Now that Christopher Nolan is out of the running for Best Director, the Coens are in, The King's Speech is the nomination leader and David Fincher has the Golden Globe tucked firmly under his arm, one of the big game-changing questions becomes: What do we make of Best Director?
Since Tuesday, the blogosphere has been swirling with this sudden notion that 2010 will be a split year: David Fincher will win Best Director, and The King's Speech will win Best Picture. Sorry, but I don't buy that yet. Yes, it's true that a split year has happened more times in the twenty years since 1989 than in the twenty years before it (five times since 1989, with four of those five in the last twelve years. Between 1968 and 1988, it happened twice).
So let's take a second and think about the contemporary splits.
There's Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, where the former stunned into a Best Picture win while the latter won the DGA and Best Director. There's 2000, where Ang Lee won the DGA for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Steven Soderbergh won Best Director for Traffic, and Gladiator won Best Picture (Gladiator also had the most nominations of that year). There's 2002, where The Pianist came out of nowhere to win Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Director (Rob Marshall won the DGA and Chicago won Best Picture). And there was 2005, when Ang Lee won the DGA and Best Director for Brokeback Mountain (which was the nominations leader), and Crash won Best Picture.
Certainly, this year is its own beast, and it's always inherently difficult to think about how a split could happen if it happens. What we have to realize is that more often than not, the film that wins Best Picture also wins Best Director. We also have to realize that the Directors Guild of America is more consistent with picking the eventual Best Director winner than any other organization. The Directors Guild has not been wrong since 2002 (when Polanski upset at the Oscars). Since 1989, there have only been three years when they haven't matched.
But what's that you say? There have been a few times when the DGA winner hasn't even been nominated for the Oscar? Yes, that's true. In 1995, Ron Howard won the DGA for Apollo 13 and Mel Gibson won the Oscar for Braveheart (Howard was not nominated). In 1985, Steven Spielberg won the DGA for The Color Purple, Sidney Pollack won the Oscar for Out of Africa. So there is precedent for Christopher Nolan capping a major win at the DGAs (remember, this is his third nomination, and he's never even gotten an Oscar nomination. Maybe the DGA will make a statement?). If that happens, we're absolutely screwed. This race will suddenly fall into a thousand pieces, especially if The Fighter wins the SAG Ensemble on Sunday.
Nolan's win is a true outlier; don't expect it to happen. I'm just saying there's precedent and we shouldn't believe it won't happen. There are two arguments right now: Fincher will win the DGA because he's won everything else, even though we're destined for a split year; or, Tom Hooper will upset at the DGA because there is a fundamental difference between the critics and the industry, and the industry wants to award The King's Speech. I'm not totally buying that.
Tom Hooper isn't necessarily a new director. He has a pretty deep history on television, including directing the entire John Adams miniseries. He directed The Damned United last year. But for all intents and purposes, The King's Speech is his break-out theatrical movie. The last time a director won the DGA for their "break-out" movie? Rob Marshall...in 2002. Not saying that means anything, of course.
Well, okay, I am saying it means something. Go look at the list of Oscar winners for Best Director. The past decade is built on giving awards to people who earned them over long careers - Bigelow, Boyle, Coen, Scorsese, Lee, Eastwood, Jackson, Polanski, Soderbergh. Even Soderbergh was making lots of compelling, borderline experimental independent movies for a decade before winning for Traffic. Tom Hooper's win would be more akin to Sam Mendes' 1999 win for American Beauty (in terms of statistics. Sort of). David Fincher has a reputation, he's built a career as a serious formalist who makes dark, complicated, demanding movies. He's also had an Oscar nomination (2008; Benjamin Button).
It doesn't make sense to me that Tom Hooper wins the Directors Guild, just like it doesn't make sense to me that he wins the Best Director Oscar. This feels like it belongs too much to David Fincher. Does that mean we're headed to a split year? I honestly don't think so. The Social Network doesn't need to be the nominations leader to win. It's not period, it's not fantasy, it's not boisterous. It has eight nominations, let's not forget that.
When Benjamin Button passed Slumdog in nominations, we all took a step back. But the Guilds asserted Slumdog, and it went on to march through the Kodak. Social Network will win the Directors Guild, the Editors Guild, and the Writers Guild. It could go on to win Best Director, Best Editing, Best Screenplay, maybe even Best Score. You know the last film to win Director, Editing, and Screenplay and lose Best Picture? Traffic. The only other time it's happened? 1951 (A Place in the Sun, which lost to An American in Paris).
The Producers Guild + nominations leader is not enough to convince me to think there is a fundamental shift for The King's Speech. I firmly believe The Social Network is in control of this game, and I need the Guilds to tell me otherwise.
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