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

2012

2011

2010

2009

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

Globes | Critics Choice | DGA | Oscar

2012

Globes | Critics Choice | DGA | Oscar

2011

Globes | Critics Choice | DGA | Oscar

2010

Globes | Critics Choice | DGA | Oscar

2009

Globes | Critics Choice | DGA | Oscar

The only time the Globes and the BFCA matched on Best Director where their chosen film did not get in for Best Picture was in 2009, for Invictus. In all other years, when the Globes and Critics Choice matched on Best Director that movie was, at the very least, chosen for Best Picture.

So how is that list looking right now?

This doesn’t prove how the race is going to go but it does show a rough, early consensus of how it might go. The one thing we can be mostly certain about is that the Globes won’t match Oscar 5/5 in the Best Director category, at least going by these years. There is a much higher chance for an Oscar Best Picture nomination for all of the Globe-nominated directors than an Oscar Best Director nod.

This is a strange year with Best Picture contenders floating into the race and dominating, despite their mostly no-name directors. Two of them, The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game. Neither director, so far, of either film has shown up in any major or minor awards. Of course, with the Oscar race for Best Director there are only two groups that count, the Directors Guild and the Academy. I’ll add a third, the Editors because editors work so closely with directors that you can almost always unify them.

First, why haven’t Morton Tyldum and James Marsh gained any traction? Who are they and why are they here? It’s either that no one really knows who they are or it’s that their films don’t have distinguishing characteristics about them that push these names above the other directors, the ones whose style takes prominence over the story. With the two British offerings, they are probably viewed on the same scale, or they cancel one another out, as suspected. If Tom Hooper got in, why can’t either of these two? Probably because there are two.

2014 feels all over the place to me, with the smallest possible consensus in the Best Director race emerging as:

1. Linklater
2. Inarritu
3. DuVernay
4. Fincher
5. Anderson

I’d order them that way, with the likelihood of either Anderson or Fincher to be replaced at the Oscars with someone else — but who that someone else might be is a mystery until we hear from the DGA.

The DGA is probably more inclined to pick Fincher because they picked him for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which tells me they admire his work overall. But the Academy didn’t. I’m not getting my hopes up for a directing nomination at the Oscars but Best Picture is looking much more likely. Gone Girl is, to me, up there with Selma and Boyhood as the film of the year so it’s a no-brainer to me to imagine a directing five but I’m going to bet that the Academy is going to be more inclined to pick someone in the realm of:

Mike Leigh, Mr. Turner
Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher
Morton Tyldum, Imitation Game
James Marsh, Theory of Everything
Angelina Jolie, Unbroken

Honestly, beyond Linklater, Inarritu and DuVernay I have no idea what direction Best Director is headed. Then again, I remember saying in 2012 that the only sure bets were Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck. Ava DuVernay is likely to make Academy history this year so even without Gone Girl in the running it will be a fantastic year for AwardsDaily.

January 8 The Academy’s ballots are turned in
January 12 The DGA’s final ballots are turned in
January 13 DGA’s nominee announcement
January 15 The Academy’s nominee announcement

We are dwelling in a new kind of Oscar race where we’re looking at more than five for Best Picture but still five for Best Director and it doesn’t necessarily follow anymore than the director winner is going to match with Best Picture. That must be why Anne Thompson is predicting a split year between Birdman and Boyhood. I’m not feeling a split year, though. I think it’s Linklater and Boyhood all the way.