.png)
2 hours ago
2 ARTICLE AD
If you had any doubt that the awards season was in full swing, Sunday night’s 15th Annual Governors Awards ceremony answered it.
If you are, or in any way think you might have a shot at an Oscar nomination this year, and were in Los Angeles, it is most likely I might have run into you last night at Ovation’s Ray Dolby Ballroom where this jam packed ceremony saluting this year’s honorary Oscar recipients took place. In fact just the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ PR team’s tip sheet was two pages of 207 single spaced names who were expected to attend (and by my count did) show up, not just to honor the deserving winners of the evening, but also perhaps to be in this place which is jam packed with Oscar voters who might be reminded to see your movie, if they haven’t done so already. At least 90% of that list were names associated with movies in the race.
The Academy likes to call this event the “kickoff” to Oscar season, the place where it all begins, but of course we already know Oscar season has been “kicked off” for months, if it ever ends in the first place. But Sunday night’s event, just by virtue of this ballroom full of industry heavy hitters, and the hot ticket it has become, is proof positive things are back to normal post pandemics and strikes that altered its impact in recent years. Every studio and distributor with hopes for a happy and healthy Oscar season ponies up north of $100,000.00 per ten seat table and fills them with actors and filmmakers they want to put out front in the Oscar race. And the turnout is just gobsmacking. As I have pointed out in November everyone still thinks they have a shot at the gold, and this year especially it feels like a wide open race, at least at this point. Therefore that is why these companies spare no expense in putting their contenders in this ‘room where it happens’ (it also is where the Academy holds their Governors Ball Oscar night that ends the season).
Paramount, for instance, spent more than $300 grand to buy three tables and put the stars and filmmakers from Gladiator II , September 5, and A Better Man near the front of the stage in the far left, while Netflix spared no expense on the far right of the stage with tables featuring Emilia Perez, Maria, The Piano Lesson, His Three Daughters, The Six Triple Eight, and Will & Harper stars, filmmakers, and artisans. Warner Bros had the Dune brigade, Universal was highlighting their Dreamworks animation team behind their hit Wild Robot, while I stopped by their Focus Features specialty label table where they were hosting the likes of Nosferatu’s Willem Dafoe, Nicholas Hoult, and Robert Eggers, along with Conclave director Edward Berger, and more. Focus’ Jason Cassidy noted to me that Conclave has become a certified boxoffice hit in addition to prime placement on most pundits Oscar prediction lists.
Sony Classics and Michael Barker and Tom Bernard had a starry table right near the one I was at which featured The Room Next Door’s Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton, and Julianne Moore (all of whom I had the pleasure of interviewing at Deadline’s also jam packed Contenders event the day before at the DGA theatre). Also at the table were Brazilian director Walter Salles and star Fernanda Torres of their international film entry, I’m Still Here. At big Sony’s nearby table Saturday Night’s Jason Reitman and composer/co-star Jon Batiste were holding court. Reitman reps the Directors Branch on the Board Of Governors hosting this event so he was wearing two hats as it were. Roadside Attractions had a table where I spotted Last Showgirl’s Pamela Anderson and director Gia Coppola, across from Lee’s Kate Winslet who had just come from a Ross House screening and reception for her astounding biopic of photojournalist Lee Miller.
At Searchlight’s table I said hello to Jesse Eisenberg seated next to his A Real Pain co-star Kieran Culkin, Nightbitch’s Amy Adams and others. I chatted with James Mangold, director of Searchlight’s Christmas release The Complete Unknown which he told me he literally finished the mix on the day before. It starts screening for critics and awards voters this week. The Unstoppable group was there including Jennifer Lopez, Jharrel Jerome, and the real life people they play in the Amazon MGM biopic. NEON’s Anora gang was out in force. Steve McQueen and Saoirse Ronan were representing Apple’s WWII drama, Blitz. I briefly met Harris Dickinson who also has a small supporting role in that one, but A24 is hoping he gets recognition for his leading role opposite Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, another Christmas Day release. In fact A24 also had their talent out in force including Kidman, Heretic’s Hugh Grant, Sing Sing’s Colman Domingo, and Queer’s Daniel Craig, sporting a cool pair of sunglasses at the reception where I caught up with him.
