Breaking, y'all! Steve Pond reported that the board members would go behind closed doors tonight and decide the honorary prizes, and AMPAS came back in record time!
The Irving G. Thalberg prize, a bust of the motion picture executive, is given to “a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” Francis Ford Coppola with his five (!!!) Oscars is certainly emblematic of this, as his involvement in cutting edge films and Hollywood influence remains untouched after forty years.
Kevin Brownlow, perhaps the single most important and accomplished film historian of our time, will receive one of the three Honorary Awards handed out the same night. Funnily enough, he's faced some major opposition from Francis Ford Coppola in releasing his brilliant five and a half hour restoration of Abel Gance's 1927 silent epic Napoléon in the United States because he didn't use Carmine Coppola's (note the last name) musical accompaniment. Even I'm bitter about that (but not to worry, I bought the five and a half hour version from this ~guy~ over the internet).
Jean-Luc Godard is still going strong making films to this day at the age of 80 (I might just catch his newest, Film Socialisme at NYFF next month) and among the most iconic of international film auteurs of the twentieth century. Though it seems like he's more than ready to use this opportunity to flick his nose at Hollywood and refuse the prize. Or, at the very least, just refuse to show up.
Eli Wallach is one of the most iconic character actors of early Westerns, including playing "the Bad" in Sergio Leone's epic classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A richly deserving performer for the prize who otherwise went largely unrecognized in his illustrious career.
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