Quincy Jones died too soon to accept an honorary Oscar at the Governors awards on Sunday night – so the ceremony in Los Angeles became a moving celebration of the life of a music legend.
Jones, who died on 3 November aged 91, was one of five Hollywood luminaries due to be honoured at the 15th Governors awards. In his absence, his daughter Rashida Jones read the speech he had drafted, alongside a spirited performance by Jennifer Hudson.
Flanked by three siblings, the actor and director recounted her father’s words: “I was always keenly aware of the enormous power that we possessed as film-makers, that the art we created, the stories we told, if we were lucky, had a chance to move people in ways that they could never imagine, to make society and the world a more understanding and embracing place for us all to exist.”
Describing her father, she said: “He had this preternatural gift with people. He knew how to stay present, stay curious and stay loving.” It had been “a difficult decision for our family to be here tonight, but we felt like we wanted to celebrate his beautiful life and career”.
The event, presented by the Academy’s board of governors, honours lifetime achievement in the film industry, often lauding those who haven’t won the traditional statuette. This year’s recipients were the screenwriter and director Richard Curtis, for his humanitarian work; the casting director Juliet Taylor, who, like Jones, received an honorary Oscar; and the James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, who received the Irving G Thalberg Memorial award.
The ceremony is a magnet for A-listers and Oscar hopefuls. Those gathered at tables in the Ray Dolby Ballroom included Saoirse Ronan, Jennifer Lopez, Paul Mescal, Lupita Nyong’o and Angelina Jolie, among many others. The actor, writer and director Colman Domingo gave an opening speech reflecting on the national moment: “What a time to create meaningful art, what a time to be in this room with you all. Tonight, we will inspire each other to just keep going,” he said. “Let’s keep telling the most complex stories that can show us that we’re more alike than unalike.”
Daniel Craig presented the award to Broccoli and Wilson, siblings who have produced the Bond films since 1995, when they took over from Cubby Broccoli, Barbara’s father and Wilson’s stepfather. Nicole Kidman presented the award to Taylor, whose credits range from Annie Hall to The Birdcage.
“The work of the casting director is always seen but it is often overlooked,” Kidman said, noting that Taylor was the first person in the job to be recognised by the Academy. “This woman was at the centre of American film-making from the 70s through the end of her career. She was more than professional. She defined the profession.”
After Taylor, Hugh Grant begrudgingly presented Curtis’s “better-than-nothing Oscar”, needling his friend for an initial resistance to casting Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Then, “not content with saving the British film industry, he decided he also had to try and save the whole bloody world,” Grant said, referring to Comic Relief, Make Poverty History, and Curtis’s other humanitarian endeavours. “There I would be in one of the lulls in my career – because of some flop or some arrest or whatever – and I’d be frankly desperate for Richard’s next film, and I’d be told, ‘I’m sorry, he’s away for a year in Africa, saving starving children.’
“I found that annoying and frankly selfish.”
In his own speech, after remarking on Grant’s “infamously unsatisfactory character”, Curtis praised his colleagues for making films with potent messages but urged them not to stop there. “Powerful films and TV shows are made, and everyone just sort of hopes they’ll help change things, and they don’t take the final step to create a mechanism in the actual production that helps to change things,” he said. They should appoint “impact producers” who would use the films “for campaigning, for targeted education, for changing laws. When films get shown to the right people in power at the right time, when films are linked to the right charities, amazing things can happen.”
The night ended with Jones’s award, presented by Jamie Foxx in a speech that included startlingly accurate impressions of Jones and of Donald Trump – whose re-election was obliquely and mournfully referenced several times throughout the evening. Foxx recalled working with Jones on the film Ray and hailed the composer’s “fearless and tireless” work for disabled people, including people with Down’s syndrome like Foxx’s late sister. “Thank you for giving the world music, thank you for giving the world light, thank you for giving the world an example of what a great human being is supposed to be,” Foxx said.
Closing her speech at the end of the evening, an emotional Rashida Jones urged the crowd to listen to her father’s music on the way home. “There’s an entire universe waiting in his seven decades of music. And while you listen, hear him, hear how he imbued love into every single second of music he made. That was his real legacy, love,” she said.
“In honour of our dad, we hope you will do the same. Live with love, lead with love. Bring love to everything that you do.”
