“Oh my God,” said Tom Hooper as he came on stage to accept the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film. He won the honor late last month for The King’s Speech during the gala DGA ceremony held in the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood and Highland Center.
Hooper was genuinely surprised to win since David Fincher was considered the early favorite at that time for The Social Network. “I’m overwhelmed,” said Hooper. “This is the biggest honor of my life.”
Well next weekend Hooper could have an honor to rival the DGA Award, again at Hollywood and Highland but at that venue’s Kodak Theater, site of the Academy Awards. In the 63-year history of the DGA competition, only six times have DGA Award recipients not gone on to win the Best Director Oscar.
Indeed The King’s Speech has been cast as the new favorite going into the Oscar proceedings, leading the nominations parade with 12 and coming off of recent Producers Guild of America Award and DGA wins as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award ensemble cast award. Seventy-five percent of the time, the movie with the most Academy Award nominations ends up winning the Best Picture Oscar.
However, a case can also be made for The Social Network which was the early front runner based on its Golden Globes’ success and being the choice of the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association as the Best Picture of 2010. The National Board of Review also honored The Social Network director Fincher, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and lead actor Jesse Eisenberg who portrayed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. And Fincher won the BAFTA Award for direction while Sorkin recently took the Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Also meriting strong consideration are True Grit which earned 10 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.
However the Coen Brothers did not earn a DGA Award nomination for True Grit, representing a notable discrepancy between the DGA and Oscar field of director nominees.
Four of the five best director nominees are otherwise the same in both industry competitions: Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan; Fincher for The Social Network; Hooper for The King’s Speech; and David O. Russell for The Fighter.
While the remaining Oscar nomination for top helmer went to Joel and Ethan Coen for True Grit, the remaining DGA nomination by contrast went to Christopher Nolan for Inception. Nolan, however, did earn an Oscar nom (and the WGA Award) for Best Original Screenplay on the strength of Inception.
The other difference concerns gender as last year’s Oscar and DGA Award winner for best director was Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, making her the first woman to receive each respective honor. With that glass ceiling broken, there was some speculation that a woman would again at least break into the nominees circle in the DGA and/or Academy Awards derby this year. That wasn’t the case although there were noteworthy candidates, most notably Debra Granik for Winter’s Bone and Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right. Cholodenko shares an Oscar nomination with Stuart Blumberg for best original screenplay for The Kids Are All Right. And Granik and Anne Rosellini garnered an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay for Winter’s Bone.
The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone also are in the running for the best picture Oscar along with: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3 and True Grit.
Toy Story 3 was also one of three movies nominated for the year’s best animated feature, the other two being How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist.
Roundtable
The Directors Guild nominees shed light on their work and influences during a DGA panel discussion the day of the Guild’s Awards ceremony. From this discussion–moderated by director Jeremy Kagan–SHOOT gleaned insights from filmmakers Aronofsky, Fincher, Hooper, Nolan and Russell. Interestingly, three of the five have commercialmaking affiliations: Fincher, a DGA Award winner for Best Commercial Director of 2003, continues to be handled by Anonymous Content; Aronofsky, who’s repped by Alturas Films; and Hooper, who signed last year with Smuggler.
(Furthermore the Coen Brothers, who are nominated for the Best Director Oscar, have spot representation via Company, and Cholodenko’s commercialmaking roost is Partizan.)
During the DGA session, Nolan noted that the inherent challenge of Inception was conveying our world and three dream worlds. Key for the director was to capture “what it’s really like to have a dream, to be in a dream, to treat a dream with a sense of reality…to [have dreams] feel real and never give them over to the straight forward surrealism by which dreams are often depicted.”
Helping Nolan to realize that dream was production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas.
Inception is also a nominee for the Visual Effects Oscar. Boding well for its prospects on that front are the recent results of the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards.
