More than 100 friends, family and well-wishers gathered in Pacific Palisades Friday night to honor writer and director Jonathan Lynn, who received the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from Friends of Film. ’It’s very nice to be given a lifetime achievement award, even when you feel, as I do, that you’re still in the middle of your career,’ Lynn, 68, said as he accepted the award from FOF founder Bob Sharka. Though he boasts a long list of directing credits, including ‘My Cousin Vinny’ (1992), ‘Sgt. Bilko’ (1996) and ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ (2000), Lynn didn’t direct his first feature, ‘Clue’ (1985), until he was about 40, so perhaps it’s true that he has just hit his mid-career stride. He started first as an actor and is probably best known in his native Britain for co-writing the BBC political comedy series ‘Yes, Minister’ and ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ with co-writer Antony Jay. Whatever his role, Lynn can be counted on as a funnyman. A reel of clips from his many films prompted lots of laughs Friday and may have created a spike in Netflix demand for ‘Nuns on the Run,’ Lynn’s 1990 British film starring Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane. In front of the outdoor crowd hosted by Paul and Irene Gigg, the writer/director displayed great comic timing. ’We all have something in common tonight,’ Lynn intoned, pausing for gravitas. ‘None of us know what I’m going to say next.’ When the laughing stopped, Lynn said he was happy to be among friends and some colleagues he hadn’t seen for years, including actress Lesley Ann Warren and his long-time production designer Victoria Paul. ’Thank you for the party,’ said Lynn, a Pacific Palisades resident. The party and award ceremony were organized by Palisadian Sharka, executive director of Friends of Film, who was energetic and dapper in a light-green blazer as he mixed and mingled among the guests. ‘A lifetime achievement award is one of the toughest awards to give out,’ Sharka said. ‘People are either too young or too old, it seems.’ He said he was impressed with both the director’s career and character from the time he first met Lynn seven years ago during another Friends of Film event. The celebration included the screening of the documentary film ‘With My Own Two Wheels,’ selected for the 2011 Friends of Film scholarship. The film, co-directed by Jacob and Isaac Seigel-Boettner, considers the profound effect a simple bicycle can have’using the lives of a volunteer caregiver serving HIV/AIDS patients in Zambia, a farmer in Guatemala, a disabled woman in Ghana, a teenage girl in India and a young man struggling to escape a gang lifestyle in California to illustrate how two wheels can dramatically change opportunities for an individual, or even an entire community. Lynn wasn’t ready to talk about his next film, other than to say he was working to get a couple of things ‘off the ground’ and that ‘independent film is harder than it’s ever been.’ He’d just returned from London and directing ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ a play based on the television series which had a critically acclaimed and successful run last fall. It will return to London’s West End for a 10-week run this summer.
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