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Oscar nominees urged to keep speeches short at pre-awards luncheon

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Winners at this year’s Oscars will need to be quick, both in their walks to the stage and their acceptance speeches.

Producers told nominees for the 91st annual Academy Awards that they will have 90 seconds from the time their name is called until when their speech will need to be a concluded. The sprint is needed to keep the Feb. 24 ceremony to three hours, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President John Bailey told this year’s class of nominees Monday at a private, untelevised luncheon to honour them.

“It means you can hit the parties by 8:15,” Oscars producer Glenn Weiss reminded the dozens of hopefuls in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton, the same room where the Golden Globe Awards are held.

Weiss and his co-producer Donna Gigliotti showed the room their ideal acceptance speech — Steven Soderbergh accepting the best director award for “Traffic” and promising to offer individual thanks in private, not public — and implored nominees to speak from the heart and not a sheet of paper.

“The thing is, run,” said director Brad Bird, who has learned from experience. “Then keep your speeches short and simple as possible … and then you get out alive.”

Acceptance speech how-to is a standard fixture at the annual luncheon, which provides a chance for the nominees, from Lady Gaga to Rami Malek, to socialize ahead of the Oscars ceremony in a low-pressure environment. But beyond the truncated runtime, no mention was made of the uniqueness of this year’s show, where some awards will be handed out during the commercial break, and there may not even be a host for the first time in 30 years.

While some below-the-line nominees in the editing and sound mixing categories complained in private about how “insulting” it is to not air all the awards during the main broadcast, the tenor of the star-studded event was largely celebratory.

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