In 1965, Martin Scorsese was 22 and was surrounded by legends when he won the Jesse L. Laskey Intercollegiate Award at the Milestone Awards dinner hosted by the then-called Screen Producers Guild on March 8, 1965. Now, almost 60 years later, the filmmaker received the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the 2024 PGA Awards in what he called a “full-circle” moment.
Guillermo del Toro introduced the Killers of the Flower Moon director and producer at Sunday’s award show, calling him an “indispensable titan.” When Scorsese, now 81, took the stage, he started to tell the story of the 1965 awards show and how he kissed German actress Elke Sommer on stage.
“On the stage, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Jack Benny, Samuel Goldwyn, Jack Warner and Norman Lear, Lew Wasserman, Julie Stein, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Janel Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and David O. Selznick,” said Scorsese. “They were the people on the dais at the 13th edition of this event on March 8, 1965… At the very end of the dais was me,” Scorsese continued. “I was all the way on the end. I was receiving the Jesse L. Laskey intercollegiate award for a film I made at NYU, 22 years old. I’m up here with all these people. Cary Grant was so gracious to me. Many of the others were gracious too. Elke Sommer gave me the award, I had get up here and I didn’t know what to do. I was taken aback… and I look over my right shoulder and Cary Grant is there and goes ‘kiss her!’ So I did!”
He then told the audience how Selznick’s Duel of the Sun, which he saw when he was four years old, inspired parts of Killers of the Flower Moon: “It’s the first film I can remember seeing by title. So the very first impact of classic Hollywood cinema starts right there for me. Slashes of color, movement, the landscapes, stunning set pieces like the dance in the cantina, the approaching horsemen lining up against the railroad, the mysticism of the film mixed with the profane. It’s played out on a larger-than-life screen by larger-than-life actors… At one point, Lionel Barrymore says… ‘There’s a strange glow in the sky tonight.’ Those figures of him in the buggy are silhouetted against a red sky. That’s 1946, I was four years old, and I was sure that those figures wound up in my film Killers of the Flower Moon, the sequence with the prairie on fire at night. It stayed with me all those years.”
At the end of his speech, the legendary filmmaker said, “I feel like it’s really come full-circle. I was 22 when Cary Grant told me to kiss Elke Sommer. Now I’m 81… and I’m glad I kissed her!”
When the PGA announced in December that Scorsese would be receiving the award, he said in a statement, “In March 1965, I was flown out to Los Angeles by the PGA to receive an award for my student film It’s Not Just You, Murray!. I was 22 at the time. At the same event, a much older filmmaker was also being honored. His name was Alfred Hitchcock. 58 years later, I’m proud to say that I am now the much older filmmaker. And I’m touched and extremely honored to be receiving an award named after a true legend among producers, David O. Selznick. It makes me feel like I’ve come full circle.”
The David O. Selznick Achievement Award recognizes producers for their outstanding body of work in motion pictures. Previous recipients of the Selznick Award include Steven Spielberg, Barbara Broccoli, Mary Parent, Tom Cruise, Brian Grazer, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and George Lucas.
At Sunday’s awards show, Gail Berman received the Norman Lear Achievement Award, while Charles D. King was honored with the Milestone Award, becoming the first Black person to receive the honor.
Click here for a full list of winners from the 2024 PGA Awards.