3 days ago
4
About two weeks ago, Quincy Jones, one of the giants of American popular music, died at the age of 91. Before his passing, Jones was set to receive and honorary lifetime achievement Oscar. On Sunday night, the Academy held its annual Governors Awards, where both Quincy Jones and casting director Juliet Taylor were scheduled to receive the Academy Honorary Award. (Writer/director Richard Curtis and James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson also received honorary Oscars.) Quincy’s daughter Rashida Jones, a movie star in her own right, accepted her father’s posthumous Oscar in his place.
Quincy Jones’ work in the film world certainly deserves recognition. In the ’60s, when Black composers were rarely invited to score mainstream Hollywood films, Jones wrote the music for films like The Pawnbroker, In The Heat Of The Night, In Cold Blood, The Italian Job, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Jones remained in-demand in the ’70s, working on movies like The Getaway and The Hot Rock, and his work on Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz is what brought him into contact with Michael Jackson, his most famous collaborator. Later on, Jones produced and scored Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple. He was nominated for seven competitive Oscars, though he never won.
At last night’s Governors Award, an emotional Rashida Jones, flanked by her siblings, said that her father had been “excited” to receive his award. She said that she and Quincy were working on his speech, and she read off the speech that Quincy intended to give at the event:
I was always keenly aware of the power that we possessed as filmmakers — that the art we created, the stories we told, if we were lucky, had a chance to move people in ways that they could never imagine, to make society and the world a more understanding and embracing place for us all to exist. We’ve come a long way in our industry. When I was a young film composer, you didn’t even see faces of color working in the studio commissaries. I am so, so proud of the fact that my name and contributions can be included in that evolution.
Watch Rashida Jones give that speech below.
After Quincy’s passing, Rashida posted a lovely elegy on Instagram.
English (US) · 