The wind of Oscar fortune has shifted from the direction of Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator” to Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” after Eastwood’s award last weekend from the Directors Guild of America. Much more often than not, the winner of the DGA award goes on to take the best director Oscar and an accompanying best picture prize. Eastwood enjoyed such a triple honor with 1992’s “Unforgiven.”
Scorsese has been nominated over the years for five DGAs and five Oscars but has never won either. The conventional wisdom was that this would be his year–and it may be yet, if Academy members are of a mind to give him what will surely be labeled his “catch-up” Oscar.
The obstacle: Few people think “The Aviator”–an epic-size, glibly executed biography of billionaire Howard Hughes–is in a class with Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” or “Goodfellas.”
Nonetheless, the race is on–“Million Dollar Baby” versus “The Aviator,” with Alexander Payne’s smaller but widely celebrated comedy “Sideways” close behind.
The DGA trumpets that in 56 years of its award, 50 winners have gone on to claim the Oscar. But three of those exceptions have occurred in the last 10 years.
In 1995, Ron Howard won the DGA for “Apollo 13” while the Oscar went to “Braveheart’s” Mel Gibson. In 2000, the DGA opted for Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), but the Academy chose Steven Soderbergh for “Traffic.” And two years ago, Roman Polanski (“The Pianist”) beat DGA winner Rob Marshall (“Chicago”).
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Compiled from news services and edited by Leo Ebersole ([email protected]) and Victoria Rodriguez ([email protected])
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