Dr. Donald A. Reed
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Saturn Award celebration, memorable acceptance speeches

Last night the motto of CINESCAPE magazine as "The crossroads of genre entertainment" and the work we do and celebrate coalesced for a few hours into something every fan of the movies and shows we all love can glory in.

With the sponsorship of this magazine, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films handed out the 28th annual Saturn Awards at the St. Regis Hotel in Century City, Calif.

Unlike the Oscars, the Emmys and the Grammys, the Saturn Awards were not televised (though the pre-show of arrivals will be broadcast on Canada's Space Channel in the near future), which might have prompted the givers and receivers of the genre's highest honors to grandstand for millions, but were given by the greatest lovers of the genre to its greatest practitioners. Something about this dynamic turned the evening into a real, full celebration of the televised and cinematic creations we all love.

So here, we bring you some of the more memorable quotes of the evening as industry figures like Stan Lee (SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN and a thousand other Marvel myths), Steven Spielberg (A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE) and Peter Jackson (THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING) received their honors.

The evening, hosted with adroit humor by Fred Willard (BEST IN SHOW, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN), was held as "a celebration of the genre we love, the franchises which inspire our dreams and take our money."

The awards kicked off with Sherry Lansing receiving the Academy's highest honor, the first Dr. Donald A. Reed Award for her body of work both as a producer and a shepherd of a multitude of hits as the president of Paramount Pictures. After being lauded by producer Dean Devlin (GODZILLA, INDEPENDENCE DAY) and glorying in a standing ovation, Lansing said the award was a specific joy because Reed, a longtime pillar of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror above all realized and reveled in the crowd-pleasing aspects of genre films.

While picking up the Saturn for the best action/adventure/thriller film, MEMENTO producer Suzanne Todd thanked the academy and said the statue was a special joy because the best thing the Academy did was "recognize films that get little recognition."

Next up was a clearly moved Drew Struzen, who garnered a Life Career Award for his work as an iconic movie poster painter of the last 25 years. If the name doesn't ring a bell, maybe the art does. He did the posters for all the STAR WARS films, the INDIANA JONES trilogy, the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy, E.T. and more than can be listed here. Quiet, a bit shy and unassuming, Struzen joked in front of a crowd of several hundred that he was used to letting his art do his talking, adding, "I wish I could let my art talk for me now."

Legendary creature maker Stan Winston brought both a laugh and a lump to the throats of all attendees with his acceptance for best special effects for A.I. Riffing off Sally Field's legendary Academy Award speech, Winston (the TERMINATOR films, JURASSIC PARK) said, "You like me. But more importantly for all of us here today... you are like me. We're all here because we love this."

While picking up the award voted for by our own readers, the Cinescape Female Face of the Future Award, ENTERPRISE's Jolene Blalock thanked the show's creators Brannon Braga and Rick Berman for "seeing something alien in me."

While accepting the George Pal Memorial award posthumously on behalf of their father Samuel Z. Arkoff (producer of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, TEENAGE CAVEMAN, AMITYVILLE HORROR and many more) Lou Arkoff and his sister Donna Roth teased laughs out of the attendees with childhood stories from the Arkoff house. Lou recounted being able to keep foam creatures in his room after his father was done with them in his films. He recounted scaring the family dog until it would not go into his room, and Donna talked about having to name a litter of puppies Frankenstein, Dracula, Spider and other horror-inspired names, and never thinking anything was odd about it.

When receiving the award for best network television series, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER creator Joss Whedon proclaimed a never-ending loyalty to the genre he loves, and voiced a rousing defense of this area of entertainment, which is looked down on by some outside it.

"I've been told some of what I do is so good it transcends the genre," Whedon recounted, "but I don't believe in transcending the genre. I believe in the genre! My stepfather keeps asking me when I'm going to do something without vampires or spaceships or aliens or whatever, and I'm proud to say never!"

Michael Rosenbaum, while receiving the award for best supporting actor on TV for his work as Lex Luthor on SMALLVILLE, punned off the name of the Saturn, and said he was expecting to be awarded a Saturn car before he was filled in on the particulars of the evening. He joked it was his first award since getting the most-improved speller in grade school.

Taking the award for best actor in a television series, FARSCAPE's Ben Browder gushed, "I'm just jazzed to be on the show, man! ... I'm glad I get to pretend this [award] belongs to me, but it belongs to the thousands of people ... who work on our show."

Then he eloquently lauded the fans as, "the people who put the bucks in BUCK ROGERS."

One of the highlights of the evening was Steven Spielberg taking the best writing award for his script for A.I. , though he was quick to point out he worked off a 95-page treatment from the late, great Stanley Kubrick, and that if Kubrick had simply put his work into a script format, the Writers Guild of America would have recognized him as one of the film's screenwriters. Spielberg also defended the genre, asking everyone there to remember whenever they have second thoughts about working within it, that nine of the 10 biggest-grossing films of all time are genre films. He got a standing ovation. While taking the award for A.I. as best science fiction film, Spielberg admitted picking up where Kubrick had left off on the project was the biggest career risk he's ever taken. Holding the award, Spielberg said he was glad he took the risk.

Riffing off a persistent Saturn awards problem, MC Willard said as soon as Spielberg left the stage that, considering that Spielberg could find the time to make an appearance, anyone who couldn't be bothered to show up at the Saturn Awards to get their statues in the future should have their honors taken away.

But the biggest reaction of the night was when Nicolas Cage presented Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee with the Life Career Award.

"He's the reason I learned to read," Cage crowed in preparation for giving Lee the award. "I even took my name form one of his characters, Luke Cage, Hero For Hire.

After enjoying a thundering, standing ovation, Lee trumped up the genre he loves, the pop myths of movies and comic books, saying that while for years he toiled with little respect because of how some see genre fare, that now with "HARRY POTTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, ATTACK OF THE CLONES and a little trifle called SPIDER-MAN, the rest of the world is catching up to where we've been all along."

For the full list of winners, click on the Saturn Award winners story elsewhere in this news section, and be sure to check back here over the next week for quotes about upcoming projects from Joss Whedon, Dean Devlin, Robert Englund, Rob Bowman (REIGN OF FIRE, X-FILES) Stan Winston, Stan Lee and many, many, many more.