The other night, my wife and a friend of ours and I went to attend a screening of the new release of “Blade Runner” here in Los Angeles. This was part of the Jules Verne Adventures celebrations taking place at the Shrine Auditorium. We knew the night of the screening was part of some sort of awards ceremony, but none of us really paid any attention to it. We were going for the movie.
Well, we got in a little bit early, and the ceremonies were apparently running a bit late. We were treated to a fairly random gathering of folks on stage. Handling emcee duties for the evening was Malcolm McDowell. We became convinced rather quickly that he’d been hitting the bottle earlier that evening. After giving a fairly normal speech, he brought Patrick Stewart on stage. Stewart seemed…giggly. I don’t know how else to describe it. And while he was speaking, McDowell was constantly interrupting him. I mean, they both seemed to be having fun, but it was just weird how McDowell would interrupt with some inane comment for no good reason while Stewart was speaking.
After handing out some awards to various filmmakers, it was time to give out an achievement award, and so McDowell and Stewart brought onto the stage Mr. Ernest Borgnine. We were all a little surprised to learn that he’s still alive, but at times, he didn’t seem to know quite where he was. If you watch SpongeBob and know who Mermaid Man is, you’d almost think he was in character.
And then it was time for the biggest award of the evening, a sort of lifetime achievement award, which was presented to William Shatner. First, Shatner was presented with a gift – a handmade and symbolic blanked – by a tribe of Indians. In making funny, he said more than one thing that sounded borderline offensive (“When I first saw the blanket, I figured it was supposed to go on a horse”). Just weird and a bit uncomfortable. Then he started to make a speech, but Patrick Stewart interrupted him because he’d prepared this really long speech about Shatner that he wanted to get out first. So Stewart went on with this speech about Shatner. Which Shatner kept interrupting. And then Stewart trying to rush through the second half of the interminable speech. And having Shatner interrupt to make fun of him for trying to rush through it because he was taking forever.
The whole thing was surreal and funny, although not always intentionally. The movie finally started about an hour late. And for the first five minutes or so, we could hear Malcolm McDowell muttering commentary off-stage because his microphone was still on. We were grateful that he didn’t make a bathroom trip, at least.
All in all, we got our $20 worth!