On the strength of La La Land, Damien Chazelle won the DGA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film on Saturday night (2/4) at the Beverly Hilton, making him the odds-on favorite to take the Best Director Oscar. All but seven of the DGA winners since 1948 have gone on to garner the Academy Award.
Besides having history on his side, Chazelle also made history by becoming at age 32 the youngest director to receive the DGA feature film honor. He will earn that same youth-be-served distinction if he goes on to win the Academy Award for his direction.
The DGA win capped a day for Chazelle which began across town at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles where he and his fellow nominees—Garth Davis for Lion, Barry Jenkins for Moonlight, Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea, and Denis Villeneuve for Arrival—shared insights into their films before a capacity Guild turnout. The Meet The Feature Film Nominees session was moderated by director, writer and producer Jeremy Kagan. This annual DGA symposium began in 1992.
During the DGA discussion, Chazelle noted, for example, that casting for the opening scene of La La Land—in which gridlocked freeway traffic turns into drivers and passengers erupting into a high-energy dance number—carried an inherent challenge.
Chazelle noted that his “greatest fear” concerning that scene was that the dancers could come off as being too good—a completely physically chiseled ensemble that looked like a So You Think You Can Dance contingent had taken over a stretch of freeway. It was important, said the director, that the performers looked the part—which called for believable people, not professional hoofers. While the performers had to be able to dance and in some cases handle choreographed gymnastics amidst and over a sea of vehicles, Chazelle didn’t always opt for the best, most perfect dancer. That would undermine the spontaneity of the scene.
Locations posed another prime challenge. Most of La La Land was shot on location, in line with Chazelle’s vision of taking the 1940s and ‘50s Hollywood musical and putting it on the streets of L.A. He laughed, though, that his experience on La La Land made him realize why those filmmakers of yesteryear stuck to the studio backlots. Getting the right site for a Hollywood party scene early on in La La Land proved to be a logistical nightmare. One seemingly good home after another fell by the wayside due to neighbor objections over the noise generated by such a shoot.
Finally when they received final approval on a house, Chazelle and his team went to work, including production designer David Wasco and set decorator Sally Reynolds-Wasco who share a Best Production Design Oscar nomination for La La Land. Chazelle described the Wascos as being “geniuses” in making locations look like “hyper-reality.” Chazelle said that this hyper sense is what he often wanted to infuse the film’s environments with, quipping that for some 70-plus lensing sites, his goal was “to find real locations and make them look fake.”
Garth Davis
While director Davis didn’t garner the marquee prize at the DGA ceremony, he did come away a winner for Lion, topping the First Time Feature directing category, now in its second year.
Based on a true story and adapted from the memoir “A Long Way Home” by Saroo Brierley, Lion introduces us to a five-year-old Saroo who gets lost, ending up on a train which takes him thousands of miles across India, away from his home and family. Somehow he survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
In accepting the First Time Feature honor from the DGA, Davis said he was “lucky” to be “gifted with a magnificent and beautiful story.” But with that came the profound responsibility of doing justice to that story. Towards that end, Davis said he was blessed with Sunny Pawar, a five-year-old actor who didn’t speak English yet managed to carry the first half of the film.
Pawar and Nicole Kidman, who portrayed the mother who adopted Saroo, presented Davis with the Best Feature Director nomination medallion earlier at the DGA Awards ceremony. During that separate on-stage presentation, Davis noted that especially gratifying to him has been the feedback he’s received from people who have been touched by Lion, including a couple who said the film inspired them to adopt a youngster, and refugees who credited the movie with giving them the courage to try to find the loved ones they left behind due to persecution and imminent danger in their home countries.
Davis made his first directorial mark in commercials before successfully diversifying into TV (with the BBC/Sundance Top of the Lake series which he and Jane Campion directed) and then feature films with Lion. Davis has since embarked on his second feature, Mary Magdalene.
He continues to be active in spots and branded content through production house RESET in the U.S., Academy at RESET in the U.K., and Exit Films in Australia and New Zealand.
Davis has a DGA Awards history. His first nomination came in the commercials category in 2009 for U.S. Cellular’s “Shadow Puppets.”
Still Davis this year was a first-time nominee for the high-profile DGA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film. In fact this time around the entire field consisted of first-time DGA Feature nominees. This hasn’t happened since 1997 when the following directors were nominated for their ‘96 features: Joel Coen for Fargo; Cameron Crowe for Jerry Maguire; Scott Hicks for Shine; Mike Leigh for Secrets & Lies; and Anthony Minghella for The English Patient. Minghella won the DGA Award in ‘97.
