'Without commitment you'll never start. Without consistency, you'll never finish'

Denzel Washington's 2017 NAACP Image Awards Acceptance is one of the shortest speeches on Speakola, yet the seventh most viewed speech in the history of the site. It's 9th 'speech-aversary' is today.

Washington was being presented with a Most Outstanding Actor gong for ‘Fences’, a film he also directed and which co-starred Viola Davis. He launched into the speech by honouring the artist who’s work was being adapted, the African American playwright August Wilson. Wilson died in 2005 aged just sixty. and is sometimes dubbed ‘theatre's poet of Black America’ —best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle.

Washington names five playwrights to open his speech, four of them are white and world famous, and then there’s Wilson. It’s an entry point to discussing other African Americans who are making outstanding films, which brings him specifically to Barry Jenkins, the director of Moonlight (and more recently, Mufasa).

Having heard excepts, I always thought Washington was talking about himself when it came to his, ‘without commitment you’ll never start … without consistency you’ll never finish’, but it’s far less mawkish and more generous for the fact that he’s elevating Jenkins, his Oscar nominated rival for Best Director.