Godard’s view of 2010 Governors Awards: “It’s not the Oscars.”

If the Academy Board of Governors isn’t aware of the damage they’ve done to the perception of lifetime achievement Oscars, maybe the reaction from one of this year’s legendary recipients will help it sink in. In hearing how the BoG have dishonored the honorary Oscars by relegating it to a private dinner party, Jean-Luc Godard feels it’s not really worth flying to America for a free meal in a banquet room. His wife Anne-Marie Mieville says Godard’s advanced age was also a factor, but THR reports she “made clear the director, 79, had issues with the fact that the honorary Oscar was no longer part of the Oscar telecast.”

“He just told me, it’s not the Oscars,'” Mieville said. “At first he thought it was going to be part of the same ceremony, then he realized it was a separate thing in November.”

…Mieville said Godard will respond to the Academy’s letter notifying him of his honor, and raised the possibility that someone from Godard’s production team may accept the award instead of him.

But if the Academy was hoping to be left with warm and fuzzy feelings, Mieville probably didn’t do so when she added, “Would you go all that way just for a bit of metal?”

Maybe the next dignified step for Board of Governors to consider would be to have somebody stand behind the Honorary Oscar recipients, looking over their shoulders during the meal. “Eat those peas. No Oscar for you until you clean your plate.”

The Oscar producers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Swarovski crystal curtain to glam up the stage of the Kodak Theater. But they’re only creating a big glitzy scene from Burlesque if they insist on schlepping off the real stars of cinema on a shuttle bus to a backroom ballroom.