GODARD WON’T APPEAR FOR OSCAR CEREMONY AFTER ALL

Legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard, who initially failed to acknowledge a letter from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences notifying him that he had been selected to receive an honorary Oscar this year, then wrote that he would attend “schedule permitting,” has now said that he will regretfully not appear after all. The award was to have been presented to him, along with Kevin Brownlow, Francis Ford Coppola and Eli Wallach, at the November 13 Governor Awards dinner, and initially it was reported that Godard may have been miffed that the presentation was not to have been made during the internationally televised awards ceremony in February. One writer suggested that Godard rarely makes long trips because they prevent him from chain smoking his Gitanes cigarettes. Others suggested however, that Godard simply disdains such events. In 2007, he failed to show up to receive a lifetime career award from the European Film Academy, writing to the organizers, “I say at the same time ‘thank you’ and ‘no, thank you.’ … When someone says I have created a life’s work, I have to accept this. But it is my way of criticism not to go there. I don’t have the impression that I have made a career.”