In its 7th year, the Governors Awards has become both a mandatory stop on the Oscar campaign trail and a chance for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to both correct its misdeeds of the past and honor Hollywood legends.
But this year’s Governors Awards – where Gena Rowlands, Debbie Reynolds, and Spike Lee received awards – also felt like the Academy wanted to move its 6,000 member organization in a new direction. It was no longer willing to just praise what its members have achieved but hoped to lead them towards a future where different voices and cultures are recognized and represented. In a year where the cry for diversity in Hollywood seems to have reached a fever pitch, the Academy began the night’s proceedings with president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announcing a new initiative, called A2020, a five-year plan to actively increase diversity in Hollywood and she asked for the leaders in the room – and all the studio heads were there – to help her.
Many were encouraged by Boone’s remarks. Said one Academy governor, “She announced it. Now it has to happen. It took a long time but she finally threw down.”
And those sentiments were echoed loudly by the organization’s last honoree, the always provocative Lee, who relayed U.S. census data to the audience to make his point. “By the year 2043, white Americans are going to be a minority in this country. And all you people out there in the position of hiring, you better get smart. Because your work force should reflect what this country looks like,” he said.
He added, “Everybody in here probably voted for Obama, but when I go to offices, I see no black folks except for the brother man at the security [gate] who checks my name off the list as I go into the studio. So we can talk, ‘yada yada yada,’ but we need to have some serious discussion about diversity and get some flavor up in this.”
Lee closed out his speech noting how it’s easier for a black person to become President of the United States than to “be the head of a studio,” and told Isaacs to “keep it going.”
“We have a long way to go,” he said.
Held in the very same ballroom as the after-party of the official Oscars, the Governors Awards gives its honorees as much time as they’d like to talk and no one goes home a loser. So the audience of filmmakers, actors, costume designers and cinematographers got to hear Gena Rowlands re-tell a story about her idol Bette Davis while Lee recounted his filmmaking career, name-checking inspiring teachers and detailing how he got ahold of his first Super 8 camera. (The event isn’t televised, but all of the speeches are now available on the Oscars’ YouTube page.)
It’s the lack of adhering to a television schedule that allows spontaneous moments to happen, too: like when Will Smith fawned over Amy Schumer’s performance in Trainwreck only to have her reply, “I want you to be my emergency contact.” Or when long-lost acting pals get a chance to reunite, like Dragon Tattoo stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, or You Can Count On Me leads Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo. It’s what allows unlikely conversations to happen as it did in the smoker’s area when Jane Fonda grabbed a cigarette with Johnny Depp, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Quentin Tarantino.
Yes, many in the room are looking for votes, hoping to make connections with Academy members with the hope that the personal touch will be what makes a voter put their screener in the DVD player above another. (Cate Blanchett asked the entire room to smile for a group photo with the line, “Cheese, vote for me!”) But while the crass art of campaigning may be what gets the giant ballroom to fill with a cast as varied as Harvey Keitel (Youth), Ian McKellan (Mr. Holmes), Michael Keaton (Spotlight), Rachel Weisz (Youth), Joel Edgerton (Black Mass), Helen Mirren (Trumbo) and Kurt Russell (The Hateful Eight), among many other potential Oscar hopefuls, the honorees for the night gives the evening a little more meaning than everyone may have expected.
Because what the Governors Awards felt like this seventh time around was Hollywood trying to be the Hollywood we dream it is, the Hollywood where the non-conformists, the outsiders come together to make something that resonates with all of us. Where we get to hear the story of how a young Miss Burbank Debbie Reynolds became the third lead in Singin’ in the Rain, nabbed an Oscar nomination for The Unsinkable Molly Brown and then founded and contributed to so many charities that the scroll reading all of them looked like the introduction to Star Wars. And that doesn’t even count the 3,500 movie costumes Reynolds bought to preserve as a part of history; things such as Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress in The Seven-Year Itch to Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat to the iconic ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz. Reynolds is recovering from an illness and wasn’t able to attend the event but her granddaughter Billie Lourd accepted the honorary Oscar for her humanitarian efforts and made sure the audience knew she and her grandma would cuddle with the gold man soon.
And then there was Rowlands, who along with her now-deceased husband John Cassavetes, essentially established the independent film business. Rowlands, an actress, as Laura Linney put it, who “smashed and destroyed the female stereotype of our time,” made movies in her house with Cassavetes that changed the way we look at female characters. For if it wasn’t for Rowlands and her roles in A Woman Under the Influence or Gloria – films that landed her Oscar nominations but never a statue – would we have the great actresses of today like Meryl Streep, like Cate Blanchett, like Jennifer Lawrence? Would the Oscar hopefuls in the audience like Carey Mulligan (Suffragette), Brie Larson (Room), and Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn) be able to explore the interior lives of women that they do in their films?
Saturday night’s events will get mentioned during the 88th annual Academy Awards on Feb. 28, where Chris Rock is set as host.