Adrien Brody on 31st Day of Oscars Acceptance Speech

by Julian Spivey

Screenshot

​Hollywood insiders remain flummoxed as Adrien Brody has entered the 31st day of his Oscar acceptance speech for his role in director Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist.”

Brody plays Hungarian brutalist architect Laszlo Toth in the film. It’s his second Academy Award Best Actor win of his career. He also won for 2002’s “The Pianist,” directed by Roman Polanski.

Much was made about Brody’s record-long Oscar acceptance speech on the night of the 97th annual Academy Awards when his speech on the ABC telecast ran five minutes and 40 seconds, nearly five whole minutes past the allotted 45 seconds asked of award recipients. The speech broke the Oscars record held by Greer Garson when she won Best Actress for “Mrs. Miniver” in 1943, for which there is no recorded footage.

Because the Oscars still had multiple awards to hand out, which wound up going to Mikey Madison for Best Actress for her performance in “Anora” and then Best Picture going to director Sean Baker’s “Anora,” Brody was finally played off the stage by the orchestra at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday, March 2, but what you may not have seen on the broadcast is he continued his speech to the usher walking him backstage and then the press backstage, which continues to this day.

Brody has thanked everyone he’s ever met, given a complete and thorough verbal memoir of his life, and listed all of the filmmakers, actors, and actresses he hopes to work with in the second part of his career—if he stops his speech in time to resume said career.

Reporters have grown tired of his speech, with most of the press room clearing out within the first week of his remarks. Some media outlets began bringing in reserve reporters to cover the speech, with reporters taking stints. Today, the only outlets still covering the speech minute by minute are Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and The Word on Pop Culture.

When asked for comment about whether or not Brody’s elongated acceptance speech has been bad press for “The Brutalist,” Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour epic, Corbet said: “If I had known Brody was going to make the entire thing about himself, I would’ve gone with [Peter] Sarsgaard. It is evident now that I have awoken a monster.”

Multiple Oscar voters have already stated they wish they had the chance to do voting over again, with one voter who wanted to remain anonymous saying: “If I had to do it over again, I’d go with Ralph Fiennes for ‘Conclave.’ I voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, and this was the worst ballot choice I made all year.”