The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has named Paul Mazursky as the recipient of this year’s Career Achievement Award.
Drector, writer and actor Mazursky, whose films include "Harry and Tonto" and "An Unmarried Woman," was lauded by the critics group for fighting "battles for warm, humane film content within the studio system, and [winning] them all." Mazursky's "comic vision of Los Angeles … and of American life," said the press release announcing the selection, " … speaks to our time and to the ages the way the films of Jean Renoir and the plays of Molière do."
The selection was announced after a special LAFCA meeting at which a slate of candidates were nominated and then narrowed down to a single choice.
The meeting is always contentious, said one longtime LAFCA member in advance of Sunday’s deliberations. “You have some people saying we should give the award to Jean-Luc Godard, and others saying it should go to Ray Harryhausen,” the member said. “That’s how far apart we are on this.”
The LAFCA, which was founded in 1975, consists of 52 Los Angeles-based print and broadcast critics.
Last year’s honoree was French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, the star of Godard's “Breathless,” who was chosen partly because the members couldn’t agree upon which director from the French New Wave to honor. Other winners in recent years have included directors Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Robert Mulligan and Arthur Penn, actors Richard Widmark and Jerry Lewis, and composer Ennio Morricone.
In the past, winners have included John Huston, Orson Welles, Robert Mitchum and Billy Wilder.
LAFCA awards for this year's films will be announced on December 12. Mazursky will receive his award at the LAFCA awards ceremony on Saturday, January 15, 2011 at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City.
