Honorary Oscars awarded amid harassment scandals
LOS ANGELES — The movie industry officially kicked into awards season Saturday night with the Governors Awards while reeling from a still-widening sexual harassment scandal.
Stars donned black tie and formal gowns to walk the red carpet of the glamorous Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences event honouring writer-director Charles Burnett, cinematographer Owen Roizman, actor Donald Sutherland and director Agnes Varda.
Each received Oscar statuettes for their distinguished careers in the annual ceremony, which signals the celebratory opening to the awards race that ends with the Oscars (March 4).
But the event was clouded by still more breaking weekend harassment revelations, including the suspension of Supergirl TV producer Andrew Kreisberg for sexual misconduct claims.
Meanwhile, Rebel Wilson alleged she was sexually harassed by a male star.
And the Academy expelled producer Harvey Weinstein amid sexual-assault allegations.
The speeches inside the Governors Awards did not once touch on the harassment scandal as each honoree, chosen by the Academy’s 54-member leadership board, was extolled.
Jennifer Lawrence presented the Oscar to her Hunger Games co-star Donald Sutherland, who she says “took me under his wing” as a newbie actor.
“For someone as generous and talented it’s odd to think that Donald Sutherland has never won an Oscar before tonight,” said Lawrence. mentioning some of the actor’s “iconic roles” (Ordinary People, MASH, The Dirty Dozen, Klute). “His work is movie magic at its best.”
Holding his Oscar, Sutherland, 82, admitted he had been “beset by my mind’s unrelenting interrogation of me demanding to know if I deserve this.” But he found awards solace and justification in the words of the great comedian Jack Benny.
“[Benny] said, as I say to you now, ‘I don’t deserve this. But I have arthritis. And I don’t deserve that either,’ ” said Sutherland, exiting to rousing cheers.
Dustin Hoffman, who has been accused in two separate harassment incidents, received healthy applause from the audience when presenting the Oscar to his Tootsie cinematographer Owen Roizman, 81 (The French Connection, The Exorcist, Network).
“Thanks for sharing with us your remarkable gift,” said Hoffman. Roizman was moved to tears in his acceptance speech.
Jessica Chastain and Angelina Jolie were part of a group of Hollywood women who praised honoree Agnes Varda, the pioneer of the French New Wave filmmaking movement. Varda, 89, called them “my feminist guardian angels.”
Ava DuVernay brought director Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, To Sleep with Anger) onto the stage saying the African-American trailblazer was “a giant, a legend to us, an icon long before today.”
Burnett, 73, told of a teacher who pointed a finger at him as a young student saying, “You’re not going to be anything.” The award proved the teacher wrong.