Report on DGA Award Nominees

Each year Jeremy Kagan hosts a discussion of the directors nominated for the DGA award. Normally there is a great deal of overlap with the directors nominated for the Best Director Oscar. The big disappointment for me was that Paul Greengrass was not nominated for a DGA award. In his place was Bill Condin for Dreamgirls. (yes, that's a barfing noise).

Kagan, who is the head of the directing class at USC hosts the event primarily for members of the directors guild to talk about craft and process. It is one of the best events I've attended in Los Angeles. Kagan is a generous professor and invites students to attend these event on a standby status. This year, in addition to Condin, were Martin Scorsese for the Departed, Stephen Frears for the Queen, Alejandro Inarritu for Babel, and the directing pair of Little Miss Sunshine (too lazy for imdb).

The event was awesome. Frears and Scorsese were the highlight. Inarritu is great to listen to. Condin was a bore and the Little Miss Sunshine folks were way out of their league. Phil noticed very early on Scorsese nodding in agreement when Condin talked about the difficulty of shooting musical sequences. In his head, Scorsese was thinking, "yep, I shot New York, New York." Later on, Inarritu talked about the difficulty of shooting in the desert under intense heat...Scorsese was nodding again, "Yep, I shot Kundun." Scorsese has grown into such a friendly, affable older gentlemen who carries his status as the "greatest living filmmaker" with such humility. It makes one feel very comfortable.

So it was of course Frears, the only real contemporary of Scorsese on stage, with his own reasons for confidence in himself as a filmmaker, who makes the first joke of the day when Kagan asks him about set building and Frears explains the cheapness of the carpets he used in some of the scenes. He says, "it's not like we had the budget of the Departed."

Scorsese takes the jest well, nodding and smiling. Frears continues to subtly mock Kagan's questions - particularly about working with actors, in a dry, British way, making filmmaking seem like the most effortless endeavour known to man. The interesting thing to me was the how funny Frears was - which contrasts with his movie, the Queen, which although I didn't see, didn't strike me as being particularly funny.

As we move onto discussing locations and shooting schedule we get to the pair from Little Miss Sunshine who, oddly, didn't seem funny at all and in their first attempt at a joke or a poke pick on Scorsese as well saying, "Well, we only had 30 days to shoot, not like the Departed."

Scorsese sits there, affable and friendly and without a hint of malice (although it would have been mightily deserved) responded through the giggles of the crowd and panel, "I've made a movie in 30 days."

It's called Mean Streets motherfuckers!