At the annual AFI Top Ten Awards lunch, AFI president Bob Gazzale soberly referenced the chaos in the world outside as he applauded the astonishing assemblage of film and television talent inside the ballroom at the Four Seasons Hotel. “What do we have to celebrate?” he asked. “Because we need you, because we need your stories to help us make sense of emotions that we cannot escape, nor should we escape them. We’re human, and we need each other. Just look around. So this gathering is our annual grace to say thank you and to say we love you.”
This celebration of the top 10 jury-voted lists for film and television is always a big draw for talent and their studio chiefs. No one has to make a speech, and mingling freely were the likes of Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos and his movie chairman Dan Lin (“The Diplomat,” “Train Dreams,” “Death by Lightning,” “Frankenstein,” and “Adolescence”), NBC/Universal chairman Donna Langley (“Wicked: For Good,” “Bugonia,” and “Hamnet”) and producer Steven Spielberg (“Hamnet”), Apple CEO Tim Cook (“Severance,” “The Studio,” and “Pluribus”), Warner Bros. motion picture chiefs Pamela Abdy and Michael DeLuca (“One Battle After Another,” “Sinners”), FX’s John Landgraf (“The Lowdown”), HBO’s Casey Bloys (“The Pitt,” “Task”), Disney’s Lucasfilm producer Kathleen Kennedy (“Andor”) and producer-writer-director James Cameron (“Avatar: Fire and Ash”), and A24’s David Frankel (“Marty Supreme”).
Hobnobbing ahead of the lunch, Ethan Hawke (“The Lowdown”) buttonholed George Clooney (“Jay Kelly”), who were then joined by Gwyneth Paltrow (“Marty Supreme”), “Frankenstein” star Jacob Elordi hung with the film’s composer Alexandre Desplat, “The Diplomat” star Rufus Sewell approached Stellan Skarsgård (“Sentimental Value”), and Edward James Olmos grabbed a selfie with Benicio del Toro (“One Battle After Another”). Del Toro said that the claims that he arrived on set with a full plotline for his Sensei character were somewhat overblown. They all worked it out, he said, as Paul Thomas Anderson rewrote the script. “Sinners” Critics Choice Casting winner Francine Maisler told 20-year-old Miles Canton (CCA’s Best Young Actor and SAG’s Actor Award nominee) to take his time choosing his next role.
“Hamnet” Best Actress Oscar frontrunner and new mother Jessie Buckley, sleek in black leather, told me that Maggie Gyllenhaal’s take on “The Bride!” (Warner Bros., March 6), which finds a mate (Buckley) for Frankenstein (Christian Bale), is “a punk gothic romance,” she said.
Executives from the likes of Netflix, Focus, and Neon (which is juggling five Best International Feature contenders) not only have to get through the rest of awards season, but are heading for Sundance to see if there’s anything there to buy. DeLuca is impatiently waiting to get clearance on a name for the studio’s new indie acquisitions label, run by ex-Neon rising star Christian Parkes. (Warner Bros. Independent is not a candidate.)
Eventually the tables settled down, as applause rippled across the room at the announcement of each of the ten film and TV winners and their clips. Summoning the most applause, the scene from Oscar frontrunner “One Battle After Another” featured an hilarious contretemps between Leonardo DiCaprio and his daughter (Chase Infiniti) before she heads out for prom night. (Both were on hand.) And the rousing music-eras scene from “Sinners” brought down the house, to the delight of Ryan Coogler and Michael B.Jordan.
Those two films will be duking out with “Frankenstein” for the most nominations on January 22.