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Jean-Luc Godard to the Oscars: “…”
Academy wants to give him an honorary award, but he’s nowhere to be found
Even in stencil form, he’s pretty cool (Photo: 200MoreMontrealStencils, via Flickr)
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Interesting story by the Hollywood Reporter about the motion picture Academy attempting to find Jean-Luc Godard, so they can give him an honorary Oscar at the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27, 2011. The French director of such classics as Breathless and Band of Outsiders is famously Anti-Hollywood, and, well, if you hated MTV, as you probably do, would you want to win an MTV Video Music Award?
“We’ve been attempting to reach him since 7 o’clock Tuesday evening and we have as yet had no confirmation,” Bruce Davis, the Academy’s executive director, said late Wednesday afternoon. “We have tried by telephone, by fax, by emails to various friends and associates. We have sent a formal letter by FedEx. But we have certainly not been told he will show up at this point.”
Davis said that possibility played no factor when the Academy’s board determined recipients of the honorary Oscars, which will be presented in November at the second annual Governors Awards. Other recipients will be Eli Wallach, Francis Ford Coppola and Kevin Brownlow.
The most surprising thing isn’t Godard not wanting the honorary Oscar; it’s that he’s still alive. Who knew?
Update (9/7)
From the Australian:
“He just told me, ‘It’s not the Oscars,’ ” [partner Anne-Marie Mieville] says, referring to his reaction on learning about the award. “At first he thought it was going to be part of the same ceremony, then he realised it was a separate thing in November.”
Not that it would make any difference. “Jean-Luc won’t go to America, he’s getting old for that kind of thing. Would you go all that way just for a bit of metal?”
She says it is likelier that “someone from his production team” will be there to represent him, and she rejects suggestions that his silence is a snub to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or a reflection of his well-documented scorn for Hollywood values.
“He will reply to the letter,” Mieville insists.