Tom Cruise Received a Lengthy-Overdue Oscar at Awards Season’s Most Enjoyable Ceremony

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It could also be onerous to consider, however we’re on the onset of one more awards season, the longest 5 months on the Hollywood calendar. From now by means of the Oscars in March, we’re going to be locked in countless debates about contenders, snubs, and which motion pictures are underrated (or overhyped.) For the final sixteen years, the unofficial beginning gun for this marathon is the Governors Awards—basically the Lifetime Achievement Awards portion that used to make up a big a part of every Oscar telecast, now damaged off as its personal occasion. This 12 months, I had the consideration of attending that occasion for the primary time.

You might argue that it’s felony to relegate the honoring of residing legends to a ceremony that isn’t really televised. But this 12 months’s host Will Arnett put it completely: The undeniable fact that the Governors Awards do not exist on this Dolby Theater ballroom means the present can play by its personal guidelines. There’s a formlessness to the evening that felt exhilarating. I went to the precise Oscars this 12 months too, and whereas being in that room felt appropriately seismic it additionally felt too unwieldy to actually take pleasure in—it’s so giant that there was nonetheless a palpable sense of separation between civilians equivalent to myself and the true Movie Stars. The Governors Awards has no such barrier; we blew previous the 6PM begin time, and for an excellent half-hour earlier than and half-hour after, the wine flowed and stars of triple-A wattage (even Leo!) milled round with everybody else in a single huge, democratic ballroom.

The first particular person I noticed that I used to be really personally aware of was Josh Safdie, who’s after all about to fuck the streets up with Marty Supreme. As we talked concerning the newest run of early Marty screenings in LA lately, Josh admitted the New York Film Festival shock exhibiting nonetheless takes the cake as a result of “the paint was still wet.” Josh described the method of watching his movies in a method I’ve by no means fairly heard from a filmmaker earlier than, saying that every time he watches one thing he is directed, particularly when peeking in on an viewers (and even within the instances he’s rewatched Uncut Gems over time), he “learns one thing new”—about why he made this factor and what he was attempting to precise.

He in contrast making motion pictures to attempting to translate and perceive a dream, and every viewing affords a brand new interpretation of some summary thought. (He additionally instructed me that he completely hated having to put on a tux, and that the one he was sporting tonight was really the identical tux Gucci despatched him seven years in the past when he was on the marketing campaign path for Gems; he’d simply by no means returned it. Marty co-writer and de facto third Safdie Ronald Bronstein came visiting to us and shared that his tux was additionally a Gems-era loaner from Safdie’s closet.)