Kennedy Center Honors Features Salutes To Francis Ford Coppola, The Grateful Dead And Bonnie Raitt — And A Sendoff To Joe Biden

At Sunday’s Kennedy Center Honors, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro each appeared on stage to give special tributes to Francis Ford Coppola, while Al Pacino called him a trailblazer willing to break the first rule of Hollywood: Never put your own money in your movie projects.

Julia Louis Dreyfus said that when honoree Bonnie Raitt “sings and plays, you know instantly that it’s Bonnie Raitt. It’s just all red hair and no bulls—.”

After testimonials for honoree The Grateful Dead from figures like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, David Letterman popped out of a prop Deadhead’s VW van and declared, “I’m so f—ed up.”

Then Letterman threw in a quip about the trepidation of what’s ahead.

“I was talking to people backstage, and they are going to get as many of these honors in place now before the inauguration,” Letterman said, as the audience clapped and cheered.

His comment was a reference to incoming president Donald Trump who, although he was not named, certainly was on the minds of many of the politicos, entertainers, media personalities and government VIPs for this year’s annual event.

That was evident in the loud ovation attendees gave to Trump’s successor and now predecessor, Joe Biden, who in the last four years restored the presidential traditions surrounding the ceremony, including annual attendance and the staging of a pre-event White House reception.

“There is no law that requires the president of the United States to host the Kennedy Center honors at the White House or attend this, but for four years, President Biden and Dr. Biden have been gracious hosts to us,” David Rubenstein, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, said to the crowd.

Few other D.C. events bring together so many of the Beltway elite, and although the ceremony is a bipartisan tradition, Trump skipped the ceremony in his first term and, after some of the honorees in 2017 threatened a boycott, canceled the White House pre-ceremony reception.

This time around, there is not just the doubt as to whether Trump will attend, but whether arts funding will be on the chopping block, the Kennedy Center included. Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to the self-named Department of Government Efficiency is, at least in their many pronouncements and posturing, putting all of government on the table, and ostensibly federal arts funding would be part of that scrutiny. The Kennedy Center receives about $30 million for operations and maintenance — which, as Rubenstein told Deadline, is a very, very tiny sliver of the overall federal budget.

On the red carpet before the ceremony, Deborah Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, said that she was “not worried about funding,” noting that in Trump’s first term they worked “very successfully” with his administration with a “direct line in the White House,” even if he himself did not attend the honors and only came to the Kennedy Center once, for a different event. Two of the Kennedy Center board members are nominees for Trump’s next administration: Pam Bondi, for attorney general, and Mike Huckabee, for U.S. ambassador to Israel.

“I just know that I will be extending an invitation to [the incoming president],” Rutter said.

Trump attending the ceremony “would be a great idea,” said Stephen Schwartzman, the former Kennedy Center chairman who supported him in the most recent election.

One congressman, though, wondered who would be among next year’s list of honorees — “Kid Rock?”

By contrast, this year’s lineup had a decided touch of the Left Coast — with Coppola, Raitt and the Dead — or as Mickey Hart noted, “a San Francisco takeover of the Kennedy Center. I don’t know if you realize that.”

Raitt was honored for her activism on social justice, the environment and human rights. “She is the original musical good deed doer,” Louis-Dreyfus said.

Other honorees included jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, who played God Bless America at a State Department ceremony on Saturday night. At the Kennedy Center event, Chris Botti played Charlie Chaplin’s Smile in tribute to Sandoval. Andy Garcia that the Sandoval’s “performances reveal a magic that defies logic, channeling an incomparable beauty.”

Also honored was the Apollo Theater, the first institution recognized as a “sacred space where Black art and culture come to life,” as emcee Queen Latifah noted. Dave Chappelle recalled that when he was 15 years old, he won a contest with thew prize a chance to perform at Amateur Night at the Apollo. One guy started booing, and then “everyone just started booing. It was like I was outside my body. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing — the Black community agreeing on something.”

“That night was the night that I first had the courage to be myself, because before that night, nothing scared me more than being rejected by an audience. After, I realized, you know what, it’s not that bad. Backstage, they were like, ‘Are you OK?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ And then the guy that went on after m made it worse. Did a fantastic job. Got a standing ovation.”

“Anyone know who it was? Exactly. I don’t know either.”

More to come.