Chicagoans Common, Graham Moore, Patricia Arquette Come Up Big At Oscars
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 23, 2015 3:15PM
Graham Moore won Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2015 Academy Awards Sunday night. (Photo credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
The 2015 Academy Awards are over and your water cooler discussion this morning may be centered on Neil Patrick Harris' performance as host, the fashions on the red carpet, what was the deal with Lady Gaga's dishwashing gloves and would Julie Andrews follow Gaga's The Sound of Music medley with a rendition of "Poker Face." Among the winners Sunday night were two people for whom Chicago left an indelible mark on their lives.
Rapper/actor/activist Common, along with John Legend won Best Original Song for "Glory" from the film Selma and brought the audience at the Dolby Center to tears with a galvanizing performance of the song.
It was much-deserved nod for a film that was otherwise snubbed by the Academy. Legend, in his acceptance speech, noted that "there are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850." (A claim the website PolitiFact, by the way, pointed out to be true.)
Later in the broadcast, Graham Moore won Best Adapted Screenplay for The Imitation Game and gave one of the more personal and moving acceptance speeches in a night full of them. Moore, a University of Chicago Lab School graduate whose mother, Susan Sher, was a former chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama and now heads the site-selection process for the Obama Presidential Library, told the audience he attempted suicide at 16.
“I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I didn’t belong. And now I’m standing here, so I would like this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’d different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird. Stay different.”
Then there's Patricia Arquette, who won Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Richard Linklater's Boyhood and used her speech to make an impassioned call for wage and gender equality. Arquette was born in Chicago April 6, 1968.