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I hope he comes up with a new letter for the Academy.

Hate to say it, but John Lydon broke the mold for this sort of thing:

cocaine socialist wrote:
I hope he comes up with a new letter for the Academy.

<3 Godard

Perhaps he could follow Brando's example and send a Native American to accept the award on his behalf?

I completely forgot about the Academy's legendary 1994 snub of Kiarostami, when they gave Kieslowski those two Oscars for Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction.

From Movieline:

I think they're pretty confident he's going to show, as the script for the ceremony has just leaked. Here's how it starts:

SPIELBERG: Nothing to be done.
COPPOLA: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Francis, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Spielberg.) So there you are again.
SPIELBERG: Am I?
COPPOLA: I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
SPIELBERG: Me too.
COPPOLA: Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how?

It goes on like this for some time.

I found this passage quite disturbing

COPPOLA: On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the seventies.
SPIELBERG: Ah shut up and help me out with this f***ing...
COPPOLA: Hand in hand from the top of Sears Tower, among the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it's too late. They wouldn't even let us up.

There simply has to be a way to get even the most reclusive filmmaker to attend the ceremony, by force if necessary. Couldn't the Academy somehow bribe the Swiss police to revoke the director's passport and put Godard under house arrest until he was extradited to the US to receive his award? I know it would set a totally unheard of precedent, but if they can't bend the rules to ensure attendance at an Honorary Oscar ceremony what could they bend the rules for?

colinr0380 wrote:There simply has to be a way to get even the most reclusive filmmaker to attend the ceremony, by force if necessary. Couldn't the Academy somehow bribe the Swiss police to revoke the director's passport and put Godard under house arrest until he was extradited to the US to receive his award? I know it would set a totally unheard of precedent, but if they can't bend the rules to ensure attendance at an Honorary Oscar ceremony what could they bend the rules for?

Huh? Are you kidding? It's the Oscars dude. Only the consumerists and the capitalists care.

I'm still trying to to decipher that Coppola-Spielberg dialog.

And I hope Godard shows up just to tell the Academy they're a bunch of fuck-offs.

Godard should edit together a video response to be aired in his stead

Murdoch wrote:I'm still trying to to decipher that Coppola-Spielberg dialog.

They're waiting for Godard.

#-o Although I'm trying to be optimistic

Coming up on the Documentary Channel:
Two American Audiences
1968
40 minutes

A discussion between legendary filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard and New York University graduate students on filmmaking and politics, intercut with scenes from "La Chinoise."

Part of DOC's Pennebaker/Hegedus retrospective.

SYNOPSIS:
When Jean Luc Godard came to New York to make a film (1PM) with me and Ricky Leacock, he was anxious to see America before the revolution broke out, torn up as it was with the Vietnam furor. We had arranged a lecture tour of a number of universities around the country. One of the lectures was for a class of NYU graduate students, which we decided to film for the fun of it (black and white film was very cheap in those days). Godard's most recent film, La Chinoise, was playing right around the corner, and Columbia University students, who had initiated their student uprising on the day the film opened, were pouring into the theater. This to our unexpected delight, for when Godard had arranged for us to distribute the film, we had done so with misgiving since his films were not normally known to fill theaters. So as we laughed at his sly remarks, it occurred to us that there were two audiences involved here, and maybe that our film should be about that. It might also be noted that the date of the filming, April 4, 1968, was the day Martin Luther King was killed. Of course, none of us in the room knew about that then. D A Pennebaker

Sept. 11 10pm,
Sept. 12 1am.

cocaine socialist wrote:

Does Godard have anything against Kieslowski?

There's a quotation of Godard's that goes something like "I prefer the earthy humanity of Kiarostami to the designer mysticism of Kieslowski".

And their names both begin with "K," so it certainly makes sense that he compares the two on at least more than one occasion.

Christ, its like Maureen Dowd writing for Cahiers.

So it sounds like he might attend. Seems to have written a nice thank you note.

His wife? Excuse you, NYT

cocaine socialist wrote:D:

Here's The Australian article the Reuters page was referencing. Ok, so maybe he isn't a flaming asshole. Maybe.

Details are still kind of sketchy (hopefully Monsieur Keller or someone else can translate the article) but apparently Godard donated 1,000 euros to the legal defense of a guy charged with downloading MP3s.


Deux fois cinquante ans de cinéma français, 1995

Psst... the post above you...