MERYL STREEP tells us that Shirley MacLaine, despite being a “highly opinionated person, is remarkably unjudgmental!” In return, when the chance came for MacLaine to talk about Streep, she calls her Postcards From the Edge costar “otherwordly.”
On another occasion, Streep describes Jane Fonda as having a “feral alertness.” Streep ascribes to Fonda a “presentness, which is unusual.”
Where can you find a sentimental Robert de Niro, with his tough and intimidating onscreen persona, delivering a speech while, all throughout, on the verge of tears. Henry Fonda talks about acting as kind of therapy for a shy young man. The actor calls acting as hiding behind a mask and pretending to be someone else. In his acceptance speech, the man who acted out very simple and accessible characters, Fonda never assumes a complex persona. He bares all in many ways, talking about pleasing his father because he loves him and he always seeks his approval.
It should be obvious, even with the small sample, that I have been obsessing with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award. I saw snippets of its various awarding ceremonies years ago. Presently, YouTube has long, extended videos of the ceremonies.
There is no dancing, no singing, just speeches. Then again, these are not “just” speeches but wonderfully crafted documentation, strangely, not of the genius of the honoree but of his humanity. The tributes in words are enough to hold the audience, composed generally of people with the biggest egos this side of the universe—film actors and actresses, movie stars as we also call them.
Now, if I’m talking many times about Streep, it is because she seems to be a favorite. She salutes MacLaine, Jane Fonda, de Niro and many more. There is the Streep aura that shines through her beautifully worded tributes.
Streep does not merely heap praises on the honoree; she teaches us as well why the person is being honored. Her stories about herself and the honoree—while, of course, dealing partly with her presence—never calls attention to herself. The night, therefore, does not become long extended hosanna. The night, in fact, is a tribute to a population of intelligent actors. This is not the showbiz that we love to lampoon; this is a community of artists with the sensitivity that makes them utterly compelling in their craft.
The tribute to MacLaine is a heartwarming one, introduced with Streep striding to the podium and producing vocabularies that are as valuable as the career of the honoree. Then the honoree is called and MacLaine celebrates all the women, and extols the virtues of the passive, the woman. For MacLaine, it was her mother, the passive one, who pushed her. Listen to your mother and listen to the women—those were the brave and original words from Maclaine.
The case of de Niro reveals to us the actor as a most sensitive person, to the point of being sentimental. Indeed those grouchy and menacing characters were roles he played. Outside the spotlight, de Niro is a man with enough vulnerability that validates where he gets the raw power of his performances.
Almost stealing the scene from de Niro is the opening speech of Billy Crystal. Hilarious, it paints de Niro as a scary character, paying tribute to those many gangster films he has done. It is, however, the words coming from Scorsese that seem to touch de Niro.
Almost stealing the scene from Al Pacino is the one-man-show tribute of the great Robin Williams. To all the punchlines and ribbing of the comedian is focused this intensely charming face of Pacino, the regular guy recklessly handsome.
The AFI Life Achievement Award viewed now is a wonderful lesson in film history. You meet and listen to the famous drawl of James Cagney, whose voice seems to be the most iconic of sounds coming from the silver screen. Met with a resounding applause and a standing ovation, Cagney waits for the applause to die down, pauses and delivers the line: “I am a wreck.” In accepting the award, Cagney calls himself as merely the custodian for all those wonderful guys and girls who worked through the years. Humility is golden when it comes from the original bad boy of cinema. Cagney also talks about art!
Who can forget about the legendary and underrated Barbara Stanwyck? She delivers a speech, which pays tribute as well to the film giant, Frank Capra, who taught her everything. Stanwyck narrates to the audience a Hollywood that is different from what it is now. Capra brought her to the recording room, the editing room, etc. In the end, the actress of those years knew all the processes of making films. For the actress, “each day was a learning process.”
The AFI Lifetime Achievement Award is unique in that the speeches of the honorees are as sterling and witty as of those handing out the honors. Being bestowed the honor, if the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award has a contest for the Best Speech, it should be Bette Davis’s. She opened her speech by saying, in that clipped English of hers, “I am not a song”—a reference to the Kim Carnes hit “Bette Davis Eyes”. Then Davis closes it by muttering, “I’d like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair,” a line from her 1932 film The Cabin in the Cotton.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have this funny, sentimental, irreverent, intelligent and human tribute in our midst, as we pay tribute to our actors and actresses, away from the media and truly away from those who honor film artists only to end up referring to their own perishable commodity of a talent?