American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"The Girl in the Cafe" (2005)

Gina Responds to the British Prime Minister

Audio mp3 delivered by Kelly MacDonald and Corin Redgrave

Prime Minister: Let me start with the "big" thing. Five years ago, the world made a series of the most magnificent promises. And we have determined to use this conference seriously to indent the most extreme curses of poverty in the world today. We shall not let them out of our sights, even if we may not yet have the power to fulfill them all.

Gina: That's not true. That's not true.

Prime Minister: Ah, I'm sorry, madam, but heckling isn't really a tradition at these gatherings.

Gina: What are the traditions, then? Well crafted compromise and just sort of ignoring the poor?

Prime Minister: Perhaps we can talk about this later?

Gina: I doubt it. I imagine I'll be thrown out later, so it's probably got to be now. I don't know how much the rest of you ladies know about what's going on, but my friend, here, tells me that while we are eating, a hundred million children are nearly starving. There's just millions of kids who'd kill for the amount of food that fat old me left on the side of my plate -- children who are then so weak they'll die if a mosquito bites them.

And so, they do die: One every three seconds.

[snaps fingers]

There they go.

And another one.

Anyone one that has kids knows that every mother and father in Africa must love their children as much as they do. And to watch your kids die...to watch them die...and then to die yourself in trying to protect them -- that's not right.

And tomorrow, eight of the men sitting 'round this table actually have the ability to sort this out by making a few great decisions. And if they don't, someday someone else will, and they'll look back on us lot and say, "People were actually dying in their millions, unnecessarily, in front of you, on your TV screens. What were you thinking? You knew what to do to stop it happening and you didn't do those things. Shame on you."

So that's what you have to do tomorrow: Be great, instead of being ashamed.

It can't be impossible.

It must be possible...