Directors Guild Says Minghella The Best
Anthony Minghella, a name virtually unknown a year ago to most American moviegoers - and indeed probably most Directors Guild of America members - won the DGA’s best director award for his film, “The English Patient.”
The desert romance, set before and during World War II already has received a dozen Oscar nominations. It would now appear to be the leading candidate in the Academy Awards derby, especially in the directing category.
On Saturday night at the Century Plaza Hotel, Minghella beat out fellow Brit Mike Leigh for “Secrets & Lies,” Joel Coen for “Fargo,” Australian Scott Hicks for “Shine” and Cameron Crowe for “Jerry Maguire.”
All five were present in Los Angeles for the awards ceremony. Of his competing directors, Minghella said, “I am so honored to be amongst them.”
Since 1949, all but four winners of the DGA feature film award have gone on to win the Academy Award for best director. Last year was one of those exceptions, when Ron Howard, who was not even nominated for an Oscar, won for “Apollo 13.” Mel Gibson won the Oscar for “Braveheart.”
The guild held two simultaneous ceremonies - one in Los Angeles and one in New York at the Sheraton Hotel, where scheduled host Mary Tyler Moore had to bow out because of blurred vision caused by diabetes.
Carl Reiner humorously handled the chores in Los Angeles.
In awards handed out in other categories, it proved to be a good night for actors-turned-directors. The most prominent name was Oscar-winning actor Al Pacino, best known as the star of such gangster movies as “The Godfather” and the current “Donnie Brasco.” Pacino won the best documentary director award for “Looking for Richard,” his examination of William Shakespeare’s “Richard III.”
Stuart Margolin, who won in the children’s programs category for Showtime’s “Salt Water Moose,” noted that he was “an actor who became a director, and I’m trying to feel like a director. This (award) goes a long way to doing that.”
Likewise, former television actress Betty Thomas won in the dramatic specials area for “The Late Shift,” an HBO movie about the late-night talk show battle between David Letterman and Jay Leno.
As one of the few women nominees - and only female winner other than Kathryn Foster, Thomas pointedly remarked: “I’m so glad my parents had a girl. It makes me feel good to be a girl and be up here.”
Thomas shared her award with Foster for best daytime serial, an episode of CBS’ “The Young and the Restless,” with Mike Denney.
The guild also honored Stanley Kubrick with a D.W. Griffith Award for lifetime career achievement for directing such impressive and controversial films as “Paths of Glory,” “The Killing,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”