McMurtry Thanks Booksellers at the Academy Awards

At last night's 78th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles, several of the Oscar-winning films were based on books -- Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, Capote, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Constant Gardener, and Tsotsi. In his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, Larry McMurtry acknowledged the role of books in film, and he offered a paean to "all the booksellers of the world."

After thanking his writing partner and co-Oscar winner, Diana Ossana, McMurtry reminded the crowd that Brokeback Mountain, which was based on the short story of Annie Proulx, was "a book before it was a movie." Then the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove continued by thanking booksellers "from the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world." He added, "All are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose."