Best Presenters, Best Speech: Tina Fey & Robert Downey Jr. Present Best Original Screenplay to Mark Boal for “Hurt Locker”

This was going to be a great category no matter what — Hurt Locker vs. Inglourious Basterds in a genuine toss-up, plus the Coen Brothers to boot. But throw in Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. in a genuinely funny bit, flawlessly delivered (hear that Miley?) and it’s suddenly become the category to beat. As if that weren’t enough — what a speech from winner Mark Boal! Boal, the journalist who wrote The Hurt Locker out of an article he wrote after being embedded in Iraq, is by all accounts a normal, stand-up guy, a first-time screenwriter suddenly finding himself in the extraordinary circumstances of being in the middle of the Awards Season whirl — and now has his first Oscar to show for it. His speech gave credence to that portrayal: Heartfelt, concise, and dedicated to his partner in Oscar crime Kathryn Bigelow as well as the thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan about whom he wrote all this in the first place, plus a quietly wrenching tribute to his late father, who, said Boal, died one month shy of seeing his son win the Oscar. Wow. Even if the rest of the show is fair-to-middling (as seems to be the case), this is the kind of confluence of Oscar moments that keep us tuning into the telecast year after year. Congratulations to Mark Boal on his award, so well-deserved.

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