Not Appearing at the Oscars: Jean-Luc Godard

Posted on Oct 25, 2010

Flickr / 200MoreMontrealStencils (CC-BY)

A stenciled image of Jean-Luc Godard in his prime appears on a building in Montreal in this photo taken in 2008.

How do you give out an Oscar to someone who doesn’t want to come and get it? That’s the quandary the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is facing, as Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave auteur and one of this year’s honorary Academy Award recipients, has refused to make the trip across the ocean to receive his statuette at a ceremony next month.

Godard’s choice appears to be more about preference than politics, according to his wife. So, the little gold prize will have to wing its way to the 79-year-old director’s abode in Switzerland.  —KA

Arts Beat in The New York Times:

The question about Mr. Godard’s attendance at the Governors Awards has been an open one since the summer, when the academy said it would present honorary Oscars to Mr. Godard, the actor Eli Wallach, the film preservationist Kevin Brownlow and the director Francis Ford Coppola, who is receiving the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

At the time, Anne-Marie Miéville, Mr. Godard’s wife and collaborator, said her husband was put off by the fact that the award was being given out at an event held months before the Oscars ceremony.

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