AFI Awards Classes Up The Oscar Race; TCM Celebrates 30 Years Of Classics; Universal Parties The Night Away – Notes On The Season

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.

One of my very favorite events, if not the favorite of all of Oscar season, is the AFI Awards, which started a wild holiday weekend of awards ceremonies and parties. All that will culminate in the Primetime Emmys Monday night, and then the end of Oscar nomination voting on Tuesday at 5 PM PT. In other words, this is crunch time.

More from Deadline

• Antoine Fuqua's Michael Jackson Biopic Gets Global Release Date Via Lionsgate & Universal

• International Box Office 2023: Turnstiles Danced With Growth In Key Markets While The Floor For Big Titles Dropped & China Shrugged; Global Studio Rankings 

• Universal's Melissa Barrera & Angus Cloud Monster Thriller From Radio Silence Gets Title & Trailer

But for a brief three hours or so (including mingling time), AFI CEO and President Bob Gazzale reminded everyone in a room you want to be in at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel, that everyone there was a winner, no “losers” in sight, unlike other awards shows which also charge you to buy a table for the honor of being recognized. No, the AFI Awards are as pure as it gets- no speeches except for Gazzale, the chairs of the movie and television juries selecting the 10 best films and shows of 2023, and a final benediction by a distinguished guest, this year 91-year-old Ellen Burstyn, who began by announcing the problem with being 91.

“I wrote my remarks down on this piece of paper but I forgot to bring my glasses,” she lamented, but then charmingly got on with it flawlessly anyway, as she described her joy in being a part of the same “tribe” as everyone else in this ballroom that was filled with tables, each representing the best of the best this awards season.

Gazzale did point out that although everyone is equal at the AFI Awards, there were three people present who actually could be separated from the pack, and that was the three past AFI Life Achievement Award honorees attending because they were a part of a movie or TV show this year. That’s long after getting a career tribute from AFI that has kept them fully in the game and still doing work “that stands the test of time,” as AFI likes to say. They would be Steven Spielberg, producer of Maestro, one of AFI’s chosen 10 films, and Steve Martin and Meryl Streep, who both starred in season three of Only Murders In The Building.

In addition to Maestro, the other movies singled out by Jury head Ann Hornaday, Chief Film Critic for the Washington Post, were American Fiction, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers Of The Flower Moon, May December, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.

On the TV side, in addition to Only Murders In The Building, those who made the cut as read by TV Jury head Rich Frank were Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Beef, Jury Duty, The Last Of Us, The Morning Show, Poker Face, Reservation Dogs, and Succession.

Each of the honored works had a specially chosen clip, and one of the great pleasures of this event is that those clips aren’t at the whim of the studio or network or streamer, but by AFI themselves. And to the last one, they were exceptional, really getting to the essence of proving why they were on this list. Watching these unfold, you could forget for just a moment that it isn’t about the chase for the gold at all, it is in the end all about the work.

The attendees (whom you can see in the photo gallery Deadline published on Friday) included studio heads like Bob Iger, Donna Langley, Tom Rothman, David Zaslav, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, and many other executives. There were also filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Alexander Payne, Todd Haynes, and many many actors who have been in this room before, like Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Paul Giamatti, Leonardo DiCaprio, Emma Stone, Bradley Cooper, Robert Downey Jr., Margot Robbie, Sterling K. Brown, Jennifer Aniston, and also some there for the first time, including Martin Short (“Everyone keeps telling me what a great event this is,” he told me as he entered), Charles Melton, Lily Gladstone, Cillian Murphy, America Ferrera, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, James Marsden, among many others, including Greta Lee, a star of the film Past Lives and the TV series The Morning Show, who was the only person this year to have a key connection to both a movie and TV honored achievement.

Of course, it is always fun to get to talk to everyone. I happened to be chatting with Nolan when all of a sudden Barbie herself, Margot Robbie, walked up and could not contain herself from geeking all over him about how great she thought Oppenheimer was, telling him a story about the air conditioning being off in the theater. “That made it especially hot, which seemed right,” she laughed. I told both “Wow, this is the ultimate Barbenheimer moment, isn’t it?”

I congratulated Gerwig on all the awards love for Barbie just this week alone. I noted she may have set a record for AFI as a filmmaker whose first three solo directing feature film achievements put her at the AFI Awards all three times. She loved the vibe and simply said it was so nice to be recognized this way. Alexander Payne flew in overnight from New York, where he had presented the new restoration of The Black Pirate at Moma. Payne, a true film aficionado, said the 1926 Douglas Fairbanks classic had never looked so good. Nolan told me that after this lunch, he would be recording his intros for Turner Classic Movies, as he was selected as February’s esteemed filmmaker who got to choose five favorites to highlight on TCM. They include Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the 1964 Jules Dassin caper comedy, Topkapi, which he has participated in its restoration with The Film Foundation, bringing much needed new life to the film that won Peter Ustinov his second Supporting Actor Oscar and that will be celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Nolan, like Payne and Spielberg, Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, are among the filmmakers using their clout to really save the classics from fading into oblivion.

