Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

Transcription

I am Walter Mirisch, and I am a movie maker. The winner is West Side Story. The winner is In the Heat of the Night, Walter Mirisch. Mr. Walter Mirisch. I think the filmmaker has a great responsibility. Thank you Liza. Good night, sugar. Good night, honey. I think although probably the primary goal of filmmaking is to entertain, We must find that woman! Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say last night, about midnight? It also has the power to enlighten, and if a filmmaker can combine those elements, he has well used the tools at his disposal. The fiddler on the roof – sounds crazy, no? What do they call you up there? They call me Mr. Tibbs. I think from the time I was very young and saw my first film, I thought “Oh my God, that must be fun, to try and do that. What a wonderful way that might be to spend one's life.” Thank you, and thank you members of the academy. Like most young people, I thought “that is so far distant from my present world. I don't know how I could ever manage to accomplish that,” and somehow or other, with enough drive and good luck, it all came to pass. It's a very very difficult career to choose. It's very difficult to find a place in this business, to carve out a career, and one really has to want it very much. Our three Academy Award Best Picture of the Year winners. When I was 18 years old, I enrolled in the University of Wisconsin. I have felt all of my life that I owe a great debt of gratitude to the university. They gave me what I felt was a marvelously well-rounded education that gave me a background to deal with all kinds of subjects in what later became my career in filmmaking. There was a time when I could have had you shot. I'm also very proud that the University of Wisconsin honored me with an honorary doctorate. There I was, some kid just walking up that hill, and now they want to do this with me. I rather felt pretty good about that, since at my own graduation, I remember they'd given honorary degrees to Douglas MacArthur, also to Georgia O’Keeffe, and I though “My God, that's pretty good company!” I attribute whatever education and grounding I have in the arts and letters to the background I got at Madison.