Spielberg Makes the DGA List

Fresh off his multiple Golden Globe wins for “Schindler’s List,” Steven Spielberg on Monday found himself nominated for the prestigious Directors Guild of America award in the company of Jane Campion for “The Piano,” Andrew Davis for “The Fugitive,” James Ivory for “The Remains of the Day” and Martin Scorsese for “The Age of Innocence.”

The five directors are the same group nominated for the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.’s Golden Globes, which were awarded on Saturday. Spielberg picked up an award for best director and his movie about the Holocaust was also awarded best dramatic film and best screenplay.

Both the Directors Guild and the Foreign Press overlooked Jonathan Demme, the winner of the Oscar and Directors Guild prizes for “The Silence of the Lambs,” whose AIDS drama “Philadelphia” is one of the high-profile year-end Oscar hopefuls. The film has drawn mixed reactions from the critics, while receiving high praise for co-stars Tom Hanks, who won the Globe’s best actor in a drama award this weekend, and Denzel Washington.

If history is any indication, the Directors Guild nominees will likely be the same individuals nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscar. The Oscar nominations will be announced Feb. 9; Directors Guild prizes will be awarded March 5.

Only three times since 1949 has the winner of the Directors Guild failed to also take home the Oscar. And more often than not, the Academy voters also give the Oscar for best picture to their best director winner. For Spielberg, an Oscar win would be his first.

Campion, a New Zealander, is a first-time nominee and only the fourth woman ever nominated by the guild (before her: Lina Wertmuller in 1976, Randa Haines, 1986, and Barbra Streisand, 1991). Campion’s film, “The Piano,” which stars Holly Hunter and is the story of a Scottish woman finding love outside of an arranged marriage in 19th-Century New Zealand, has been widely praised by critics groups.

Davis, another first-time guild nominee, was named for “The Fugitive,” which was based on the 1960s television series and starred Harrison Ford. “The Fugitive” was 1993’s second-highest-grossing movie, collecting $180 million at the box office, surpassed only by Spielberg’s monster hit “Jurassic Park.”

Ivory’s “Remains of the Day” is another pairing of Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins and it follows his 1992 Directors Guild and Oscar nomination for “Howards End,” which also starred the duo. Ivory also was nominated by the guild in 1986 for “A Room With a View.”

Scorsese received his fourth guild nomination for his opulently styled “The Age of Innocence.” Although a popular and widely praised director, Scorsese has never won a guild award or Oscar, despite such contenders as “Taxi Driver,” “GoodFellas” and “Raging Bull.”

Spielberg’s guild nomination for “Schindler’s List” is his seventh time at bat. His one guild win came in 1985 for “The Color Purple,” but he was overlooked in the Oscar race--one of the three years when the guild winner did not go on to win the Oscar. Sydney Pollack won the Oscar that year for “Out of Africa.”

With seven Directors Guild nominations, Spielberg is now in the company of John Huston, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet and William Wyler. Only Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann received eight nominations. Spielberg’s other nominations for the guild prize were for “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T.,” and “Empire of the Sun.”