SubscribeWhy are DGA and Oscar in lockstep?
It’s a bit surprising that the Oscars and DGA think so similarly considering the difference in their voting pools. There are 370 members of the film academy’s directing branch, which determines Oscar nominees (all members vote on the winners).
The DGA contenders and winners are selected by its 13,000 members, many of whom are movie helmers, but many others work on TV series, commercials and music videos scattered across America and they're much younger than the typical academy demographic.
Timing has a lot to do with the impact factor: DGA announces its nominees a week to 10 days before the first round of Oscar ballots are due; winners are declared 10 days to two weeks before the last round of Oscar ballots must be submitted. It’s rare that the two lists of director nominees line up exactly, but the winners are uncannily similar.
The voting methods are similar: Members of both groups recommend five nominees during the first voting stage, ranking them according to preference, and then pick a winner from a list of five contenders.
The DGA’s current coziness with the Oscars is ironic considering that the two orgs started out at war with each other. The initial mission of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was to act as a cross-industry union, but when it became clear to directors, writers and stars that the org was merely a puppet of studio moguls, the latter groups bolted, formed their own guilds and tried to kill off the Oscars by declaring a boycott in 1935. Many of the top talent stayed home that year, but the academy survived primarily because a shrewd director, Frank Capra, served as its prexy at the same time he was helping to organize the helmers’ guild. Although created a few years earlier, the Screen Directors Guild was formally inaugurated in 1936 and was later renamed the Directors Guild of America in 1960 when it merged with the Radio and Television Directors Guild.
Awards were first bestowed in 1948, the same year that the writers’ guild got into the kudos game. Quarterly awards were given out in addition to the annual prize during the kudos’ first eight years. Counting up the annual trophies from 1948 to today, Steven Spielberg reigns as the biggest champ, with three wins ("The Color Purple," "Schindler’s List," "Saving Private Ryan") and also holds the record for most bids (nine).
The DGA’s prize is positioned after the critics and Golden Globes sound off, so guild members often pick one of the many early Best Picture and Director choices to declare the Oscar front-runner. On two occasions, though, they didn’t like any of the pix named to that point and went their own way — opting for John Schlesinger’s "Midnight Cowboy" in 1969 and for Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Godfather, Part II" in 1974 — both of which went on to nab Best Director and Picture at the Academy Awards.
On two other occasions, they dismissed the choices made by the crix and Golden Globes in favor of films that showed early promise when they were cited by the National Board of Review, but then vanished from consideration: Franklin Schaffner’s "Patton" in 1970 and George Roy Hill’s "The Sting" in 1973. Ron Howard ("Apollo 13," 1995) and Spielberg ("Color Purple") are the only DGA winners who failed to be nominated at the Oscars. No director has won the Oscar without being a DGA nominee.
Thanks for the cx -- fixed!
Posted by: Tom O'Neil | January 27, 2008 at 11:31 AM
Ops. Steven Spielberg wasnt´t nominated by the academy either, for The color purprle
Posted by: André | January 27, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Steven Spielberg won the DGA for The Color Purple and was not nominated for the Oscar.
Posted by: jilda | January 27, 2008 at 10:36 AM