PWC Blake Edwards Wins Honorary Oscar

American filmmaker Blake Edwards received an Honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement Sunday, February 29, at the Kodak Theater. The 81-year-old Edwards has been working in films since the 1940s, first as an actor, then more notably as a writer, director and producer. For almost 20 years he has suffered from chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, but he has continued to work during remissions of the illness.

The Oscar citation pays homage to Edwards “in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen” during his 60-year career. Edwards is best known for the 1961 classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the acclaimed drama The Days of Wine and Roses, the sex farce Victor/Victoria and his hilarious string of Pink Panther detective spoofs. Other films include Micki and Maude, 10, Operation Petticoat, The Great Race, S.O.B. and That’s Life.

When comedian Jim Carrey introduced Edwards at the Oscars, the filmmaker careened across the stage of the Kodak Theater in a wheelchair and crashed through a wall in an entrance worthy of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. He didn’t mention his struggle with CFIDS in his acceptance speech, but did talk about it with fellow filmmaker Kim Snyder in her award-winning 2001 documentary, I RememberMe.

In the documentary, Edwards poignantly and angrily describes his battle to get an accurate diagnosis and some kind of effective treatment. “I found it was very hard to articulate it or explain it except to say that my whole body was just one big boil, that I ached in very joint every second of the day and night.” Edwards describes how the infectious disease specialist he consulted in the 1980s “divorced” him after tests came back that totally threw the doctor. He told Edwards, “I have no answer for you. I don’t know what it is.”

To view a video clip featuring more of Edwards’s comments about his struggle with CFIDS from I Remember Me, visit one of the links below.

RealMedia Link
http://video1.radiotalk.com:8080/ramgen/Taylor/cfids/cfids3-04.rm

Windows Media Link
http://wm1.radiotalk.com/tcc/cfids2/cfids3-04.wmv