Chris here. Now that the Oscar closing shock has worn off (oh, wait it still hasn’t) let’s take a second to discuss the growing frequency of the Best Picture / Director split. This is now the fourth time in five years two different films have taken home the two biggest prizes - with 25% of all instances occurring in the past decade. Has a Best Picture / Director split become an Oscar new normal?
But the recent prevalence of the split might be more symptomatic of an Academy more bent on spreading the wealth. In fact, La La Land ties Fury Road as the most awarded film since Gravity - also rewarded on the Director side of the equation...
Of the past five years, no Best Picture winner has won more than four Oscars. Maybe Best Picture is starting to carry more weight, or perhaps the preferential ballot is the key here. Or are Academy members actually beginning to vote for the two categories with separate criteria that used to go hand-in-hand?
The split is now as common as it has been since the 30s, with a few more years left this decade for it to happen again. My money is that it will. A few short years ago, it was a foolhardy prediction to not pick the same film for the big two, but now it’s becoming commonplace enough that we should pay attention to how the split happens. If we’d known this were coming, I think many would assume the opposite prizes would have been awarded - La La Land joins Cabaret as the only musicals on the Director side of the split. Lots will be written and pondered about how we should have seen Moonlight’s win coming (and probably way too much credit given taken from La La Land’s dissenters), but this remains one of the most surprising even without the finale snafu.
As Best Picture / Best Director splits become the new normal, the Moonlight / La La Land duo certainly just became the most memorable - and possibly the first between real-life pals. Here is Oscar’s history of splits:
- 1927 - Director: Frank Borzage (7th Heaven) and Lewis Milestone (Two Arabian Knights) Director TIE
Picture: Wings - 1929 - Director: Frank Lloyd (The Divine Lady)
Picture: The Broadway Melody - 1930 - Director: Norman Taurog (Skippy)
Picture: Cimarron - 1931 - Director: Frank Borzage (Bad Girl)
Picture: Grand Hotel - 1935 - Director: John Ford (The Informer)
Picture: Mutiny on the Bounty - 1936 - Director: Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)
Picture: The Great Ziegfeld - 1937 - Director: Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth)
Picture: The Life of Emile Zola - 1940 - Director: John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath)
Picture: Rebecca - 1948 - Director: John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
Picture: Hamlet - 1949 - Director: Joseph Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives)
Picture: All the King’s Men - 1951 - Director: George Stevens (A Place in the Sun)
Picture: An American in Paris - 1952 - Director: John Ford (The Quiet Man)
Picture: The Greatest Show on Earth - 1956 - Director: George Stevens (Giant)
Picture: Around the World in Eighty Days - 1967 - Director: Mike Nichols (The Graduate)
Picture: In the Heat of the Night - 1972 - Director: Bob Fosse (Cabaret)
Picture: The Godfather - 1981 - Director: Warren Beatty (Reds)
Picture: Chariots of Fire - 1989 - Director: Oliver Stone (Born on the Fourth of July)
Picture: Driving Miss Daisy - 1998 - Director: Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan)
Picture: Shakespeare in Love - 2000 - Director: Steven Soderbergh (Traffic)
Picture: Gladiator - 2002 - Director: Roman Polanski (The Pianist)
Picture: Chicago - 2005 - Director: Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)
Picture: Crash - 2012 - Director: Ang Lee (Life of Pi)
Picture: Argo - 2013 - Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)
Picture: 12 Years a Slave - 2015 - Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant)
Picture: Spotlight - 2016 - Director: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)
Picture: Moonlight