In the May issue of GQ, Andrew Corsello talks to Richard Gere, who,
since his first big role as Mr. Goodbar thirty years ago, has served
two masters: the Dalai Lama and the false gods of Hollywood. Here,
we uncover the script Gere was supposed to read at the 1993 Oscars
and revisit the controversial words that put him in Oscar’s doghouse
By Cole Louison; Photograph by Terry Richardson
Pamela Anderson boycotts the Kentucky Derby. Madonna shops for
orphans in Malawi. Yup, everyone’s got a feel-good social cause these
days. There’s a time and place for taking a stand. And for Richard Gere,
well, that time was live at the Academy Awards. It was 1993 (Best Picture:
Unforgiven) when Gere stepped out to present the trophy for art direction.
Rather than read from the teleprompter, he used his thirty seconds to
make a sober, intelligent appeal for the human-rights campaign in China.
It’s worth noting that Gere hasn’t been invited back to present since,
though the Oscar folks insist there’s no bad blood. “We don’t ban
presenters,” the Academy’s press office told GQ. “There’s no such thing
as a ban.”
Having uncovered the bit Gere was supposed to read, we’re pretty sure he did the right thing.
What Gere was supposed to say at the Sixty-Fifth Annual Academy Awards on March 29, 1993:
Rubens and Rembrandt. Michelangelo and Monet. Da Vinci and Degas. If they were around today, they would be
art directors for films—if their agents could get them work. Art direction demands taste, talent, and the diplomacy
to convince producers they also have taste and talent. Five widely different imaginative examples of their work
are these nominees for best achievement in art direction.
What Gere did say at the Sixty-Fifth Annual Academy Awards on March 29, 1993:
To my friends, I want to say hello up in Vancouver - right now we are doing Intersection up there. Hi, guys. I’ll see
you later tonight. I had a thought about something, actually, before I came out. I want to share it with you. It’s
going to be short. I was really struck by this idea that there were one billion people watching this thing. It’s
astonishing—one billion people watching. And I was curious about what countries this was actually going to. And it
is in fact being seen in China right now. And the first thought that came to me was, I wondered if Deng Xiaoping is
actually watching this right now, with his children and his grandchildren, and with the knowledge that -that - that -
what a horrendous, horrendous human-rights situation there is in China, not only towards their own people but to
Tibet as well. And when it was this kind of…if something miraculous, really kind of movielike, could happen here,
where we could all kind of send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping right now in Beijing, that he
will take his troops and take the Chinese away from Tibet and allow people to live as free independent people
again. So, thought… We send this thought -we send this thought out. Send this thought. Anyhow…art direction
demands taste…
| RICHARD GERE: THE LOST TRANSCRIPT |