Quincy Jones, Bond producers, celebrated at honorary Oscars event

LOS ANGELES (AP):

The family of Quincy Jones was not sure they wanted to attend the Governors Awards.

Their father died two weeks before he could accept his second honorary Oscar, alongside Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, filmmaker Richard Curtis and casting director Juliet Taylor.

But the Jones family decided to show up for the event Sunday night in Hollywood for a celebration of his life and work with humour from Jamie Foxx, a rousing performance by Jennifer Hudson and a moment with his family. His daughter Rashida Jones even read the speech he had been working on up until a month ago.

“We felt like we wanted to celebrate his beautiful life and career,” she said. “His music has literally defined an entire century of culture spanning genres.”

It was a moving end to a celebratory evening that had Hugh Grant roasting Curtis for getting a “kind of Oscar” and Daniel Craig celebrating the legacy of the James Bond films.

The audience in the Ray Dolby Ballroom was starrier than even the Oscars. The event, put on by the film academy’s board of governors, is also a de-facto campaign stop for Oscar hopefuls as awards season gets underway.

Everywhere you looked there were famous faces greeting one another: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson at the bar ordering a margarita on the rocks; Jude Law and Kristen Wiig exchanging hellos; Zooey Deschanel sipping champagne; Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz Beckham wandering around; Saoirse Ronan and Elizabeth Olsen deep in conversation; Sharon Stone hugging Kieran Culkin; Jesse Eisenberg chatting with Elle Fanning; and Jeremy Strong taking a selfie with Guy Pearce.

Others remained near their seats, like Jennifer Lawrence, June Squibb and Angelina Jolie, who attended alongside her son Knox Jolie-Pitt. They sat beside her Maria director Pablo Larraín and across from His Three Daughters stars Natasha Lyonne and Olson. At another table, Barry Keoghan kept making his way to Margarat Qualley’s side, squeezing in between her and Demi Moore.

But most of the schmoozing subsided for the main event. With no television cameras or band to play anyone off during a speech, it is a night during which friends and colleagues can pay tribute to the year’s honorary Oscar recipients.

Barbara Broccoli and her brother Wilson followed in her father’s footsteps receiving the rarely given Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, celebrating the work of producers. Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli accepted his own trophy, then a bust of Thalberg, at the 1982 Academy Awards as they looked on from the audience.

Nicole Kidman presented the honorary Oscar to Juliet Taylor, a casting director unaccustomed to being publicly celebrated for her contributions to cinema. In her career of more than four decades, she cast classics like Annie Hall, Working Girl, Sleepless in Seattle and Schindler’s List.

There were many sombre references throughout the evening to the events of the “last few weeks,” although no one speaking from the stage said anything much more specific. Jamie Foxx, introducing the Quincy Jones tribute, did his own little impersonation of President Elect Donald Trump.

Foxx quickly got back on track to speak about Jones, whose celebration closed out the evening on a cathartic note.

“He was really excited to attend tonight,” Rashida Jones said. “He has so many friends in this room. Well, actually, probably in every room to be honest because wherever he went he made connections with everyone. Real ones. He knew how to stay present, to stay curious, to stay loving.”

Jones invited the audience to listen on the way home, to go for the deepest cuts.

“There’s an entire universe waiting in his seven decades of music,” she said. “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.”