Best Director: the DGA and Oscar Disconnect

The Oscar race has never been as divisive as it is in 2014, with factions splitting from the whole to create new worlds where film represents different things for different people. The critics have risen up agains the general consensus in a pronounced way, most notably by taking much of the focus off of American studio product and putting it mostly on films from other countries that have earned their admiration. Russia’s Leviathan, Poland’s Ida, France’s Two Days, One Night – good movies that ought to be considered in what should be renamed the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as it was once called at its inception. Louis B. Mayer simplified it when he removed “International” from the name.

For the past four years, Best Director has gone to someone born in a country other than America – among them, only Ang Lee is a naturalized U.S. citizen. All of the others have hailed from foreign countries. It makes you wonder what the Americans are doing so wrong, why they can’t dazzle voters the way foreigners can. All that is going to change, however, as the Best Director race is already being led by several prominent Americans, like Richard Linklater, Ava DuVernay, David Fincher, Wes Anderson. They are joined by Alejandro Inarritu, the director that Anne Thompson is predicting to split with Best Picture, making the non-American winning the director category 5 years in a row.

Still, probably none of these directors have a chance of cracking either the DGA’s giant consensus vote or the smaller sampling of Academy directors who vote for the nominees in that category. The critics, though, have introduced films that might have a better chance with the Academy than with the larger guild vote.

First, a tiny factoid worth knowing if you don’t follow this website (since no other site, no other blogger that I’ve read finds this to be as important as I do). In 2012, for the first time since the DGA began handing out awards, the DGA nominees announcement came after Oscar ballots were turned in. The same thing happened last year. The same thing is going to happen again this year.

Here’s how it went down:

2013

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity	Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave	Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Paul Greengrass, Captain Phillips	Alexander Payne, Nebraska
David O. Russell, American Hustle	David O. Russell, American Hustle
Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street	Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

2012

Steven Spielberg, Lincoln	Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Ang Lee, Life of Pi	Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Ben Affleck, Argo	David O. Russell, Silver Linings
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty	Michael Haneke Amour
Tom Hooper, Les Miserables	Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

2011

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist	Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist+
Martin Scorsese, Hugo	Martin Scorsese, Hugo*
Alexander Payne, The Descendants	Alexander Payne, The Descendants*
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris	Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris*
David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Terrence Malick, Tree of Life*

2010

Tom Hooper The King’s Speech	Tom Hooper the King’s Speech+
David Fincher, Social Network	David Fincher, Social Network*
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan	Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan*
David O’Russell, The Fighter	David O’Russell, The Fighter*
Christopher Nolan, Inception*	The Coens, True Grit*

2009

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker	Bigelow, Hurt Locker+
Lee Daniels, Precious	Lee Daniels, Precious*
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air	Jason Reitman, Up in the Air*
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds	Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds*
Jim Cameron, Avatar	Jim Cameron, Avatar*

You can check out our DGA/Best Picture chart here to see how they lined up in previous years, but what’s most interesting to note is what happened two years ago, when the consensus picks Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck were left of the Academy’s list. It caused quite a bit of uproar and was just one of the other details about Zero Dark Thirty and Argo that tied them together. Argo was “Zero Dark Thirty lite,” or “Zero Dark Thirty if the Americans were the good guys.” The one thing everyone seemed sure of was that both of those directors would be nominated.

But in a race with more than five Best Picture contenders, you’re not necessarily looking at Best Director the same way anymore. You’re looking at splitting up the two categories, not just how the Ben Affleck year, and the following year did it, where you had a split between Picture and director, but how you think about best Picture overall.

Academy voters have five slots to put down their nominees for Best Picture of the Year. Only five. Yet the race allows for more than five. The only real way we have of knowing how popular a film is overall with the Academy is how many branches nominate that film, but I’m going to go one further and say ESPECIALLY the director category.

The reason is that Director and Picture have been tied together for almost as long as the Academy has given out awards, give or take an early decade or two, but especially once they agreed to hand out five Best Picture nominees and five Best Director nominees.

While last year’s lineup, compared to the DGA, only missed one name, 2012’s missed three of the five names. That was a crazy irregularity when you look back on DGA/Academy history.

So if you go by nominations overall and look at what films were nominated for Best Picture in 2012 and what films were nominated for Best Director you can kind of see which films had the consensus, and therefore had a better shot at the DGA, and which films didn’t.

Let’s start with who did get nominated for Best Director that year:

Ang Lee, Life of Pi (11 nominations) Steven Spielberg, Lincoln (11 nominations) David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook (9 nominations) Michael Haneke, Amour (5 nominations) Benh Zietlin, Beasts (4 nominations)

And what remaining films were there?

Argo (7 nominations)
Les Miserables (8 nominations)
Zero Dark Thirty (6 nominations)
Django Unchained (5 nominations)

The DGA went for the following five:
Ang Lee
Steven Spielberg
Ben Affleck
Kathryn Bigelow
Tom Hooper

The DGA reflects the broader, more popular tastes, which explains why these films have such high nominations. The one exception is Silver Linings Playbook which did not get a DGA nod but did get an Academy nomination.

Further complicating things, and I know it’s confusing by now, but Oscar changed how they counted Best Picture. In 2009 and 2010 they had a straight ten for Best Picture, with no wiggle room. But in 2011, 2012 and 2013, they had members choose five of their favorite Best Pictures and then expanded the list depending on what kind of numbers they got. It was supposed to be anywhere from 5 to 10 but it has solidly turned up as 9. So close and yet so far. Having 10 allowed for much more diversity in the lineup.

Now let’s fold in the Critics Choice and the Golden Globes and see where we are:

2013