Everything You Missed In Joaquin Phoenix’s Heavily Bleeped Golden Globes Speech

It wouldn’t be an awards show without at least one eyebrow-raising acceptance speech. Unsurprisingly, Joaquin Phoenix, who gave an unapologetically controversial performance in Joker, is the one who supplied that bound-to-Twitter-trend moment during the 2020 Golden Globes. The performer’s acceptance speech for Best Drama Movie Actor was filled with bleeps galore, and left viewers at home wonder what, exactly, Phoenix was saying. 

The answer was quite a few F-bombs. 

To kick off his speech, Phoenix announced, “Congrats to my fellow nominees. We all know there’s no fucking competition between us. It’s like this thing that is created to sell advertisements for the TV show. I'm inspired by you. I'm your fucking student.” 

Later, he explained, “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to rock the boat. But the boat is fucking rocked.” 

While Phoenix’s expletives certainly had censors on the edges of their seats, his other comments about Hollywood culture likely shocked his fellow actors the most. Towards the end of his speech, the Joker star announced, “Hopefully, we can be unified and actually make some changes. It's great to vote, but sometimes we have to take that responsibility on ourselves and make changes and sacrifices in our own lives. We don't have to take private jets to Palm Springs for the awards sometimes.” 

Destinations like Palm Springs, Venice, and Cannes are famous for hosting the festivals that lead up to award season. 

Phoenix was happy to critique is award season earlier this year in Palm Springs during the 2020 Palm Springs International Film Festival.  “I’m of two minds about these things. These shenanigans we do,” he said. “Part of me thinks this is absurd and ridiculous and embarrassing … Half of me is like running out of this building.” 

But, another part of Phoenix “realizes the power of the creative spirit.” That’s the one you’ll see smiling in the winner's circle throughout award season.