George Lucas Awarded National Medal of Arts

Here's the actual video clip from today's ceremony at the White House:



And, here it is again, with just the right "SW" touch added...

Congratulations, Mr. Lucas!

 

Hope there was a good presentation ceremony a la ANH and TPM.

Congratulations indeed!

 

Well deserved. Blockbuster movies just weren't the same afterwards.

 

I'm just gonna say what I know everyone's thinking... George Lucas is REALLY short and Barack Obama is REALLY tall.

 

Woo! The Force is with us. A very well deserved medal. Congratulations, George!

 

Yeah, I wonder what George thought about getting this award? I've never read a biography of him or read as many of his interviews, etc. as I'm sure a lot of fans here have, but from what I've seen he seems like he might be sort of shy about being recognized in this way. I thought he even looked a little shy about it in the video...does anyone have any insight into or thoughts about this?

 

I recently heard him say something along the lines of:

"I never win any awards. I mean, I win a lot of lifetime achievement awards and 'gee you're such a nice guy' awards, but I never win anything where they say 'and the winner is...'."

This might fall under the category of 'gee you're such a nice guy' awards, but still. The President of the United States of America. Come on.

 

I think since his falling out with Hollywood back in the day George has resigned himself to the fact that he's unlikely to be flavour of the month amongst the film establishment types. I'm sure he appreciates this type of recognition all the same - even if it is a bit of a Monty Burns Award.

 

That must be why that medal looked so big!

 

.."a Monty Burns Award"? I know who Monty Burns is but I'm not following...

I also looked up the description of the award. Any US citizen can nominate someone, and then the final selections are made by the National Council for the Arts. So it's at least partially a "people's choice" award (which maybe is more gratifying to GL anyway).

 

Yes, I think he'd appreciate this one more than your lifetime achievement, 'oh well, we better give him something after all these years I suppose' award.

Re: Monty ... http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Field_of_Excellence

 

He just won a Daytime Emmy for "THE CLONE WARS".

 

I actually pulled this paraphrase from an interview regarding that event.

 

he deserves more accolades then the crap he gets....nice one GL..... now if only you'd had more help tightening up the romantic dialouge it would have been perfect.....

 

He should have received that advice 34 years ago, when ESB was filming, as well. If you want to shoot off a complaint about his work, while praising him; I guess I might as well do the same.

 

The romantic dialogue WAS perfect! YOU JUST DON'T SEE IT!

 

and I thought I was the biggest GL gusher.... he is not perfect no film maker he is....but a damn good one