cast and crew here, or as many of them as we could do.
The film is an absolute tribute to them. There's one guy I should mention, we've mentioned a lot of people. I forgot a guy. The guy who choreographed the dance at the end of the film. He's called Longiness. And I forgot him off the credits. And I only found out about it two weeks ago. I'm an idiot and I apologize from the bottom of my heart, Longiness. Thank you so much.
Finally, just to say to Mumbai, "Unending, inseparable, unborn." All of you who've helped us make the film and all of you of those of you who didn't, thank you so much. You dwarf even this guy (gesturing to the statuette). Thank you very much indeed.
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