Here is the classic and beautifully edited March Of Time reel shown every year at this AFI event, and even better than ever this year.

A 30TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY FOR TCM

And speaking of all that, right after the AFI Awards lunch, some of the attendees walked across the lobby to TCM’s 30th Anniversary reception, including Spielberg, who, with Anderson and Scorsese (who is skipping this weekend’s awards activities and is staying in New York after receiving top film honors from the National Board Of Review on Thursday night), along with with Warner Bros’ Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, have all just signed on for another year of consultancy for the classic movie channel. Many feared it was going to disappear after key executives were let go shortly after the Warner Bros./Discovery merger.

Instead, because of this filmmaking quintet, it is once again thriving, with some of those execs thankfully reinstated, and as detailed in remarks by DeLuca, Abdy, and once-banished then restored programming guru Charlie Tabesh, more vibrant than ever, with a promise to keep it untouched.

Spielberg told me he, Scorsese, and Anderson had only two days to prepare a plan to help resuscitate TCM to its once and future glory. He gave great credit to Zaslav for giving them the power to make it happen, and in pure Hollywood tradition, there is now a happy ending for TCM, and an even happier new beginning.

Spielberg also told me a story about working with director/star Bradley Cooper on Maestro, and getting a call from his other producer on the film, Kristie Macosko Krieger, about the Thanksgiving Day argument scene between Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia, so brilliantly played by Cooper and Carey Mulligan.

“She said ‘Bradley isn’t going to shoot any coverage on the scene’, and I said, ‘What did you say? No coverage?’ But that was the case,” Spielberg said of the dicey decision, and wondering at the time why he would do that. “Still, I said, it is his movie, and when I looked at dailies of the scene the next day, I knew he was right.” Spielberg is very proud of the movie that he himself was once considering to direct. But clearly, he made the right choice in not only having Cooper star, but go behind the camera.

Anderson, by the way, was wearing a mask at the TCM event, as he is deep in preparation for shooting his next film for Warner Bros. that starts in just 11 days, and he was taking no chance in exposing himself to any health issues before going on set for the film. It will star Leonardo DiCaprio. Unlike his last, brilliant, Licorice Pizza, which shot in L.A., this untitled film is going to be in production in several locations around the country. No release date has been announced, but it is likely for 2025.

UNIVERSAL RAISES A TOAST TO 2023 SUCCESS

Finally, on Friday, Universal threw a crowded and starry party to celebrate its success as the number one studio of 2023, and its box office and awards run so far, with movies like Oppenheimer and Focus Features’ The Holdovers, which both had a great night of wins at the Golden Globes and are roaring into Oscar contention.

Donna Langley, as she did last year, proudly touted all the year’s accomplishments, and led the toast at the party, which not only drew everyone from the aforementioned movies, but also the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Olivia Wilde, Snoop Dogg, Colman Domingo, and countless others.

In fact, Domingo jumped into the front of the cast and crew Oppenheimer photo opp, perhaps confusing people that in addition to Rustin and The Color Purple, he has yet another 2023 movie credit (no, he is not in Oppenheimer).

I hopped into one of the Sunset Tower’s restaurant booths to chat with newly mined Golden Globe winner Robert Downey Jr., who you can bet is heading towards his third Oscar nomination for his brilliant supporting turn in Oppenheimer.

We talked about his feelings on how the whole Oscar campaign season thing has become much more intense since his first two times around this particular block. For 1992’s Chaplin, which won him a Best Actor nomination, he basically knew nothing about the process and was told it was gonna finally be Al Pacino’s year, “as it should be,” he said. So he didn’t worry about winning, and was shocked when he won the BAFTA award, not even attending.

“The director Dickie Attenborough accepted for me. I just didn’t think I had a chance,” he said. For 2008’s Tropic Thunder, his Supporting nomination also came as a surprise, because comedy rarely gets recognized. I told him I thought he deserved a nomination for The Judge in 2014, but he said at least they were able to get a supporting nom for the great Robert Duvall, who played his father.

This time, he thinks it feels a little more likely to be considered, due to the film and the role. He is off to a good start with that brand new Globe. Downey also talked about having met with Nolan in the past for roles he knew he wouldn’t get (Batman Begins might have been one of them, he recalls). But clearly, the timing was right when the director called and offered the job.

On to Critics Choice Awards Sunday, and the Primetime Emmys Monday. No rest for the weary.

Best of Deadline

• Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2024: Photo Gallery & Obituaries

• 2024 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming

• TV Cancellations Photo Gallery: Series Ending In 2024 & Beyond

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.