Inception won all four VES categories in which it was nominated: Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture; Outstanding Created Environment (Paris Dreamscape) in a Live-Action Feature; Outstanding Models and Miniatures (Hospital Fortress Destruction) in a Feature; and Outstanding Compositing in a Feature. The lead VFX house on the film was Double Negative Visual Effects, which maintains studios in London and Singapore. Models and miniatures for the film came out of New Deal Studios, Los Angeles.
Nolan, who also just won the VES’ inaugural Visionary Award, additionally showed that his sensibilities encompass much more than what the eye can see. He related that his editor doesn’t use temp music. (Lee Smith edited Inception.) Instead, quipped Nolan, for Inception he would “harass” composer Hans Zimmer for demos. Nolan observed, “Temp music makes things look better than they are. I don’t like it.” Nolan assessed that Zimmer’s score for The Thin Red Line (directed by Terrence Malick) was perhaps the best he had ever heard, underscoring his creative trust in the composer. The director said that for Inception Zimmer scored the overall movie, not each scene.
That approach, affirmed Nolan, strengthened Inception, “connecting scenes and binding the film together, helping to guide the audience through the film.”
Hooper noted that having worked earlier in his career with Helen Mirren, he saw and heard how deft she is in “word switches,” subtle changes that shape a performance.
His two lead characters in The King’s Speech–Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush–are also deft in that regard. Music, said Hooper, has to adjust and recognize that deftness. For The King’s Speech, the scoring of composer Alexandre Desplat does just that. “Alexandre loves actors and takes care of them,” related Hooper.
At the same time, silence is integral to The King’s Speech, observed Hooper. “The use of silence was the key. There’s a lot of silence in the film.”
The notion of less being more also helped to shape visual backdrops for the film, as reflected in the scenes focused on Colin Firth as a stammering King George VI.
“I almost exclusively put him against negative space when the camera was focused on him–big distressed walls where the wallpaper was almost falling apart. His face was floating in negative space, much like stammering can cast a person into isolation and a world of nothingness,” said Hooper. “The frame overwhelms him; he’s diminished by it.”
By contrast, Rush–who portrayed Lionel Logue, the speech therapist treating the King–was “shot against the domesticity of bookshelves, a fireplace.”
Aronofsky quipped that he was “jealous” about that falling apart wallpaper in The King’s Speech. Aronofsky admitted that he very much “got into wallpaper” for Black Swan as he paid attention to that and assorted other details as he “wanted the whole film to be a ballet, to choreograph every scene like a dance.”
Aronofsky credited production designer Thérèse DePrez with bringing “ballet onto the wallpapers.” Even the paintings seemed to speak to Natalie Portman’s character “during the freakiest moments” of the story.
Earlier this month at the Art Directors Guild’s 15th annual Excellence in 2010 Production Design Awards, the feature winners were: Eve Stewart in the Period Film category for The King’s Speech; Dyas for Fantasy Film on the basis of Inception; and DePrez in Contemporary Film for Black Swan.
For the Oscar recognizing Achievement in Art Direction, Black Swan and DePrez were not nominated. The King’s Speech and Inception were along with: Alice in Wonderland (production designer Robert Stromberg), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (production designer Stuart Craig), and True Grit (production designer Jess Gonchor).
Relative to backdrops and locations, the proposition for The Social Network seemed “too easy” at the outset, said Fincher. “We’ll go to Harvard and they’ll say, ‘yes.'”
However, Harvard ultimately didn’t grant permission to film. “Who didn’t talk to Harvard?” said Fincher but it was to no avail.
The director said that Harvard became akin to “the hottest girl in the room. She will probably say ‘no’ but you take your best swing anyway.”
A Google Maps search for colonial architecture to rival that of Harvard yielded the discovery of “a stunning example”: Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Hopkins became the principal backdrop for the film, with Fincher noting that the university “couldn’t have been more helpful.”
There and in the film’s other backdrops, Fincher took a self-described tongue-in-cheek Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom approach, following the actors wherever they went.
