Angela Basset, Mel confesses to receive honorary Oscars

Angela Bassett may have gone home empty-handed from the Oscars in March, but the two-time nominee will still receive a gold statuette this year – and in very good company.

In November, Bassett, Mel Brooks and film editor Carol Littleton will receive honorary Oscars at the Governors Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday.

Michelle Satter, the founder and senior director of artist programs at the Sundance Institute, will also receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the non-televised event.

“The Academy’s Board of Governors is pleased to honor four pioneers who have transformed the film industry and inspired generations of filmmakers and film fans,” Janet Yang, the Academy’s president, said in a statement.

Most recipients of the academy’s honor awards have not won competitive Oscars. Brooks is an exception, however, as he won an original screenplay Oscar for ‘The Producers’. At the ceremony, in 1969, he said he wanted to “thank the academy of arts and money for this wonderful award”. In his speech, which left the audience in the lurch, he also thanked Gene Wilder three times.

The 96-year-old, who began his career writing for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” would go on to write, direct, act, produce for film, television and Broadway and write books, including a recent memoir, over the next 70 years. is one of the rare types of EGOT winners. (Those are entertainers who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards.) He also received two other Oscar nominations, for writing the lyrics to John Morris’ song “Blazing Saddles” and another screenwriter for ” Young Frankenstein”, which he shared with Wilders.

“Mel Brooks lightens our hearts with his humor, and his legacy has had a lasting impact on every facet of entertainment,” said Yang.

Bassett, whose credits include “Boyz N the Hood,” “Malcolm X,” “Waiting to Exhale,” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” received her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Tina Turner in “What’s Love.” Got-to-Do”. With It,” and her second earlier this year for playing the grieving queen in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The 64-year-old told the AP earlier this year that “this moment has been so special, it’s been a career highlight.”

Yang said in a statement that “Angela Bassett has continued to deliver transcendent performances throughout her decades-long career that set new standards in acting.”

Littleton’s name may not be as instantly recognizable as the celebrities honored alongside him, but he has worked behind the scenes with top filmmakers for nearly five decades. The 81-year-old Oklahoma native often collaborated with both Lawrence Kasdan and Jonathan Demme, editing such films as “Body Heat,” “The Big Chill,” “Swimming to Cambodia,” and “The Manchurian Candidate.” She received her first and only Oscar nomination for ‘ET The Extra-Terrestrial’, the only film she edited for Steven Spielberg. She is also married to cinematographer and former Academy president John Bailey.

The honorary awards are given “in honor of extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of the motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.”

Meanwhile, for more than 40 years, Satter has directed the Sundance Institute’s renowned artist programs, helping filmmakers in the earliest stages of their careers, from Paul Thomas Anderson to Ryan Coogler.

The Governors Awards will be held November 18 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles.