Here's a cool thing I worked on that you can watch for free
Wait, is Josh sharing something he worked on?
I almost never share the actual shows I worked on with people who I know. There are myriad reasons for this. I won’t bother getting into those reasons because there are few ways to give the rationale for that without potentially (and potentially unintentionally) denigrating the show or shows on which I’ve worked in the past.
A lot of them are ego/vanity-driven—oh, you moved to El-Eeh to CREATE and all you did on this show is make sure that the crew showed up on time and got fed.
Having said that, since I moved to LA back in 2015, I’ve worked on the American Cinematheque Award show in every year in which there’s been a live version—2020 being the obvious exception.
And pretty much every year, it’s been the highlight of my working year.
I won’t bother getting into the ins and outs of the working experience on the show, but it’s easily the show in which I’ve always had the most input, where my contribution has been most valued, and which has had the best end product. I wouldn’t deign to suggest that it’s because of my increased involvement because I’m still far from being in a position where I’m influencing any decisions being made, but it’s a pretty great show irrespective of my own inflated perception of my importance in the greater scheme of things.
And yet, it’s not been televised in any of the years in which I worked it (it used to be).
This is baffling to everyone working the show.
Year in and year out, the talent is jaw-dropping in its combination of A-listers and inarguably cool presenters. Not to give too much away, I’ve seen some insanely funny and/or heartfelt speeches from the likes of Seth Rogen, Seth McFarlane, Patton Oswalt, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Michael Shannon, Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zack Galifianakis, Kristen Stewart, Kristin Wiig, Lady Gaga, Jamie Lee Curtis, Matthew McConaughey, and Vince Vaughn—whose speech killed and, I know for a fact, was improvised, one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in person.
That’s just the highlight reel. There were more.
And I say it’s not televised, but it’s recorded for archival purposes every year.
I’ve never seen this recording reach the light of day.
That’s not the case this year.
This year’s honoree was Ryan Reynolds*.
*At this point, I should say that I rarely have any interaction with the talent, and certainly not with the honorees. I may be in the greenroom with them as they prepare for presenting, but that is literally the extent of it. Only the most observant of them would even know they were in a room with me, though my name is on a sheet of paper on the wall each of the last six shows or so.
The year-to-year talent who are able to appear in person varies depending on any number of reasons which are only negligibly related to the honoree. For example, the show happens in LA during the week, and most people probably don’t think about this that much, but very few films are shot in or around Los Angeles. It also tends to fall within a couple weeks of Thanksgiving, which also means that a lot of talent aren’t around, as they’ve jetted off to wherever they observe the holiday with their friends and family.
I’m not about to say who could or couldn’t be at the show, but there were a bunch of stars who were not able to be there who sincerely seemed to want to be at this year’s show to honor Ryan Reynolds.
And I’ll just say that it makes total sense.
This year’s show just showed up on Ryan’s (we’re so close… he’d totally call me, “Hey you”) YouTube feed. I was lucky enough to be there for it. This is the full playlist, ordered sequentially, on RYAN’s page.
Here’s Will Ferrell’s intro, which was fucking incredible.