A funny thing happened on the way to the American Film Institute greeting their picks for the 10 Best Movies and TV Shows of 2022 at their annual AFI Awards Luncheon on Friday.
Al Pacino appeared.
Of course, Pacino was a guest who took the usual place that the AFI gives an actor to deliver closing remarks at the annual event; It’s not like he’s crashing the party or anything.
Then again, he made some kind of accident in the party, turning a quiet, elegant affair on its head with a rambling, rambling, uproarious speech that ultimately made him tell the story of his trip to the Oscars in 1974.
It wasn’t clear what exactly he had to do with the best filmed entertainment of 2022, but it was Al Pacino and he has the right, and certainly the ability, to hijack any event he wants in the most entertaining way.
AFI’s annual luncheon, which has not been held in person for three years due to the pandemic, is a quiet ritual that AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale described as “no envelopes, no speeches, no sweat.” ”. In other words, the awards have already been announced and all creators have to do is show up, mingle, have lunch, and watch some cleverly assembled movie bits that make a good case for the honorees.
(The “reasons” that describe why each work is honored are, to be honest, a bit flowery, but so was Pacino and everyone loved him.)
For 2022, the TV honorees were “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear,” “Better Call Saul,” “Hacks,” “Mo,” “Pachinko,” “Reservation Dogs,” “Severance,” “Somebody Somewhere,” and ” The White Lotus”, while the film awards went to “Avatar: The Way of Water”, “Elvis”, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, “The Fabelmans”, “Nope”, “She Said”, “Tár ”, “Top Gun: Maverick”, “The Woman King” and “Women Talking”, in addition to a special award for the ineligible (because it is not an American production) “The Banshees of Inisherin”.
In the opening stretches of the event without Pacino, guests from all the films mixed, with mutual admiration societies springing up all over the room at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Steven Spielberg told Quinta Brunson he loved “Abbott Elementary,” “She Said” stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan hooked up with “Banshees” director Martin McDonagh and star Barry Keoghan, “Nope” actor Steven Yeun exchanged pleasantries with “Severance” star Adam Scott and photographers swarmed the packed room whenever two prominent people stood side by side. In the foyer, the room’s center of gravity shifted as Disney’s Bob Iger and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos chatted for a moment.
A somber note struck when Baz Luhrmann and the “Elvis” crew arrived less than 24 hours after the announcement of the death of Lisa Marie Presley, who had voiced her support for the film about her father. Luhrmann sported a shocked look, while actor Austin Butler, who played Elvis and became very close to the Presley family, opted not to turn up at an awards event so soon after the death.
Gazzale began the program by calling for a moment of silence to support the anonymous honorees “who attend with a heavy heart,” before moving on to the film clips that are the heart of the show: first a reel of “March of Time” that began in 1912 and then jumped forward 10 years at a time, entering a fast-paced montage that mixes up all the AFI-honored work for 2022.
The clips that followed were scenes rather than trailer-like montages, a more effective way to highlight movies and shows. And then Gazzale called Pacino, who spent the first five minutes or so talking about why watching all these great videos made him think he shouldn’t tell the story he planned to tell because it would change the tone of the evening. and maybe be too offensive.
He said that a couple of times, then jumped into the story anyway. She started with him setting the scene from early in his career, when, she said, drugs and alcohol “were my feed. They helped me with a lot of things, I have to admit.” A pause. “I am not defending that please! I’m just talking here!
With the scene set, he described reluctantly going to an Oscars ceremony with his girlfriend at the time, Diane Keaton. (He didn’t mention the year, but it was clearly 1974, when he was nominated for “Serpico.”) “Diane sat on one side of me and the great Jeff Bridges sat on the other,” he said. “I was taking Valium, taking all kinds of things. He was already drunk when I got there.”
In that frame of mind, Pacino said that he sat in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as the show continued, and just before it reached the one-hour mark, he said, “I turned to Jeff Bridges in my stupor and asked him, ‘ I guess they’re not going to get Best Actor?’
“And he said, ‘What?’
“I said, ‘Time’s up.’
“He said, ‘What time?’
“I said, ‘Showtime.’
“And he said: ‘It is three hours, man.’ Well, then he was in the grieving stages.”
Pacino said he went to the Oscars convinced he wasn’t going to win, but slowly through his drug-induced haze one nagging thought occurred to him: “What if do To win?”
“You know I can’t get to the damn stage,” he said. “Am so gone.”
Eventually, they made it to the Best Actor category and read the envelope: Jack Lemmon for save the tiger. “
“Well, you couldn’t hold me in the seat,” he said, yelling, “I was so fucking happy!”
Pacino’s speech turned more sentimental during the last few minutes, but at the time it hardly mattered. On an afternoon dedicated to the best of 2022, everyone in the room would go home with lasting memories of an Al Pacino placed in the 1974 Academy Awards.
And hey, there’s nothing wrong with that.
