At Saturday’s 33rd annual Producers Guild Awards, Steven Spielberg presented the 2022 Milestone Award to Lucasfilm creator George Lucas and its current president, Kathleen Kennedy.
Introducing the pair, longtime collaborator Spielberg, who has worked with both Lucas and Kennedy for decades, said: “I feel even in this room, we need to define what producers do. Producers do whatever the hell it takes. Courage and imagination and utter lack of intimidation, the producer needs to know everybody’s jobs, and not how to do them, but how they are done well, which is what makes George and Kathy so deserving of this recognition.”
Huge congratulations to the Milestone Award winners George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy! #PGAAwards @lucasfilm pic.twitter.com/fGSykORmco
— Producers Guild of America (@producersguild) March 20, 2022
In her acceptance speech, Kennedy said:
“As women, artists of color, LGBTQ and differently labeled artists and producers who have fought for and won a place at the table, propelling our community toward a more inclusive, diverse, richer, more sophisticated and nuanced sense of our responsibilities for social, racial and economic justice. There’s no one that I would rather share this moment with more than my friend, my mentor and the greatest master Jedi of them all: George.”
Lucas thanked his former mentor Francis Ford Coppola before giving an impassioned speech about a producer’s role in filmmaking.
“To me, that’s the first and foremost job of a producer, which is to do the impossible. And you do it every single day. And then every single day, something comes along to destroy everything you’ve done. And you have to pick it all up at lunch, and figure out a new way to finish the movie, in conjunction with the director, and it’s daunting to say the least. But a producer never works alone. One, you have to have a great crew. I’ve always had the best crews,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without them. And so I think my job also is to gather them all together and inspire them to be the best they can be.”
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