A Close Read of Joaquin Phoenix and Renée Zellweger’s Utterly Baffling Oscar Speeches

There comes a time in an actor’s life when they find themselves seated in the Dolby Theater for the 12th consecutive hour, and they are either working on their face of gracious defeat for when their name is not called out as a winner, or they are optimistically going over a victory speech in their head, ensuring they don’t forget this producer or that agent or that grip on stage. (Or they are running around the bar, asking why the Academy can’t “just do another ‘Shallow,’” which is probably the only reason I have not been invited to the Oscars.) On Sunday night, we got two excellent speeches from actors, and two less excellent ones: Brad Pitt and Laura Dern mixed the intimate with the courteous, thanking their famous families and famous co-stars and reflecting on lives spent in front of the camera. Lead acting winners Joaquin Phoenix and Renée Zellweger, however, had speeches of a different flavor up their sleeves.

It has been said, correctly and coincidentally by me, that Joe Pesci delivered the best-ever Oscar acceptance speech: “It was my privilege. Thank you.” But people keep winning Oscars, so people keep giving Oscar speeches. Today, in the glow of Parasite’s Best Picture win, we are gathered here to decipher two of the most puzzling acceptance speeches from the night: Zellweger accepting her award for playing Judy Garland in Judy, and Phoenix accepting his award for King of Comedy, Revisited, excuse me, that’d be Joker.