00:00I met Noah for the first time at the fire and ice ball sometime in the 1990s.
00:05A very worthy, very starry benefit of the sort they had in those days.
00:09He was on this monster mega hit show.
00:13I was on another show.
00:16And we were both taking a break from the event and standing outside the venue,
00:21each of us with a back leg propped up on the wall, smoking cigarettes handsomely.
00:26And knowing, I suspect even then, how lucky we were to be in this amusement park of an industry.
00:33Neither of us could have predicted the future, but we probably didn't expect the world to be as it is
00:37now.
00:38We were just grateful to be employed.
00:40And so we smoked our cigarettes handsomely.
00:44And in the years since then, Noah has stayed grateful, handsome, and incredibly productive.
00:50And after a lifetime of consistently brilliant and entertaining work, Noah has found himself in a kind of precarious position,
00:59that of spokesperson for basic decency.
01:03He not only has the pit become a critical and commercial success,
01:07the show has struck a chord for the deep yearning for something which has been in short supply lately,
01:14decency and empathy.
01:16And that is who he is and what he wants to get across.
01:21Decency without strings, ethics without a catch,
01:24and an appreciation for the necessity of art in our daily lives.
01:28And on top of that, he has prioritized love in his life.
01:32He is a great husband and a great father.
01:41And a pretty decent friend.
01:44I could talk about the fun we've had as friends,
01:46or that when making Noah laugh, which is my goal.
01:50He sounds like a 19th century locomotive coming to a long screeching stop after running at full steam.
01:59But, and with his success, Noah very easily could have
02:04devolved into some overblown egocentric celebrity,
02:08or somebody who's been sold as being somehow cooler,
02:11hipper, superhuman.
02:13But because of the core of who he is,
02:16he has instead chosen to activate the decency and self-awareness,
02:22humility and creativity that human beings have within them
02:26to make it through the challenges in our society
02:28with which we have been lately faced.
02:31Cynicism, mediocrity, moral laziness, downright meanness.
02:35He's the opposite of those things.
02:38He's a person of depth, compassion, creative courage, and generosity.
02:43He's an entertainer.
02:44He's an artist.
02:46So, yeah, this is an amazing honor.
02:48But we know that anybody, whenever you are standing there,
02:52admiring this star at 6164 Hollywood Boulevard,
02:56that it's not just some Tinseltown tribute.
02:59That block of pavement is actually, or, well, symbolically,
03:03supporting you as you stand there, carrying your weight.
03:09And without it, and therefore without Noah,
03:14you'd be plummeting down a deep hole,
03:19possibly hurting your legs badly on all that rebar poking out of the walls.
03:23And that's who Noah Wiley is.
03:27He's not just a generous, creative, ethical, and entertaining guy.
03:30He's protecting us from rebar.
03:33Congratulations, my friend.
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