The star-studded event was full of amusing anecdotes, nostalgic looks to the past, and anticipatory mentions of future projects.

Reiner’s friends and colleagues—including but not limited to James Caan, Michael Douglass, and Meg Ryan—each introduced one of Reiner’s films or projects. Ryan and her co-star, Billy Crystal, introduced When Harry Met Sally (1989).

“For those of you who have waited 25 years for a sequel, this is it!” Crystal said, inducing laughs from the audience. Crystal and the other presenters recounted stories and unknown aspects of their personal and working relationships with Reiner.

For instance—on the set of When Harry Met Sally, as Ryan and Crystal described, Reiner actually performed the famous orgasm scene at Katz Deli so Ryan knew exactly what he was looking for. The offscreen demonstration was also in front of Reiner’s mother, who played the woman that says, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Along with these hilarious yet perhaps slightly disturbing vignettes, the gala also provided glimpses into Reiner’s most recent endeavors. A clip of his upcoming film And So It Goes was played as was a clip from the upcoming Proposition 8 documentary, The Case Against 8—in addition to filmmaking, Reiner is an outspoken activist for gay rights.

The actual award was presented by 1998 Chaplin Award recipient and fellow legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese. With a few of his own words regarding his admiration of Reiner, the man of the hour finally walked onto the stage.

Reiner expressed mutual respect of Scorsese and mentioned how grateful he was to be included in his latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street, in which he played the father of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character. Reiner joked: “Which is more unbelievable—that Leonardo DiCaprio is a Jew, or that I’m his father?”

Reiner continued to express his gratitude to both his colleagues and to his family—he stressed that although he loves filmmaking, nothing is more important than his wife and kids.

The night’s presenters joined Reiner onstage after his heartfelt acceptance, and the audience rewarded him again with a much-deserved standing ovation.

By Zoe Halsne

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NAB: What do you look for in movies that you see?
AOS: I like to be surprised. I like to feel some human reality has been illuminated.

NAB: Who would you say has had the biggest influence in the field of film?
AOS: Thomas Edison

NAB: What is the state of film now?
AOS: The state of film is that it is almost no longer “film” in the technical, photochemical sense. At the same time, moving pictures are everywhere, and there is more cinema in our daily lives that would have been imaginable even a generation ago.

NAB: Where do you see the field of film headed?
AOS: Film has been dying since the introduction of sound. It kept dying through the rise of television, home video, and now the Internet. I expect it to continue its death spiral for another 100 years or so.

NAB: What is your favorite movie genre, along with your favorite movie, and why?
AOS: I don’t have a favorite genre, unless “Italian” counts. I love just about anything made in Italy between 1945 and 1970, and also anything that shows the influence of those films. I like the naturalistic look, the theatricality of the post-synch sound, the sound of the Italian language. If I had to single out a favorite it might be “La Dolce Vita.” “La Dolce Vita” presents both a distillation of history–the West in a moment of what would turn out to be a perpetual, slow-moving, terminal crisis—and also a beautiful cinematic world. I have never been able to resist the desire to live in the world, or the fantasy, on some days, that I already do.

NAB: Who is your favorite actor and why?
AOS: At the moment I like what Joaquin Phoenix is doing. In his last few performances—thinking of “The Immigrant,” “The Master,” “Her”—he has completely resisted playing his characters as types. That is not easy to do—most actors slide back into familiar, pre-made ideas of the kinds of people their characters are, and in each of these cases he could have done that. There’s a way of playing an unstable alcoholic, a suave deceiver, an anti-social nerd, but the characters are none of those things. They are unpredictable, original and volatile in ways that are very rare in screen acting.

NAB: Who is your favorite actress and why?
AOS: Marion Cotillard. She is an actress of limitless bravery and supernatural poise, who is both beauty and beast.

NAB: Who is your favorite director and why?
AOS: This past year it was the Coen Brothers, among active American directors. The Coen brothers just now seem completely free to do what they want to do, and utterly confident in their story-telling and visual powers. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is by far the most perfectly realized movie of 2013.

NAB: What do you most enjoy about your job?
AOS: I love the variety of movies I get to see, and the way that movie permits me to travel to places I would otherwise never go, and know them in a way a tourist never could.

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