Practicalmadness

Can you even tell me the name of the person who directed Chicago? Is it a man or a woman? White or black? Those questions are unfortunately easy -- the vast majority of Hollywood directors are white men. So which white man did the deed? What is his name?

You may know the answer. You may also know that it doesn't really matter; this man -- whose name, incidentally, is Rob Marshall -- will never make a truly great film so as to be remembered alongside Kubrick and Kurosawa, or even alongside Spielberg and Scorsese. He's the guy who didn't screw up. He was a nice boy who made a nice film and Harvey Weinstein has been in everyone's faces for four months saying he should win an Oscar.

Marshall took (or was taken on) the first step to actually getting that Oscar when he accepted the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for Best Director yesterday.

The various guild awards are the best predictors for Oscar winners because they are voted on by the same individuals who will be voting on the Oscars; they're like the dress rehearsal before the main event, and the winner of the DGA Award has almost always gone on to win the Best Director Oscar, and their film almost always wins Best Picture.

To receive this illustrious honor, Marshall beat out directors Roman Polanski (The Pianist), Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York), Stephen Daldry (The Hours) and Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). All but Jackson are nominated for the directing Oscar, which will be awarded during the Oscarcast on March 23.

There is still a chance that the apparent favorite for the Oscar, Martin Scorsese, can still win. The DGA award is a very good predictor, but not a perfect one: in 2000, Ang Lee won the DGA award for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for Traffic. Neither film won Best Picture; that honor went to Gladiator.

Back in 1972, even though Francis Ford Coppola won the DGA Award for The Godfather, the Oscar went to Bob Fosse for Cabaret.

We shall see.