The Governors Awards: On the scene at Oscar's special honors

It was the first big experiment of a quite experimental Oscar season, and by all accounts, it was a resounding success. Last night, for the first time in Academy Award history, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out their honorary awards at a separate event from their annual Academy Award ceremony. At a three-hour gala dinner in the ballroom above the Kodak Theatre, B-movie king Roger Corman (pictured, left), groundbreaking cinematographer Gordon Willis (right), and legendary screen siren Lauren Bacall (center) received honorary Oscars, and producer and studio chief John Calley was recognized with the rarely bestowed Irving G. Thalberg Award.

“I’m delighted, and surprised,” Corman told me at the pre-dinner reception. “I knew I’d been nominated [to receive an honorary Oscar], and I predicted flatly that I had no chance of getting the award, because I make low-budget films. I thought the Academy will not give an award to someone who makes low-budget films.” Both he and Willis earnestly professed they were happy the Academy had chosen to spin off their awards into a distinct event. “I like it better this way,” Willis said. “It’s more meaningful, [and] it also gives them the opportunity to do more than one person at the end of a commercial.” (Bacall declined to speak to press.) Free from the time constraints and nerve-racking pomp and circumstance of a prime-time television broadcast, the evening’s festivities did indeed feel appealingly warm and intimate. Along with the usual montage of clips representing their body of work, each honoree received lengthy toasts and testimonials from their friends and colleagues, read from note cards instead of teleprompters or simply delivered off-the-cuff. Academy first vice-president and multiple Oscar-winner Tom Hanks summed up the feelings about the evening for pretty much everyone there. “I’m over the moon about it,” Hanks told me after the first two honorees had received their awards. “This is what it should be. Look how long you got to talk about Gordon [Willis] or Roger [Corman]. You get the clips, the anecdotes, and everything else. If this was on the TV show, it would be seven pressure-filled minutes. This way, it’s all peers, and it’s all honors.”

Directors Ron Howard, Quentin Tarantino, and Jonathan Demme celebrated Corman’s achievements in independent filmmaking and his unmatched mentorship of a generation of filmmakers. (You can read EW’s commemoration of Corman’s career here.) One of my favorite moments came when cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Passion of the Christ) said in his toast for Willis that his mentor “loved to complain about Hollywood,” remembering a time that Willis ranted about “dump truck directors [who] don’t even think about what they shoot — they just fill up a big dump truck with a bunch of shots, and dump them on the editor’s lap.” (The implication: Willis’s irascible temperament may have contributed to his stunning work on The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Annie Hall, and Manhattan all getting snubbed for an Oscar nod.)

Leading-man icon Kirk Douglas won his own standing ovation when he stepped to the dais to honor Bacall, his onetime fellow student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. (Douglas told a sweet story about Bacall talking her uncle into giving his overcoat to the young and penniless Douglas, and then quipped that he repaid her kindness by “trying to seduce her.”) Unfortunately, Calley was not able to attend due to an apparent illness, so past Thalberg award winners Walter Mirisch, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Saul Zaentz, Norman Jewison, Warren Beatty, and Dino De Laurentiis appeared to accept on his behalf. (You can watch video highlights of all the presentations, as well as Corman’s, Willis’, and Bacall’s acceptance speeches in full, at the Academy’s official website.)

With so much of high-powered Hollywood milling about the lavishly appointed room, the evening also turned out to be a conspicuous opportunity for certain 2009 Oscar hopefuls to begin their own campaigns for their first Oscar nomination. Best actress contenders Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and Abbie Cornish (Bright Star) were prominently making the rounds, as well as possible best director nominees Tom Ford (A Single Man) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). Bigelow, in fact, sat at my table, along with her film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal. When I remarked to them both about the long journey from their grueling film shoot in the intense desert heat of Jordan to the posh and plentiful Wolfgang Puck-catered gala event, Bigelow said, with a wry smile, “Quite a jump cut.”

The Academy’s next jump cut, of course, is to its main ceremony next March. And while the inaugural Governors Awards appeared to be an unqualified hit, Tom Hanks also seemed to summarize a prevailing feeling among many about the centerpiece of Oscar’s major makeover this year — namely, the expansion of the best picture category to ten nominees. “What are those ten movies going to be?” Hanks asked me. “How deep is it going to go? Here it is, November. Can you name ten movies that are worthy of being on the list?”

Image Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images