A dinner for the National Board of Review on Tuesday night was supposed to honor Emma Thompson for her scintillating portrayal of "Mary Poppins" creator P.L. Travers in the new film "Saving Mr. Banks." However, the night suddenly was blanketed by tension after Meryl Streep, who was assigned to present an award to Thompson, hit out at Walt Disney saying he is a racist and sexist.

Saving Mr. Banks is a film about Disney's efforts to persuade Travers to adapt her books into a musical, reason why it became awkward for the audiences, including Thompson, to hear Streep's comments.

Streep was being funny at the start of her speech, saying it was 'weird' that she's the one presenting the award not 'receiving.' She even joked that anybody can leave because she did a very long introduction.

However, as she continued with her speech, things turned a little heavy when she focused on serious matters.

Some of [Walt Disney's] associates reported that Walt Disney didn't really like women. Ward Kimball, who was one of his chief animators, one of the original "Nine Old Men," creator of the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, Jiminy Cricket, said of Disney, "He didn't trust women, or cats." And there is a piece of received wisdom that says that the most creative people are often odd, or irritating, eccentric, damaged, difficult. That along with enormous creativity comes certain deficits in humanity, or decency.

Among those creative but odd (or vice versa) people that Streep named are Mozart, Van Gogh, Tarantino, and Eminem.

When I saw the film, I could just imagine Walt Disney's chagrin at having to cultivate P.L. Travers' favor for the 20 years that it took to secure the rights to her work. It must have killed him to encounter a woman, an equally disdainful and superior creature, a person dismissive of his own considerable gifts and prodigious output and imagination. But when we sit in our relative positions of importance and mutual suspicion, and we cast judgment on each other's work, we're bound to make small mistakes and misconstrue each other's motives.

Although Streep talked about Disney a lot in her introduction speech, she also praised her friend saying she's a saint.

See the complete Meryl Streep speech by clicking this: https://vult.re/1lBRzWz