Damien Chazelle did in fact win the DGA Award over the weekend.
La La Land is the big favorite to win Best Picture, and assuming it does will Chazelle also be named Best Director? Is there another split coming?
From 1950 to 1997 there were only
six times where the Best Director didn't come from the Best Picture. Six times in forty-seven years. Which probably isn't so surprising, that when voters filled out their ballots they assessed the person who directed the best movie also did the best job directing. The six times they did make a distinction in all those years...
1951:
An American in Paris/George Stevens (
A Place in the Sun)
1952:
The Greatest Show on Earth/John Ford (
The Quiet Man)
1967:
In the Heat of the Night/Mike Nichols (
The Graduate)
1972:
The Godfather/Bob Fosse (
Cabaret)
1981:
Chariots of Fire/Warren Beatty (
Reds)
1989:
Driving Miss Daisy/Oliver Stone (
Born on the Fourth of July)
Since then it has become more common, though it is still not the norm. After only six instances in nearly fifty years, since 1998 it has already happened seven times in those eighteen years of Oscars, including three of the last four...
1998:
Shakespeare in Love/Steven Spielberg (
Saving Private Ryan)
2000:
Gladiator/Steven Soderbergh (
Traffic)
2002:
Chicago/Roman Polanski (
The Pianist)
2005:
Crash/Ang Lee (
Brokeback Mountain)
2012:
Argo/Ang Lee (
Life of Pi)
2013:
12 Years a Slave/Alfonso Cuarón (
Gravity)
2015:
Spotlight/Alejandro González Iñárritu (
The Revenant)
Even with the increased frequency, the Director and Picture are usually still the same. Will there be a split this time, or even major surprises like
La La Land and Chazelle both losing?
Mel Gibson's comeback is complete with the acclaim and high profile noms
Hacksaw Ridge received, none more validating or surprising than making the cut as one of the five nominees here. I suspect Gibson has extremely little chance of bringing home another Best Director Oscar to put next to the one he earned for
Braveheart at the 1996 ceremony, but this is surely a time where being nominated was an honor in and of itself.
Mel Gibson was the only of the five to have a previous nomination in this category.
Denis Villeneuve's
Incindies got nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature at the 2011 ceremony. It lost to Susanne Bier's Danish entry
In a Better World, but it was the international hit that put him on a lot of people's radar, including those in Hollywood. Since then his films have been American financed and seem to be getting more and more ambitious. First with
Prisoners, then
Enemy,
Sicario, and now
Arrival. He has arrived. Not only was
Arrival that rare genre movie that pleased audiences, critics, and the people who hand out high profile nominations, but it seems to have inspired Denis to tackle more Science Fiction. 2017 will see the release of the long delayed and until he was attached to the project not very anticipated sequel
Blade Runner 2049. Before that has even been seen by the public comes word that he will be taking a second shot at adapting Frank Herbert's legendary
Dune for the big screen. Neither Villeneuve nor
Arrival will win this year, but if he wasn't already a filmmaker who's work you highly anticipated, it seems as though the next few years will be him daring you not to.
Villeneuve, who hails from Montréal, is the ninth Canadian to get a Best Director nomination (fourteen overall noms). The others were Edward Dymytrk, Mark Robson (2 noms), Norman Jewison (3 noms), Arthur Hiller, Atom Egoyan, Paul Haggis, Jason Reitman (2 noms), and James Cameron (2 noms), with Cameron's win for
Titanic being the only Canuck victory, to date.
Kenneth Lonergan made his name in the indie film world with his directorial debut,
You Can Count on Me (2000). It garnered many prizes and earned him his first Oscar nomination, for original screenplay. It would be another decade before he would make his second feature,
Margaret, but he was writing plays and got a second nomination as a screenwriter for his work on Scorsese's
Gangs of New York.
Manchester by the Sea is only his third film, even more critically acclaimed than his debut, and nominated as both the director and the screenwriter. Odds are he won't win as Best Director this time, but I hope he finds inspiration to make films more than once every six or ten years.
Barry Jenkins is another writer/director who made his mark this past year. His first feature,
Medicine for Melancholy (2008), did well on the art film circuit, but it never broke through to the mainstream. On first flush
Moonlight probably didn't seem like it had potential to do much more, either. But this stylized yet authentic coming-of-age story was too compelling and interesting not to be enjoyed by wider audiences. Its reputation kept growing and growing until this small budget very personal effort was being deemed a shoe-in for big Oscar nominations.
Barry is only the fourth black man to be nominated in this category, joining John Singleton (
Boyz N the Hood), Lee Daniels (
Precious), and Steve McQueen (
12 Years a Slave), and he is the first to ever get the trifecta of Best Picture, Best Director, and a Best Screenplay nominations. I don't know how many more tales Jenkins has in him, but with the success of
Moonlight he's definitely going to get the opportunity to make them as movies in coming years. If they are anywhere near as special as
Moonlight, he'll be back at the Oscars.
La La Land is only
Damien Chzelle's third feature. He wanted it to be his second. After getting the micro-budgeted
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench made, which was almost a sort of dry run at similar themes on a less ambitious scale, he shopped
La La Land around as a screenplay for years without any takers. A Musical? Not only that, but an ORIGINAL Musical, and not one based on a Broadway hit or existing property? No thanks. So he went to plan-B, which was to write a screenplay with less intricate production that could be financed and made cheaply. Based on some of his own experiences as a musician, that project was
Whiplash, which was first made as a short to secure the financing, and after it became a feature two years ago it had the kind of success
Moonlight enjoyed this year, culminating in five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, his Best Screenplay, and J.K. Simmons' win for his ferocious work as Best Supporting Actor.
And all of that led to somebody finally saying yes to
La La Land. I doubt that even at their most optimistic many people involved with the production allowed themselves to think about being an Oscar frontrunner, but Chazelle's passion project has translated into legions of fans, including Academy voters. I don't think there will be any surprises come Oscar night in regards to Picture or Director. They're both going to
La La Land. If he does win, Damien Chazelle will be the youngest person to ever win Best Director. He just turned 32 on January 19th. Ever since the 1931 ceremony the record holder as youngest director to win was Norman Taurog, who won for
Skippy. He was 32-years-old as well, but 32 and about nine months when he won. Chazelle will be 32 and about five weeks. The next two youngest were Lewis Milestone (
Two Arabian Knights) who was 33 and about seven months old and Sam Mendes (
American Beauty) who clocked in at 34 and 8 months when he picked up his Oscar.
Before
Whiplash Damien Chazelle was an unknown kid. After his Oscar coronation in a few weeks he will officially take the title of wunderkind. It will be exciting to see what else he can bring his sensibility and talents to. His next project is slated to be
First Man, adapted from the non-fiction best seller about Neil Armstrong with Ryan Gosling set to play the astronaut. It does not appear to be a Musical, but we shall see. If anyone could pull it off, it'd be Chazelle.
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