DGA Preview – They Announce Tomorrow

The Directors Guild will add their voice to the mix that will have no influence on Oscar voting, but could confirm the popularity of certain films. The DGA has roughly 14,500 members, where the Academy’s directing branch has around 400. No one really knows if this will be a year like 2012, where only two names landed on both lists, or if it will be a typical year, where four out of five or five out of five will land on both. It’s a year with a few popular films so far, and a year with a few outliers.

For the past four years, no American born director has won the Oscar in the directing category. That’s likely to change this year, with so many strong Americans in the race, chief among them, Richard Linklater, but also Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Ava DuVernay, Dan Gilroy, Bennett Miller and Damien Chazelle. The one non-American in the hunt is Alejandro G. Inarritu.

Because of the Oscar ballot disconnect, the role of Director in the Best Picture race has been diminished. Since 2012, Picture an Director have split – once Argo won without even needing a Best Director nomination, and since the Best Picture slate has expanded, the role of what used to dominate the Best Picture race has changed up a bit. On the plus side, that has allowed for “Best Director” to kind of exist as its own thing, and/or present itself as an opportunity to honor two films. Would that the Academy had thought that way in 2010, when The King’s Speech could have won Picture, while David Fincher took Best Director. Alas, back then, Picture and Director were linked.

This year there will likely be no split. I don’t buy the theory that’s being floated around that Boyhood will win Best Director while something else will take Best Picture. If it happens, it will be as surprising as Crash winning. If anything but Boyhood wins the SAG ensemble, that could set things up for an upset. The only two movies that might would be Birdman or Imitation Game. The former because it’s an actors movie and actors are really the reason splits happen. The latter because it’s “important.”

Nonetheless, here we are at one of our last major stops before Oscar nominations on Thursday. Here is how our readers are currently predicting the DGA to go:

The three strongest heading into the race would be Linklater, Inarritu and Anderson. The other two slots feel like they’re open. The common logic is that the Academy won’t pick the big name Fincher and will go for, instead, the littler movies that are driving so much of the nearly unanimously male vote: Whiplash and Nightcrawler.

The DGA isn’t as cock-centric as the Oscars. Think of how few women directors there are at all and you start to get an idea of what the Academy’s Best Director branch looks like.

But you might see something on the order of:

DGA
Linklater
Inarritu
Anderson
Fincher
Nolan or DuVernay

Oscar
Linklater
Inarritu
Anderson
Chazelle
Gilroy

I liked both Whiplash and Nightcrawler. They are worthy Best Picture contenders. But I’m way in for Fincher and DuVernay. For Fincher, it would be honoring this director’s most successful work in making what is easily one of the best films of the year. For DuVernay it would be making DGA and Academy history to go along with it being one of the best films of the year. I’m not sure either of these will get in for Oscar.

Meanwhile, the one thing I did discover in my chart building was that the Best Picture race can often be determined not by what films get nominated for Best Picture at the Globes or Critics, but by what gets nominated for Best Director. What I found is that the only film since Oscar expanded to get both Globes and Critics Choice for director was Clint Eastwood’s Invictus. Every other one that was named got in. If you add DGA to the pile it’s a slam dunk. That means, for this year, Best Picture is likely to include as your frontrunners:

Boyhood
Birdman
Grand Budapest Hotel
Gone Girl
Selma

That’s five. Four other slots to fill. We’ll be putting up our nomination predictions, along with a quickie contest, later today.

Charts

FEATURE FILM AWARD DGA’S Site

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2014:

2012

2011

2010

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2009

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2008

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2007

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2006

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2005

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2004

BFCA | Globes | DGA | Oscar

2003

2002