00:03Please, ladies and gentlemen, welcome Stephen Webber to the stage.
00:16Hi, I wasn't out on ER.
00:20There would have been a real ratings spike had I been.
00:24I met Noah for the first time at the Fire and Ice Ball sometime in the 1990s.
00:29A very worthy, very starry benefit of the sort they had in those days.
00:33He was on this monster mega-hit show.
00:37I was on another show.
00:40And we were both taking a break from the event and standing outside the venue,
00:45each of us with a back leg propped up on the wall, smoking cigarettes handsomely.
00:51And knowing, I suspect even then, how lucky we were to be in this amusement park of an industry.
00:56Neither of us could have predicted the future, but we probably didn't expect the world to be as it is
01:01now.
01:02We were just grateful to be employed, and so we smoked our cigarettes handsomely.
01:08And in the years since then, Noah has stayed grateful, handsome, and incredibly productive.
01:14And after a lifetime of consistently brilliant and entertaining work,
01:19Noah has found himself in a kind of precarious position.
01:23That of spokesperson for basic decency.
01:28Not only has the pit become a critical and commercial success,
01:31the show has struck a chord for the deep yearning for something which has been in short supply lately.
01:38decency and empathy.
01:40And that is who he is, and what he wants to get across.
01:45Decency without strings, ethics without a catch,
01:48and an appreciation for the necessity of art in our daily lives.
01:52And on top of that, he has prioritized love in his life.
01:56He is a great husband, and a great father.
02:05And a pretty decent friend.
02:08I could talk about the fun we've had as friends,
02:10or that when making Noah laugh, which is my goal.
02:14He sounds like a 19th century locomotive coming to a long screeching stop after running at full steam.
02:23And with his success, Noah very easily could have devolved into some overblown egocentric celebrity,
02:32or somebody who's been sold as being somehow cooler, hipper, superhuman.
02:37But because of the core of who he is,
02:40he has instead chosen to activate the decency and self-awareness,
02:46humility, and creativity that human beings have within them
02:50to make it through the challenges in our society with which we have been lately faced.
02:55Cynicism, mediocrity, moral laziness, downright meanness.
03:00He's the opposite of those things.
03:02He's a person of depth, compassion, creative courage, and generosity.
03:07He's an entertainer.
03:08He's an artist.
03:10So yeah, this is an amazing honor,
03:12but we know that anybody, whenever you are standing there,
03:16admiring this star at 6164 Hollywood Boulevard,
03:21that it's not just some Tinseltown tribute.
03:23That block of pavement is actually, or well, symbolically,
03:28supporting you as you stand there, carrying your weight.
03:33And without it, and therefore without Noah,
03:38you'd be plummeting down a deep hole.
03:43Possibly hurting your legs badly on all that rebar poking out of the walls.
03:48And that's who Noah Wiley is.
03:51He's not just a generous, creative, ethical, and entertaining guy.
03:54He's protecting us from rebar.
03:57Congratulations, my friend.
03:59Attention, my friend.
03:59Applause
04:02Applause
04:04Applause
04:04Applause
04:06Music
04:11Applause
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