The 10 Best Backstage Oscar Soundbites

After Academy Award-winners hear their names called and trek up to the stage to receive their statuettes, they meet the Oscars press in a question-and-answer ritual backstage. The mood is still giddy, but winners get the chance to speak in a little more detail about their feelings and their accomplishments than they did in the heat of the moment on live television. We've compiled the 10 best quotes from last night's Oscar winners that you couldn't see on TV.

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant

It's not, you know, five cinematographers running a hundred meters to see who gets the Oscar first. It's very subjective, and it's only 6,000 people that vote. So I'm just lucky. Doesn't mean I'm the best cinematographer.

Supporting Actor Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

I think African-American actors are in a stronger position now, thanks a lot to what Chris Rock has done tonight and what the activists who have been raising the issue around this awards ceremony have said.  And I think also there's a big issue for women. That's been as big an issue for me in these months coming up to this, the revelations about just how dominated this major storytelling form of our culture is by men. I know it's true in Shakespeare, where I work, that there aren't the King Lear parts for the great actresses. So I hope that this kind of awareness that's been raised very humorously by Chris tonight and angrily by other people, understandably, I hope that's going to create a lot more diversity. It's of course not just for the performers. It's a matter of audiences taking this on. It's a matter of audiences not just going out for the thrill or the safe bet, but taking a bet on more unusual films and more unusual plays that tell stories about issues or people who are in the minority in society …. I hope this will do a little bit more to change the story and diversify the stories that we listen to and watch.

Actress Brie Larson, Room

There were many times that I would go into auditions and casting directors would say, "It's really great.  Really love what you're doing, but we'd love for you to come back in a jean miniskirt and high heels." I tried maybe once, and it always made me feel terrible because they were asking me to wear a jean miniskirt and heels to be sexy, but a jean miniskirt and heels does not make me feel sexy.  It makes me feel uncomfortable.  So learning for me what it took to feel confident, and strong, and take what these people were trying to get to exude out of me come from a personal place, and from my place, and trying to represent in film women that I know, women that I understand, complicated women, women that are inside of me, that became my mission.  And every time I was put in front of an opportunity where I had to decide in those moments, do I or do I not wear a jean miniskirt?  They became huge moments for me of confidence. 

Editor Margaret Sixel, Mad Max: Fury Road

I think there is some prejudice that women can't cut action, but I'm hoping that will change with the Star Wars girls and me. I think it will change. I think it's already changing, don't you?  That's my personal feeling. And you just watch. In the next 10 years, I think the balance will come back in our favor, hopefully.

Supervising Sound Editor Mark Mangini, Mad Max: Fury Road

Because of the way this film was shot — there's high-speed cameras and there's wind machines and there's sand — virtually none of the sound that was recorded during production was very usable, so everything that you hear in Mad Max was something that [sound designer] David [White] and I and our team created. I mean, down to the smallest footsteps down to the biggest explosion …. I feel like that is a pretty stunning accomplishment.

Sound Re-Recording Mixer Chris Jenkins, Mad Max: Fury Road

Even late in the game, there were questions whether the movie was too strange or too off-putting to audiences …. There was a lot of talk about, should we take some of the things out of it that we really loved, which were kind of legacy Mad Max things?  And those are the — you know, that's what made it individual. That's what it made it stand out. And to George's credit, I think this made a lot of filmmakers, ourselves included, take bigger risks, because not only do people recognize that George at 71 years old spent 10 years making this astonishingly crafted movie, but he made all of us rise up to it and do our best work, and he allowed us to do it, and it doesn't always happen …. It was really great, but for a long time, it wasn't a successful movie, and it found its place, and it's found its heart and its soul, and it found its audience and critics.

Costume Designer Jenny Beavan, Mad Max: Fury Road

The way we made the film is so much in little bits and pieces that you never got a real sense of it.  You knew it looked stunning and it was extraordinary, but it was only when I actually saw it three years later at a press screening in Berlin where I was working that I actually understood some of the power of it.  Because it's very odd for the film, quite often, when it all comes together with all the elements, it's much greater than the sum of its parts.  And our part was obviously just doing the costumes.  So that whole thought about that, which unfortunately, the music came up and I wasn't quick enough, and I didn't get the speech organized and all the rest of it, has been growing on me that, you know, actually, if we're not kind to each other and if we don't stop filling the ocean and land with toxic waste, I think that could all be horribly real.

Producer Michael Sugar, Best Picture Winner Spotlight

[To the Oscar press corps.] I hope that you, as journalists in here and throughout the world, will help resonate our message all the way to the Vatican, and maybe we can have some real change at this point.  That's what we hope to accomplish. That's what this was really about for all of us, to talk about this film and what happened and, because these things are still happening, the story of Spotlight has really just begun.

Director Asif Kapadia, Documentary Feature Amy

For me when I started learning about [Amy Winehouse] and seeing her, I kind of fell in love with her and I really cared about her and I wanted the world to see the real girl.  But what I found also is that the film became about everyone else and how complicit we may have been, however large or however small, in the way we portrayed her. In the way we talked about her, the way we commented, things that were online that were easy to do about people who may be in a bad way when actually it's all a cry for help.  They're waiting for someone to come in and look after them and protect them and save them.  And I think that was part of the mission of the film was just next time maybe to get people to think before they put that horrible nasty tweet or whatever you write or whatever you say about someone.  That's what I was hoping.

Producer Jonas Rivera, Animated Feature Film Inside Out

I'm a huge fan of N.W.A and Ice Cube, and we were lucky enough — this is so name-droppy, but here we are — we were lucky enough to sit next to them, the Straight Outta Compton table at one of these [pre-Oscar] things and I got to meet Ice Cube, and I introduced myself as a producer of Inside Out not knowing what I'd get, and he said, "Oh, man, that movie's dope." And, I got to be honest with you, that was a pretty good moment for me.