“I shoot two cameras all the time, usually next to each other, to follow the instincts of people more talented [than the director]….I shoot a lot of takes–not to antagonize people but to have time for [inspired] accidents to take place.”
For director Russell, the perfect backdrop for The Fighter was clearly Lowell, Massachusetts.
“The movie is about the intimacy of that community and everyone there. It’s a working class town that’s struggling,” he said.
For Russell, it’s a struggle to watch dailies so he doesn’t.
“They make me hate the whole thing. I give the dailies to the editor [Pamela Martin] with specific notes about which takes I think were best.”
The Fighter was shot over 33 days, three of which were dedicated to the boxing scenes.
The fights were shot from outside the ring, a dramatic departure from the norm. Six HBO cameras and two additional cameras were deployed. The end result elicited plaudits for realistic depictions of “the sweet science” known as boxing.
Also ringing true were the characters themselves. “I have a shot list but am open to discoveries. I like working on a schedule, three to four takes, six to seven tops,” said Russell who paralleled the dynamics of a film to that of “a song, a rhythm. During the first couple of weeks, the actors get the melody, the rhythm. Once they have it, everybody relaxes and they feel okay. Melissa Leo improvised a lot of lines.”
As for the direction he gave performers, Russell cited what he told Leo and Amy Adams. “Talk like a dude. I wanted women talking from their balls…I learned that from Dustin Hoffman years ago. The musicality of someone’s voice is their character. Amy Adams showed a whole other side of herself.”
Spirited competition
While the Oscars will be presented on Sunday, Feb. 27, the night before the Film Independent Spirit Awards will be bestowed. Leading the Spirit Awards nominations derby with seven–including Best Picture, director (Granik), screenplay, female lead, supporting female actress, supporting male actor and cinematography (Michael McDonough)–is the rural crime thriller Winter’s Bone.
This came on the heels of the film earning best feature honors at the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Earlier Winter’s Bone won the grand jury prize for American dramas at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
Rounding out the field of Spirit Award-nominated directors are: Aronofsky for Black Swan; Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right in which a same-sex couple’s children bring their biological father into the family’s life; Danny Boyle for 127 Hours, the real-life story of a man’s battle for survival which results in his severing his own arm; and John Cameron Mitchell for Rabbit Hole, which deals with a couple coping with the accidental death of their young son.
Up for Best Picture are Winter’s Bone; The Kids Are All Right; Black Swan; 127 Hours; and Ben Stiller’s dark romance Greenberg.
The King’s Speech (U.K.) is also nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award, in the foreign feature film category, along with Kisses (Ireland) directed by Lance Daly; Mademoiselle Chambon (France) directed by Stéphane Brizé; Of Gods and Men (Morocco) directed by Xavier Beauvois; and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand) directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Low-budget films such as those honored at the Spirit Awards have gained more and more weight at the Oscars, filling a void left as Hollywood studios increasingly concentrated on mainstream blockbusters.
Recent Spirit Awards winners such as Precious: Based On The Novel “Push” By Sapphire, The Wrestler and Juno have been major Oscar contenders.
The spirit of the Spirit Awards also includes recognition of promising up-and-coming talent.
Among the nominated films for Best First Feature is Get Low, directed by Aaron Schneider, and produced by David Gundlach and Dean Zanuck. The drama mystery, with a dash of comedy, is set in the 1930s in a rural town. The cast includes Robert Duvall, Bill Murray (nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Spirit Award), Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black and Bill Cobbs.
Duvall plays a backwoods recluse, Felix Bush, whom the local people fear. Bush rides into town with a wad full of cash to buy “a living funeral” in which anyone who has ever heard a story about him is invited to come to tell it.
It turns out Bush, though, has a deep dark secret he needs to tell. Murray plays Frank Quinn, a fast-talking, bit of a slickster funeral home owner who looks to score a big payday from Bush’s eccentricities.
Schneider told SHOOT he finds the Spirit Award nomination gratifying, especially since the road to such recognition was longer than anticipated. He related that it took him and his producer colleagues five years to get the film made.
