The 20th edition of the Hollywood Film Awards saw the usual gathering of A-list bosses of cinema, including fresh award recipients Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The untelevised event, which took place at the Beverly Hilton Sunday night, gave stars one last chance to urge voters to acknowledge defining issues such as climate change when they hit the polls Tuesday.
Though DiCaprio didn't mention Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during his acceptance speech for the Hollywood Documentary Award, he did once again plead with voters to simply pay attention to basic science. "If you don't believe in the science of man-made climate change, you might as well not believe in gravity," DiCaprio, whose Before the Flood documentary with Fisher Stevens won the night's top doc honor, said. "2016 was the hottest year in recorded history. July was the hottest month in recorded history. This is an urgent threat to life on Earth as we know it."
The time for debate, DiCaprio added, has passed. "There's no more time for arguing, for clouding the facts, or for spreading campaigns of misinformation," he said Sunday. "All of us need to act. All of us in this room. And besides all of us here, if by chance this clip is televised, let's all use our power as citizens and do the right thing. Please vote this Tuesday, Nov. 8 and vote for people who believe in the science of climate change."
For Comedy Award recipient De Niro, who previously declared his disgust with the Republican nominee in a hella viral video, the absurdity of this election is inarguable but shouldn't deter voters from showing up in a big way. "We remember obvious absurdist comedies like the Marx brothers' Duck Soup where a lunatic is running the country, or Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove where our leaders dally with nuclear weapons and bring us to Armageddon," De Niro said. "Wacky comedies right? Well, not so fast."
Those fictional characters, De Niro explained, are sadly more believable than our current reality. "It's two days to a frightening election and the shadow of politics is hanging over us whether we like it or not," De Niro said. "It's hard for me to think about anything else. So let me just lay it out right here. We have the opportunity to prevent a comedy from turning into a tragedy. Vote for Hillary Tuesday."
