If you click on over to the Best Director page that we've had up for awhile, you'll see this Oscar prediction awaiting you.
It's the exact DGA nominee list for Best Director (just announced). This isn't The Film Experience blowing its own horn so much as the obvious: This is the shortlist. In order for anyone else to pull an Oscar nomination on January 25th for Achievement in Direction, they'll have to either: K.O. David O. Russell as he floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee; cut those thespian marionette strings that Tom Hooper is gracefully pulling; sue David Fincher for capturing zeitgeist in a bottle before they could; break the legs of Darren Aronofsky's ballerinas; or invade Chris Nolan's Oscar dream. Before it even happens!
Any one of those things will be very difficult to do. I don't think it's going to happen so I'll leave these predictions as is. Though perhaps it's worth remembering that this is Nolan's 3rd DGA nomination (Memento, The Dark Knight and Inception) and so far he's been forgotten when Oscar nomination morning rolled around.
Granik, acclaimed since Sundance
There's always room for doubt. The DGA doesn't often line up 5/5 with the eventual Oscar list. In the past decade it's only happened twice (last year and 2005). Some will tell you that the Coen Bros have the spoiler momentum given True Grit's box office heat (it passed the $100 million mark, their first film to do so) but I'm almost with Nick who told us on the podcast that he could totally see Debra Granik happening for Winter's Bone. She's got two previous winners in her campaign corner (Scorsese and Bigelow) and though it might sound far-fetched, isn't the "spoiler" usually far fetched when it actually happens and not the expected sixth slotter? Or is this just because we remember those best? Mike Leigh wasn't the sixth slot "duh!" when he was nominated for Vera Drake to cite one instant-recall example. Neither was Fernando Meirelles when City of God shocked pundits.
The most surprising thing about the list is how uniform it is. There's only a 14 year age spread, two countries (UK/USA) and all five men are (possibly) still in the first act of their career with none of them having yet entered a double-digit filmography. Most of them have never been nominated either. What's more, Hooper aside, the other four all started in rough succession. Consider.
First Features
- Fincher: Alien3 (1992)
- Russell: Spanking the Monkey (1994)
- Nolan: Following (1998)
- Aronofsky: Pi (1998)
That's only a six year spread of Fresh (directorial) Meat.
MORE TRIVIA: Film Experience reader Yonatan reminds us that this is the first time the Globe Director nominees and the DGA nominees have matched completely since 1993. But even then, Oscar did not follow suit, dumping Andrew Davis of The Fugitive for Robert Altman's Short Cuts. I haven't had time to triple check this next bit but has it really been since 1977 when all three (Globes, DGA, Oscar) matched 5/5 in the Director category? That year the field was:
- Woody Allen, Annie Hall
- George Lucas, Star Wars
- Herbert Ross, The Turning Point
- Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters
- Fred Zinneman, Julia
QUESTIONS: Does this strike you as the least diverse group in a long while (I'm not talking race but the points argued above)? Do you think one of them will fall by the wayside --as is the norm -- and for whom? Or do you expect to see all five celebrating their (mostly) first Oscar nominations on January 25th?