"Makes it official, then."
Last year's DGA winner, Kathryn Bigelow, with this year's winner, Tom Hooper
Shit, as they say, just got real in the Oscar race. The Directors Guild of America had its annual awards ceremony tonight. There were several categories in both film and television, but naturally the big moment was the announcement of the Feature Film winner. What's great about the DGAs is that, since it's not televised, it's more laid back and there's no rush to make a set time limit, so they do a big schpiel for each nominee and give them all a nice plaque. Last year, all the guys were as much in love with Kathryn Bigelow's legs as they were her film.
This year, the nominees were...
Darren Aronofsky, the perceived dark horse for his trippy, unsettling Black Swan,
David Fincher, the perceived frontrunner for The Social Network, which has won several awards already,
Tom Hooper, the perceived longshot for The King's Speech, due to his being less established and his film being less showy,
Christopher Nolan, the Oscar snubbee, whose Inception was also perceived as a possible spoiler here, and
David O. Russell, who quite frankly was lucky to be in the room for The Fighter.
And the winner was, as you saw above ... a completely gobsmacked (or so I've heard) Tom Hooper.
Here's some stats for you. The DGA has been giving these awards for 62 years, counting this one. Only 12 times has the film of the winning director NOT gone on to win Best Picture. Only 6 of those winning directors did NOT go on to win Best Director (though it's happened twice this decade). I still think Hooper is a long shot for the Directing Oscar, for a number of reasons. Mainly, it reminds me of the situation in 2002, when a similarly "new" director, Rob Marshall, nabbed the DGA for Chicago and the Academy ultimately awarded Roman Polanski for The Pianist (though Fincher is not as overdue as Polanski was, nor is Hooper as "new" as Marshall was at the time). ETA: Also, I should mention that King's recently won the Producers Guild award, which is also a strong Oscar indicator, though not quite as reliable as the DGA.
A lot of pundits are sighing and wringing their hands over Hooper's win, many saying that several directors could have taken the same cast and the same script and turned out a good movie that people loved. But here are some facts. It was Hooper's decision to change David Seidler's script (which had Bertie miraculously cured of his stammer), making the ending much more powerful. It was Hooper's decision to bet against all weatherly odds and cast Helena Bonham Carter, despite the fact that the practically guaranteed rain in England in November (when they were shooting) could have left Helena Bonham Carter trapped at Leavesden shooting Deathly Hallows on pick-up days and left him searching for another actress to play the Queen. And it was Hooper's Anglo-Australian heritage that made this a very personal film as opposed to an awards grab.
We shall see if the Screen Actors Guild, who hold their awards tonight (televised on TNT and TBS) continue TKS's momentum upswing. It's quite possible, especially with a cast that all those pundits bemoan could have delivered similar results for the movie in some other director's hands. :P The Fighter could be a possible spoiler, though (each of them have three noms in the individual categories). I'm not planning to liveblog, but I may Tweet.