If you agree with filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu that Tom Cruise “doesn’t just make movies — he is movies,” then the Oscar that Cruise received at the motion picture academy’s annual Governors Awards wasn’t just long overdue. It was a restoration of balance, a necessary correction, not to mention a nod to the sheer weight of Cruise’s body of work in the collective imagination.
When multi-hyphenate Debbie Allen, herself an honoree, worked in a reference to the “tighty-whities” Cruise wore sliding across the floor in “Risky Business” into her own acceptance speech, you could understand why he received the night’s longest ovation. He really is movies. In one way or another, he completes us.
Cruise, 63, was still shaking hands and posing for pictures long after the ceremony ended Sunday night. He may in fact still be in the Ray Dolby Ballroom, listening to people tell him giddy and sometimes teary stories of when they first saw him in a movie. After Iñárritu introduced him, Cruise delivered a gracious, cinema-booster speech, at one point asking everyone in the room who had worked with him to stand.
“I carry you with me, each of you, and you are part of every frame of every film I have ever made or ever will make,” Cruise said. And yes, he was in alignment with Iñárritu. “Making films is not what I do. It’s who I am.”
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Trailblazer Wynn Thomas, widely recognized as the first Black production designer in film, and Dolly Parton also received Oscars at tonight’s Governors Awards ceremony. These honorary Oscars, once part of the televised Academy Awards, were spun off into their own event in 2009.
Parton, 79, was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Health issues, which led to a postponement of her December Las Vegas residency, prevented Parton from attending in person. But she thanked the academy by video, saying, “We didn’t have too much to share, but my mama and daddy showed me that the more you give, the more blessings come your way. And I have been blessed more than I ever dreamed possible, like with this award tonight.”
Lily Tomlin, Parton’s “9 to 5” co-star, gave a delightful, digressive introduction. Capping the presentation, Andra Day sang a spine-tingling cover of Parton’s classic “Jolene.”
The Governors Awards are not televised and, as Will Arnett, introducing the evening, noted, “There are no commercial breaks. The orchestra is not waiting to play anybody off. There is nothing stopping us from doing this until the sun comes up.” The relaxed nature of the show gives honorees room to roam with their speeches and also offers current Oscar contenders a chance to schmooze with voters.
In one corner of the ballroom, you might find filmmakers Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach and Joachim Trier engaged in a debate over who is better, Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut, a French New Wave throwdown inspired by Linklater’s sly homage “Nouvelle Vague.” Across the room, Sydney Sweeney, meeting Cruise for the first time, compared notes on broken bones. Outside, Iñárritu told director Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”) about his upcoming movie, starring Cruise. (“It sounds crazy,” Coogler said.)
Cruise was on everyone’s mind, except perhaps Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe, director of the superb thriller “Sirāt,” who did not know the actor was receiving an honorary Oscar. People offered me their favorite Cruise movies. Director Eva Victor (“Sorry, Baby”) went with “Edge of Tomorrow.” Shih-Ching Tsou (“Left-Handed Girl”) chose “Top Gun.” (“I fell in love,” she says.) And Coogler went with a wild card, picking the compulsively rewatchable 1988 comedy “Cocktail.”
“It was my parents’ favorite movie, so I saw it all the time,” Coogler says. “I know it’s nonsensical.”
Ethan Hawke, who made “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part documentary on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, recalled how Newman didn’t want his honorary Oscar in 1986. He hoped to win one outright. A year later, he took the lead actor trophy for “The Color of Money,” which, yes, co-starred Cruise.
“Cruise should have won for ‘Magnolia,’ one of the best performances of my lifetime,” Hawke told me. “My suspicion is that this will be the first of many Oscars for Tom Cruise. He’ll get this honorary one and then four more in the next 20 years.”
Thomas, it could be argued, should have won a competitive Oscar years ago for any number of movies, including his striking work creating the single block setting in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood for Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Relating his journey to becoming a visual storyteller, Thomas recalled growing up in “one of the worst slums of Philadelphia,” sitting on his front stoop reading Shakespeare, James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams, immersed and transported.
“The local gangs looked down on me and called me sissy,” Thomas said. “But that sissy grew up to work with some great filmmakers.”
Presenting Allen with her Oscar, “Wicked’s” Cynthia Erivo said “to know Miss Debbie is to know that she refuses to let dreams fade and has a determination to make them happen.”
“I myself am fortunate enough to consider her my auntie,” Erivo added.
Allen’s five-decade career includes choreographing the Oscars seven times, as well as films including “Forget Paris” and “A Jazzman’s Blues.” Her producing credits include Steven Spielberg’s 1997 historical drama “Amistad.” She’s probably best known as an actor on the ’80s television series “Fame,” which she also served as a choreographer. Her non-profit dance academy is a Los Angeles institution.
Allen namechecked the Dodgers, her husband (the Los Angeles Lakers legend Norm Nixon) and, of course, Oscar.
“It’s like I got married … sorry, Norm,” she said, cradling the statue. “I’m definitely taking him to work with me and keeping him close to remind me, not of what I’ve done, but what I get, need and have to do.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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