DGA Awards 2012

Directing movies: it’s an old man’s game! The Directors Guild of America has revealed its shortlist for 2012: and young directors are not welcome!

The line-up looks like this:
• Woody Allen for Midnight In Paris; his fifth DGA nom, and first since 1989. He won for Annie Hall.
• David Fincher for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; his third DGA nom.
• Michael Hazanavicius for The Artist.
• Alexander Payne for The Descendants; his second DGA nom.
• Martin Scorsese for Hugo; his ninth DGA nom; won for The Departed (pur-lease!); was awarded the DGA’s lifetime achievement award in 2003.

Fincher is something of a surprise here, although given that Spielberg has probably let himself down with the Tintin/War Horse double bill and that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’s Tomas Alfredson has yet to cross-over with Americans, this may be an example of the Guild realising that the modern American equivalent of Hitchcock remains unrecognised by the body that should be celebrating his work.

I still can’t see Oscar going for Fincher’s anal rape special though!

However, as has been pointed out many times before, the DGA award is a clear an indicator of Oscar success: only six times since 1948 has the DGA winner not gone on to win the Best Director Oscar. For the record, those six occasions are:
• 1968: Anthony Harvey won the DGA for The Lion in Winter while Carol Reed took home the Oscar for Oliver!
• 1972: Francis Ford Coppola won the DGA for The Godfather while the Oscar went to Bob Fosse for Cabaret.
• 1985: Steven Spielberg received his first DGA for The Color Purple, but the Oscar went to Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa.
• 1995: Ron Howard won the DGA for Apollo 13 while Oscar voters selected Mel Gibson for Braveheart.
• 2000: Ang Lee won the DGA for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for Traffic.
• 2002: Rob Marshall won the DGA for Chicago while Roman Polanski received the Oscar for The Pianist.