Sunday’s Oscars were full of few surprises but many heartfelt, emotional speeches. One of the most emotional speeches came from Graham Moore, the young screenwriter of the adapted script for The Imitation Game. Graham is only 33 years old and TIG was his first full-length feature screenplay that had ever been produced. He was beyond thrilled, of course, and this is part of what Moore said in his speech:

Alan Turing never got to stand on a stage like this and look out at all of these disconcertingly attractive faces. I do! And that’s the most unfair thing I’ve ever heard. So in this brief time here, what I wanted to do was say this: When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself. Because I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I did not belong. And now I’m standing here. And so I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do! I promise, you do! Stay weird. Stay different, and then when it’s your turn and you are standing on this stage, please pass the same message along.

[From Moore’s Oscar speech]

Many instinctually felt – as I did – that Moore was talking about being gay and struggling with that in his teenage years. Moore seemed to be referencing the It Gets Better Campaign, and I was also reminded of Dustin Lance Black, the out-and-proud screenwriter who won an Oscar for Milk in 2009 and who is also active in LGBT suicide prevention. As it turns out, Graham Moore wasn’t coming out at the Oscars at all. He was just “coming out” as a “weirdo”. For real. He said backstage at the Oscars:

“I’m not gay, but I’ve never talked publicly about depression before or any of that and that was so much of what the movie was about and it was one of the things that drew me to Alan Turing so much,” Moore said. “I think we all feel like weirdos for different reasons. Alan had his share of them and I had my own and that’s what always moved me so much about his story.”

[From HuffPo]

That’s true, we all feel like weirdos at some point in our lives, and that’s especially true for young people. So, Graham Moore just liked the story of Alan Turing and he wasn’t trying to make any kind of statement on LGBT issues. If anything, maybe he was trying to raise awareness about depression.

Photos courtesy of WENN.