“Making it all the way to the Spirit Awards kind of counterbalances the long time it took to get the proper financing in order to properly get this project off the ground.”
Schneider made his first industry mark as a cinematographer, initially in commercials and music videos, spanning such clients as Nike, Mercedes-Benz and L’Oreal, and performers including Whitney Houston, Gwen Stefani and Michael Jackson.
The DP then diversified into TV, most notably with executive producer Steven Bochco’s legal drama Murder One. Schneider garnered an Emmy nomination for his work on that series as well as a pair of ASC Awards, respectively, for his cinematography during seasons one and two.
His lensing exploits branched out into features with Kiss The Girls and Simon Birch, as well as second unit on James Cameron’s Titanic.
Then Schneider decided to spread his wings further, looking to steer his career from cinematography to directing. “I wanted to make my own films so I took my life savings and threw it all into a short film to not only show other people what I could do but to discover for myself whether I was a director or not.”
That short film indeed provided an answer. Based on an adaptation of William Faulkner’s short story, Two Soldiers–which Schneider wrote and directed–won the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short Film.
The short became a calling card, a tool for Schneider to land an agent to represent him as a director, to gain access to studio executives, producers and scripts. He made the rounds and related, “When the dust settled, the project that just naturally felt right to me was Get Low.”
Producer Zanuck and Get Low found Schneider through Two Soldiers and wound up pursuing him.
“Dean enjoyed the short but more than that there were the obvious connections,” noted Schneider. “The short showed I could do a period piece on a budget and Dean had just struck out to work on his own so we both had something to prove.”
Little did they know that it would take five years to attain that proof–which has since been reaffirmed with not only Spirit recognition but also selections to last year’s Sundance, South by Southwest and Tribeca film festivals. Get Low is a Sony Pictures Classics release.
Schneider’s collaborators on Get Low included Emmy Award-winning cinematographer David Boyd, ASC (Deadwood), Academy Award-nominated production designer Geoffrey Kirkiland (The Right Stuff, Children of Men) and twice Oscar-nominated costume designer Julie Weiss (Frida, Twelve Monkeys).
Also nominated for Best First Feature Spirit Award honors are: Everything Strange and New (director Frazer Bradshaw, producers A.D. Liano and Laura Techera Francia); Night Catches Us (director Tanya Hamilton, producers Sean Costello, Jason Orans, and Ronald Simons); The Last Exorcism (director Daniel Stamm, producers Marc Abraham, Tom Bliss, Eric Newman, and Eli Roth); and Tiny Furniture (director Lena Dunham, producers Kyle Martin, andAlicia Van Couvering). Dunham also earned a nomination for the Best First Screenplay Spirit Award.
Another up-and-coming talent, Casey Neistat, has seen Daddy Longlegs, a movie he and Tom Scott produced, earn a nomination for the Spirit’s coveted John Cassavetes Award, given to the best theatrical feature film made for under $500,000.
Neistat might be a familiar name to SHOOT readers, having been included in SHOOT’s 2010 New Directors Showcase at the DGA Theatre in New York. Neistat is represented as a director for commercials and branded content by HSI Productions.
Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, Daddy Longlegs is an ode to parenthood, telling the story of a father–both charismatic and flawed–who gets to be with his two young sons for a couple of weeks each year.
Ronald Bronstein portrays the dad and is a nominee for a Spirit Award as Best Male Lead.
Along with Daddy Longlegs, the other John Cassavetes Award nominees are Lbs (director/writer/producer Matthew Bonifacio, writer/producer Carmine Famiglietti), Lovers of Hate (writer/director Bryan Pyser, producer Megan Gilbride), Obselidia (writer/director Diane Bell, producers Chris Byrne and Matthew Medlin), and The Exploding Girl (writer/director Bradley Rust Gray, producers Karin Chien, Ben Howe, So Yong Kim).
Bell is also up for the Best First Screenplay Spirit Award on the basis of Obselidia.
