Here’s one lesson to take from the Governors Awards, which took place Saturday night in the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood & Highland center:
Even when they’ve only got four awards and the show isn’t being televised, it still takes the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences three and a half hours to hand out Oscars.
But time wasn’t a pressing issue at the inaugural Governors Awards, which moved the presentation of honorary Oscars out of the Academy Awards telecast and onto a special night devoted solely to actress Lauren Bacall, producer Roger Corman, cinematographer Gordon Willis and producer John Calley.
“It’s so much better that nobody’s worrying if 35.5 million people are watching us, or only 29.2 million,” said Warren Beatty as he took part in the presentation to Calley in front of a room of 550 Academy governors, members and guests accustomed to fretting about matters like ratings and running time.
Some Oscar watchers have certainly complained about denying the honorees their proper moment in the spotlight – but with the time constraints of the main Oscar show, the only way to give more than one or two honorary Oscars each year is to do them in a separate event.
Hence the Governors Awards, a collegial, informal evening consciously patterned after early, pre-television Oscar shows, when the event took place over dinner and the onstage speeches were punctuated with toasts and table-hopping.
(Right, Ron Howard toasts Roger Corman; Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Demme are also at the table. Photo: Matt Petit/AMPAS)
“It captured that intimate, elusive feeling that everybody wants the Oscar show to have,” said producer and Academy vice president Kathleen Kennedy afterwards. “I think this will become the fun event that everybody wants to go to.”
Certainly, it was a different kind of night for the Academy. There were no roadblocks on Hollywood Boulevard in front of Hollywood & Highland, no metal detectors or ID checks on the way to the ballroom, no bleachers of screaming fans and only one small bank of cameramen and reporters.
Inside the ballroom, which was reconfigured into a reception area and a larger dining room draped with red and gold curtains and sporting a single giant Oscar statue, there were no TelePrompTers, no commercial breaks – and, as guests gathered after the pre-show reception started at 6:30, the expectation of a lighter, breezier evening.
“Are there really only four awards tonight?” asked Julian Fellowes, an Oscar winner for writing “Gosford Park,” who was in town for the opening of his stage version of “Mary Poppins.”
Told that the event was indeed devoted to just four awards – honorary Oscars to Bacall, Corman and Willis, and an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to John Calley – Fellowes grinned.
“Oh, heaven,” he said. “Usually you grow old at these events, waiting for them to give out all the awards.”
In front of a crowd that included Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, Jeff Bridges, Alec Baldwin, Abbie Cornish, Vera Farmiga, Marisa Tomei, Dana Delany, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Academy president Tom Sherak kicked off the evening by standing at his table and raising a toast – a move that confused some people, who naturally looked to the two onstage podiums but couldn’t see Sherak, who was hidden from some by guests at adjacent tables who were still taking their seats.
