Remember Helen Mirren, on a jet ski, at the Oscars? What happened to the jet ski?
One of the more memorable moments from last year’s Oscars show was seeing Helen Mirren — tucked into a dazzling evening gown — sitting atop a jet ski on the stage.
Thanks, Jimmy Kimmel.
The late-night talker hosted the Academy Awards. Charged with the thankless task of keeping the proceedings on schedule — Oscar acceptance speeches are notoriously long — Kimmel had a plan.
He offered a free jet ski to the person who gave the shortest speech. Mirren appearing on stage with the jet ski was icing on the cake.
The 2018 Kawasaki Ultra 310LX went to Mark Bridges, who gave a 30-second thank-you after winning Best Costume Design for “Phantom Thread,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
(“A winner from ‘The Shape of Water’ would probably have made more sense, but you can’t have everything can you?” joked the ShortList movie website.)
“I have the philosophy that nobody wants to hear the costume designer yammer on about who to thank,” Bridges recently told BBC News. “I want to make it short and sweet.”
Still, Bridges used an ocean of words compared to the two-word speech Patty Duke gave in 1963 after winning Best Supporting Actress for “The Miracle Worker.”
Watch the video below. It took her longer to walk up on stage than it did for her to say, with tears shining in her eyes, “thank you.”
The longest speech?
That honor, by most accounts, belongs to Greer Garson, Best Actress winner in 1943 for “Mrs. Miniver.”
“She spoke for more than five minutes, which many consider to be the original rationale for giving the winners time limits,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Bridges said the brevity of his speech was unintentional — he accidentally left out a line.
“Basically, I forgot one sentence I was going to say, which was thanking (director) Paul Thomas Anderson more for working with me all these years,” he told the BBC. “So I guess that’s why it ended up being the shortest speech, because I skipped that sentence... so winning ... actually was coincidence.”
Bridges decided not to keep the jet ski, he told the BBC, because “it’s interesting here in America when you win something, then you’re liable for taxes on it, so it was quite expensive jet ski, so it was quite a bit of money to pay for taxes for it.
“So I thought I’d turn lemons into lemonade, so to speak, and I donated it to the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF).”
A few days after the show, The Hollywood Reporter reported that raffle tickets for the jet ski were being sold on Omaze.com.
The MPTF supports both retired and current members of the entertainment community through “philanthropy and volunteer services of fellow entertainment industry members,” the foundation’s website says. “Our industry is unique and we have a history of taking care of our own like no other industry in the world.”
Last year wasn’t the first time the Academy dangled a golden carrot to get the winners to keep it brief.
At their annual luncheon in 2001. nominees were told the person with the shortest speech would get a flat screen TV.
Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit missed the lunch but won the TV with an 18-second speech, according to the BBC.
Like Bridges, he donated his prize to charity, the BBC reports, because he didn’t want “to ship it home to the Netherlands.”