Derek Cianfrance
Derek Cianfrance of RadicalMedia won the DGA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Commercials. A first-time nominee, Cianfrance earned distinction as the best spot director of the year based on four entries from his body of work in 2016: Nike Golf’s “Chase”; Powerade’s “Doubts” and “Expectations”; and Squarespace’s “Manifesto.” The Nike and Powerade commercials were from Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore., while the Squarespace piece was out of Anomaly NY.
In his brief acceptance remarks, Cianfrance gave thanks to his parents, wife Shannon and their two children, as well as to compatriots as his long-time roost RadicalMedia, including principals Jon Kamen and Frank Scherma, executive producers Joe Killian, Donna Portraro and Greg Carlesimo, and national agent Michael Dimitri.
Earlier Cianfrance told SHOOT that he was proud of all the work entered on his behalf for DGA consideration and that he perhaps most personally identified with his Powerade “Power Through” campaign for W+K, particularly the “Expectations” spot which includes a female football player who excels despite a nay-saying coach. Cianfrance cast real athletes for the campaign—in this specific case, a female defensive lineman for the New York Sharks, a team in the Independent Women’s Football League.
Cianfrance can relate to bucking the odds and naysayers—both personally and professionally. He recalled, for instance, a high school coach telling him he’d never play much. Cianfrance worked hard, and became an all-conference soccer player on his high school team, having his best game against the team whose head coach was the one who had initially discouraged him.
On the professional front, Cianfrance noted that his breakthrough feature film Blue Valentine took him a dozen years to get off the ground. “I had 12 years of rejection on that movie,” he recollected. “The more I was told that movie would never amount to much, the greater the motivation was for me to make it happen. That’s why I understood the spirit of that Powerade work. The girl we cast who wanted to play football was in real life a force to be reckoned with.”
Blue Valentine went on to earn an Oscar nomination—Best Lead Actress for Michelle Williams—as well as Golden Camera and Un Certain Regard Award nominations at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, a Gotham Award Best Feature nomination, an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Williams’ performance, and a Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Cianfrance has gone on to direct such features as The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) and last year’s release, The Light Between Oceans.
As for his other DGA-winning spots this year, offering another perspective on an athlete’s inner drive is “Chase” for Nike Golf. While golf is often considered a mental game and not all that physically strenuous, Cianfrance and W+K wanted to paint a more accurate picture of the sport, focusing on champion Rory McIlroy. The spot captures his grueling daily training regimen, providing a visceral look at his workout and lifestyle.
Meanwhile Cianfrance’s remaining DGA entry, Squarespace’s “Manifesto,” focuses on real people from different walks of life and their aspirations spanning diverse endeavors. Working with cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (who shot The Place Beyond the Pines), Cianfrance directed a piece which plays almost like a meditation on people in the act of doing what they want and love to do.
In winning the DGA Award, Cianfrance topped a field of nominees which also consisted of directors Lance Acord of Park Pictures, Dante Ariola of MJZ, Fredrik Bond of MJZ, and A.G. Rojas of Park Pictures.
Other winners
Several other first-time DGA Award nominees came away winners: director Ezra Edelman took the Documentary category for O.J.: Made in America; Becky Martin won for Achievement in TV Comedy Series for the “Inauguration” episode of Veep; Miguel Sapochnik topped the TV Drama Series competition with “The Battle of the Bastards” episode of Game of Thrones; Steven Zaillian was victorious in the Movies for TV and Miniseries category for The Night Of; and Tina Mabry was honored in Children’s Programs for An American Girl Story—Melody 1983; Love Has To Win.
On the flip side, prior nominees also got into the winners’ circle. Glenn Weiss, with 13 career nods, won for The 70th Annual Tony Awards which took the Variety/Talk/News/Sports Specials category. This was the seventh time Weiss won a DGA Award, the others coming in 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015.
Don Roy King, who’s amassed 11 career nominations, topped the Variety/Talk/News/Sports—Regularly Scheduled Programming category for the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Dave Chappelle. King is now a three-time DGA Award winner, the first two coming in 2013 and 2015.
A nominee seven times in his career, J Rupert Thompson won the Reality Programs honor for “The Finale—Over the Falls” installment of American Girl. This was Thompson’s second career DGA Award, the first having been in 2005.
Lifetime Achievement
Sir Ridley Scott received the DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Motion Picture Direction.
In the Guild’s 80-year history, just 34 directors have been recognized with this honor including Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
Scott’s career spans features, TV and commercials. He is behind production companies Scott Free (TV, features) and RSA Films (spots, branded content).
