Oscar Winner's Speech Interrupted for Second Time
posted by Lindsay Robertson
Aside from his Oscar win, documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams can't seem to catch a break. He's now better known for being ambushed onstage by former co-producer Elinor Burkett (now nicknamed "Lady Kanye") during his acceptance speech, rather than for his film, "Music by Prudence," which won for best documentary short. The day after the Oscar incident, Williams attempted to give the speech he wrote in a public forum, and again he was interrupted.
Because of the speech-hijacking incident, Larry King invited Williams on his show last night. After discussing the "Kanye moment" for a few minutes, King announced, "We wanted to give him a chance to give his speech, uninterrupted." Williams walked over to the side of the stage, where a microphone had been set up. Holding his speech in his hand, he began speaking as if he were still in front of the Oscar audience and had just learned his film had won. ("Oh my god, oh my god.")
Less than a minute into the speech, however, Williams suddenly looked confused and distracted. It appeared that something was happening off camera, most likely that he was being signaled by a staff member to end the speech. Before King said, "Don't cha have anything left," he referenced that they were running out of time. As Williams began a synopsis of the rest of the speech, King said, "Quickly…we have 20 seconds."