Eric here with thinking about the past 40 years of Oscars Best Director category.
This past Saturday, director Michael Cimino passed away at age 77. Cimino won the Best Director Oscar for 1978’s The Deer Hunter, beating Woody Allen (Interiors), Hal Ashby (Coming Home), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry (Heaven Can Wait), and Alan Parker (Midnight Express). While those five actual films are of varying quality, the names behind them are all heavyweights and it was formidable company.
The Deer Hunter was a divisive film upon its release and remains so today (praised for its leisurely-paced first half and its capture of inexpressive male friendship; criticized for the Russian Roulette melodrama and its depiction of the Vietnamese). With The Deer Hunter, Cimino aimed to make something epic and classically Greek in its storytelling, and watching the film you can actually feel his young talent. Cimino next famously (infamously?) went on to direct 1980’s Heaven’s Gate, a film of disastrous proportions that has been covered ad nauseum as one of cinema’s biggest catastrophes. He directed four more films after that, none to any significant acclaim, the last one released 20 years ago.
It’s interesting to look over the list of the men (and one woman) who have won the Best Director Oscar since Cimino in 1978 to see where their careers have gone...
(How long until Kathryn Bigelow isn't the *only* woman. Care to make a guess?)
1979 Robert Benton
1980 Robert Redford
1981 Warren Beatty
1982 Richard Attenborough
1983 James L Brooks
1984 Milos Forman
1985 Sydney Pollack
1986 Oliver Stone
1987 Bernardo Bertolucci
1988 Barry Levinson
1989 Oliver Stone (again)
1990 Kevin Costner
1991 Jonathan Demme
1992 Clint Eastwood
1993 Steven Spielberg
1994 Robert Zemeckis
1995 Mel Gibson
1996 Anthony Minghella
1997 James Cameron
1998 Steven Spielberg (again)
1999 Sam Mendes
2000 Steven Soderbergh
2001 Ron Howard
2002 Roman Polanski
2003 Peter Jackson
2004 Clint Eastwood (again)
2005 Ang Lee
2006 Martin Scorsese
2007 Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
2008 Danny Boyle
2009 Kathryn Bigelow
2010 Tom Hooper
2011 Michel Hazanavicius
2012 Ang Lee (again)
2013 Alfonso Cuaron
2014 Alejandro G Iñárritu
2015 Alejandro G Iñárritu (again)
(How delightful that Scorsese, a director's director, got his Oscar from three legendary men)
The biggest surprise is that a majority of the winners are, regardless of the films they won for, major filmmakers with expansive careers. Few (nobody?) could argue that Sydney Pollack, Bernardo Bertolucci, Steven Spielberg, Roman Polanski, Ang Lee, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, Joel & Ethan Coen, Alfonso Cuaron, and Inarritu aren’t among the great filmmakers of the past forty years of cinema
One trend that we don’t see much lately that we saw quite alot in the 80s and 90s was the actor-turned-director, and how eager The Academy always was to hand them statues; Oscars went to Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, and Mel Gibson within a 14-year period. It would be like Bradley Cooper winning the Best Director Oscar next year for A Star is Born which seems highly unlikely in this current climate.
3 directors won when they directed Meryl Streep including Robert Benton (pictured for Kramer vs Kramer). All in the first 8 years of Meryl's screen careerWhile Cimino is a special case because of the Heaven’s Gate fracas, the list makes you wonder who the other winners were who have truly faded or disappeared. Robert Benton went on to make two or three more solid films (Places in the Heart, Nobody’s Fool) but nothing major materialized. James L. Brooks did well by Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets, but has basically disappeared (and his last film, How Do You Know, felt unbearable). The careers of both Tom Hooper (the least technically-proficient winner in this modern-day list) and Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) could go either way still.
What’s surprising, and satisfying, about the list is how many very talented directors have actually won. In addition to the masters mentioned above, we’ve seen victories from Milos Forman, Oliver Stone, Barry Levinson, Jonathan Demme, Anthony Minghella, James Cameron, Danny Boyle, and Kathryn Bigelow. Is this the one category where, viewed historically, Oscar voters have gotten it right more often than not?