The whole 'I have a dream' section wasn't even planned to be in the speech that day. The pressure was on, and he wanted, no he needed, to make this speech memorable. It was the last scene shot on the last day of filming, and the script simply said, " Travis speaks to himself in the mirror." De Niro could have said anything, but it's on occasions when the pressure's on that true genius comes to the fore and he improvized the words that would become #10 in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Movie Quotes.Ī similar thing happened with MLK. I remember reading somewhere that Robert de Niro's " Are you talking to me?" scene from Taxi Driver, one of the most iconic in movie history, wasn't even scripted. MLK knew the importance of the speech and halfway through, felt that although it was a decent oration by his standards (brilliant by anybody else's, mind you) it just wasn't having the effect he'd hoped for. Many had traveled a long way, were anxious to make good time on the journey back and had already left. The speakers were supposed to have limited themselves to just five minutes each, but they all overran and with the humidity and heat (it was 87F at noon), the crowd was losing its enthusiasm. Yet the famous words " I have a dream" almost didn't make it into the speech at all. In a survey in 2008, only 4% of Americans questioned were unfamiliar with the speech. Yet his impact was so great that few people other than civil rights historians could tell you the name of any of the other speakers. He was one of the event organizers, but he was16th on an official programme that included the national anthem, the invocation, a prayer, a tribute to women, two sets of songs and nine other speakers. Most people don't realize it, but the 250,000 people who gathered in Washington for the " March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" on August 18th 1963 hadn't necessarily come to listen to MLK. There is a video of the full speech at the bottom of this page and a full transcript of the speech with the rhetorical techniques highlighted and explained here. It's Martin Luther King's " I have a dream" speech, something I've heard it dozens of times and yet still moves me emotionally and raises the hairs on the back of my neck every time. Some of my fellow countrymen would opt for Churchill's " Fight them on the beaches", other people would pick JFK's inaugural address, but for me there's no doubt. What is " the best speech of all time"? The answer to such a question is obviously subjective, as amongst other things, it partly depends on how you define 'best'.
0 kommentar(er)
