|
JUNE 8, 2006: Sir Sean Connery
34th AFI Life Achievement Award DVD
— Sean Connery definitely didn't get away Scot free at his lifetime achievement award.
1. The 34th annual American Film Institute ceremony honoring the actor was part tribute and part roast as actors such as Pierce Brosnan, Andy Garcia, Harrison Ford and Tippi Hedren teased the man of the evening.
There were jokes about his advancing age (75), his longtime eagerness to escape the movie set and play golf, and his perpetual use of a Scottish accent even when playing characters who are Russian, Egyptian or Irish.
Brosnan, who paid tribute to Connery's inauguration of the James Bond character in such movies as Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball, recalled meeting the elder Bondsman when he was shooting 1999's The World Is Not Enough.
"One day I had to shoot this massive stunt, a huge fireball sequence. The shot required me getting on these wires," Brosnan said. "Anyway I did it – but out in the (studio) parking lot I looked up and there was the big man, Sean Connery. He said, 'I've just seen what you did there. Very good.'
I was silent, and then he asked me a question, one that has stayed with me to this very day. He said, 'Are they paying you enough money?'"
Andy Garcia, who played opposite Connery's Oscar-winning supporting role as a Chicago cop in The Untouchables, said the actor tended to show up for rehearsals in "red, polyester golf pants" so he could drift away periodically to the links.
"He worked for, like, five minutes after 18 holes of golf. After the scene I said, 'That was very clever of you, you came in already dressed for golf, you play the scene at the end of the day, you came in and said one line, they get a big close-up of you and the scene is over.'
He said, 'It's not my first barbecue.'"
Practically every anecdote was accompanied by a rough imitation of the Connery's Scottish growl.
Harrison Ford addressed Connery as "Dad …," a reference to Connery playing his father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Star Wars creator George Lucas teased Connery for considering retirement when he's still trying – after many years – to get a fourth Indiana Jones movie on the screens.
Connery was unsentimental when accepting the award, which has previously been given to Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg and Elizabeth Taylor.
He said the retrospective of his films "brought back to me lots of terrific memories of working with people who are fun, industrious, talented and enthusiastic. …. The rest of you, well – you know who you are. Making movies is either a utopia or its like shoveling (expletive) uphill."
1ST CLASS MAIL WITH DELIVERY CONFIRMATION $4.00 USA & CANADA
ALL OTHER COUNTRIES $5.00 AIR LETTER POST |
