Sunday night’s Oscars were a joy to watch, one of the brightest telecasts of the event in recent years, and it was almost all because of Steve Martin’s surprisingly salty and biting turn as host. And the show only ran three and a half hours, no small feat if you ask me.

But by now, the show has been forgotten by most of those who watched, and we’re back to watching our DVDs of “Gladiator,” only now when we watch it, we know it’s a Best Picture (as if that makes it better). Will we even remember who won a year from now? A month from now? Tomorrow? Hell, I had trouble remembering what won Best Picture last year when somebody asked me Sunday night (“American Beauty,” kids).

I will remember one moment from Sunday for a while, and it came during Steven Soderbergh’s speech upon winning the Best Director Oscar for his epic drug tale, “Traffic.” Soderbergh told the audience he wouldn’t be thanking any of his “Traffic” collaborators on stage; he instead said the following:

“… I want to thank anyone who spends a part of their day creating. I don’t care if it’s a book, a film, a painting, a dance, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, anybody – anybody who spends a part of their day sharing their experience with us, I think this world would be unliveable without art, and I thank you.”

Soderbergh’s words are very truthful; can our world survive without art? Some would care to criticize our culture for caring so much about things like the Oscars, but what should we be caring about? Man cannot live on politics, war and “important issues” alone. Man (or mankind, if you prefer) needs an outlet, needs to see how others interpret the world we live in, needs to interpret that world for itself.

Soderbergh understands that his profession is as important as any other – as a film director, he can give us a peek inside the inner workings of Mexican law enforcement and U.S. drug politics in “Traffic,” portray the fictionalized account of a real-life hero in “Erin Brockovich” and show us the atavistic nature of our own relationships in “sex, lies and videotape.” Soderbergh comments on the human experience, just like Spielberg or Kubrick or Fincher or Lean or Welles have.

The director’s words are a reminder that those who pursue and love the arts shall not be slighted for that which they are passionate about. I may need a heart surgeon to save my life somewhere down the line, but would I want to be saved if the world didn’t have Mozart or Bach or Jagger, Picasso or Monet or Pollock, Fitzgerald or Steinbeck or Salinger? I don’t think so.

I hope the other Oscar winners felt a little inadequate after Soderbergh’s delivery Sunday night. Of all the winners, only the balding geek with the glasses will be remembered for what he did at the awards instead of what he did to earn the awards.