Recap of the Governors Awards honoring Debbie Reynolds, Spike Lee and Gena Rowlands

The Governors Awards are now in their seventh year and no matter how big they become – and they have become quite big – there will be those who gripe that these honorary Academy Awards are no longer presented during the regular Oscar telecast.

Well, get over it.

Rather than being a blip during an already long evening, the recipients get the entire evening to themselves and are paid proper tribute and are wonderfully fussed over.

This is also a special night in the fall that kicks off the awards season and most people who hope to be nominated for an Oscar show up making this one of THE most star-studded evenings of the year. Among those in attendance on Saturday night were Denzel Washington, Daniel Craig, Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren, Will Smith, Jane Fonda, Cate Blanchett, Michael Caine, Rooney Mara, Peter Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Ian McKellen, Idris Elba, Brian Cranston, Laura Linney, Mark Rufallo and Amy Schumer, among others.

It was such a pity that one of those stars was not Debbie Reynolds who was being honored this year along with Spike Lee and Gena Rowlands. But she was represented so nicely by her actress granddaughter Billie Lourd who accepted the award for the ailing Debbie who is recovering from a recent surgery. Reynolds’ children Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher were also in attendance.

Fonda told the audience that the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was being presented to Reynolds “for the outstanding work she has done outside her day job to improve our city, our country and the world.”

Streep then presented the award to Lourd who said: “It seems super weird to be up here without her, because she’s always been the leader of our family at awards shows like this or back home. I truly have never seen her miss a show in her life. Unfortunately our leader needed a little backup tonight. I will be taking it home to her right now so we can cuddle with it and she can put it in a place she has always secretly saved for it – right next to the ruby red slippers.”

Blanchett took part in the presentation to Rowlands and praised the “intense authenticity” and immediacy of her performances which she called “as close as anyone has ever come to capturing on film that special quality, that presence of live stage performance. There is, quite simply, no membrane between Gena and her audience.”

It was then filmmakerNick Cassavetes who presented his mother Gena Rowlands with her Oscar.

“There’s a lot of great actresses in the room but she’s the best one on the planet,” he said of this truly great actress.

In her acceptance speech Rowlands said: “You know what’s wonderful about being an actress? You don’t live just one life – yours – you live many lives.”

Lee’s Oscar was presented by the trio of Washington, Smith, Jackson and Wesley Snipes. During his acceptance speech he called for more diversity in the film industry and pointed out that it has become easier for a black person to become President of the United States than to become head of a Hollywood film studio or TV network.

“We need to have some serious discussions about diversity and get some flavor up in this. [The] industry is so behind sports, it’s ridiculous,” he said.