Speaking of the latter quartet of names they were also key presenters on the ceremony itself. Oh yes, this was an Oscar ceremony, the reason we were all there in the first place, lest you forget. And I have to say I have been to all 15 of these Governors Awards shows (I even served as writer for the second one) and this one, produced immaculately by Jennifer Fox for the sixth consecutive year, had it all: humor, respect, emotion, terrific clip packages, inspiring speeches, and a reminder that the reason this very tony crowd was in this room is the love of the craft itself. On stage were this year’s first Oscar winners: Casting Director Juliet Taylor, Thalberg Award recipients Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, Rashida Jones and the family of the late Honorary Oscar recipient Quincy Jones, and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner Richard Curtis.
At the cocktail reception I had a fun meeting with Curtis, director/writer of the likes of Love Actually, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones Diary, and as screenwriter on 1994’s Four Weddings And A Funeral which brought him his only Oscar nomination to date. When he was told I cover Oscar and awards for Deadline he lit up, telling me he has been obsessed with all things Oscar since he was a kid. “Even as early as May I make up lists of what I think will be nominated. I love the Oscars, ” the uber fan told me.
There was no mention of that in his inspiring acceptance of the Hersholt which he got for all his indefatiguable activities promoting Comic Relief, Live Aid, World Hunger charities and more. It was a side of him I never knew and a prime reason why the Hersholt Award is so important, despite what presenter Hugh Grant jokingly said in his intro to Curtis. “Would we call it an Oscar? It’s a kind of Oscar. It’s a better-than-nothing Oscar.” Grant, who claimed Curtis was the only one who didn’t want him for Four Weddings And A Funeral, also said of his directorial collaborations with Curtis, “Forever etched on my heart, are some of the notes he gave me, including ‘And now do a funny one’ and ‘Don’t worry, we can cut round you’… Anyway, while all this was going on, not content with saving the British film industry, he decided he also had to try and save the whole bloody world.” For his part Curtis was more modest than that exclamation. “I’ve just been a sort of lubricant to try and bring everyone together,”
Kidman got things rolling with her tribute to Juliet Taylor, now retired from a Casting career that included over 40 Woody Allen movies, and work with the likes of James L. Brooks, Mike Nichols and countless others for whom she discovered such luminaries as Meryl Streep, Holly Hunter – you name ’em. Taylor was also quite humble, but thankful. “The director who really changed my life with his loyalty and his support was Woody Allen. From the beginning, he had confidence in me. He was always kind and patient and polite, and working with him was a casting director’s dream because he was so open and so humble, ” she said while also noting, among other famous directors, she truly misses the great Mike Nichols. The casting directors are finally getting their own category in 2026, a very long time coming and in watching the comprehensive clip package that was played before Taylor’s acceptance, you can see why it is so deserved. Among those interviewed in that package was Allen, and June Squibb who Taylor cast in her very first movie at age 61 in Allen’s Alice. Squibb, who is in the awards race this year for Thelma, was among those in the audience applauding Taylor.
Of course it would have to be Daniel Craig presenting to Broccoli and her brother Michael G. Wilson. They received the Irving G. Thalberg Award given to Producers( and not very often). They are the first children of a past winner, Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli to receive it (in 1981), and basically it is for the same reason: keeping the James Bond fire burning. After their heartfelt acceptance speeches, Broccoli added, “Thank you, Daddy, for giving me the greatest life imaginable.” And I would add the greatest franchise ever as well. Incidentally there is a difference between their Thalberg and that of their father. Until this year the award was a bust of the man it was named for. No more. Now Thalberg winners get regular Oscar statuettes, an odd move that takes away some of the historical heft of the prize itself, but certainly not it worth or importance.
Finally, and producer Fox was wise to end this way, was the posthumous Honorary Oscar to Jones, who died at age 91 just two weeks ago. He had received the Hersholt Award 30 years ago, but this one was for his musical career as a landmark film composer, the first African American to really break through in a big way in scoring films from his first, 1965’s The Pawnbroker to The Color Purple on which he was a producer. Legend doesn’t begin to describe him. It was appropriate that Jennifer Hudson led a rousing musical number in tribute, and daughter Rashida read the speech that Jones himself was preparing to give last night. With some of her siblings by her side she added, “He really intended on being here with us tonight. And I want you to know that he is here, very much here. The music he made, that was his real legacy, love. He loved life, and he often said, live every day like it’s your last, and one day you’ll be right. And you did, Dad, you did.”
Another great night in a very long season to come. Hopefully it served as inspiration to all those gathered in that room. Lasting contributions to movies and the world itself is what this is really all about.
