Gore and Whitaker give best Oscar speeches

Thanking Valium and Schwarzenegger
When “The Departed” soon thereafter won for best picture, it seemed a shame that movie icons like Scorsese and Jack Nicholson (who co-starred in “The Departed”) waited in the wings while producer Graham King spoke for the night’s biggest award.

The broadcast, which ran nearly four hours on ABC, had earlier asked winners to spare the audience a laundry list of benefactors. Few took much heed, and it seemed unlikely that producers, agents and family members of winners would be scurrying to the Internet to see if they at least made it onto Oscars.com’s new “Thank You Cam,” where award recipients could expand on their allotted 45-seconds.

Expect a CNN-style crawl at the bottom of the screen next year where winners can be sure to squeeze in thanks to the director (“a genius!”) and God (also smart).

There were many funny and strange little moments Sunday night. “The Departed” screenwriter William Monahan took the stage and said in astonishment, “Valium does work” — while his director, Scorsese, laughed and shook his head in the audience.

The 6-foot, 9-inch German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who won best foreign-language film for “The Lives of Others,” reached the stage in about six long, eager steps. He then curiously thanked Arnold Schwarzenegger for “teaching me that the words ‘I can’t’ should be stricken from my vocabulary.”

You can always count on the Governator to pump you up.

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