DGA Award Nudges Mendes Closer to Oscar

A year ago, he wasn’t even a member of the Directors Guild of America, but now Sam Mendes stands a good chance of walking off with one of the most coveted honors in Hollywood: the Academy Award for best director.

The odds that the British stage director will capture the coveted Oscar on March 26 for his debut film, “American Beauty,” were enhanced dramatically Saturday night when the 12,000-member DGA awarded Mendes its top honor for a feature-length movie.

The DGA Award has traditionally been a near-perfect barometer for the best director Academy Award. Only four times since the award’s inception in 1949 has the winner not won the Oscar.

With such legendary filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Wise looking on, it seemed that a new generation of filmmakers was taking center stage.

Mendes was chosen over four other directors, two of whom were first-time DGA nominees: Spike Jonze for “Being John Malkovich” and M. Night Shyamalan for “The Sixth Sense.” Also nominated were Michael Mann for “The Insider” and Frank Darabont for “The Green Mile.”

In remarks to the DGA’s 52nd annual awards banquet held at the Century Plaza Hotel, Mendes said he felt honored to receive the award and took a bow to DreamWorks SKG, the studio Spielberg co-founded, which gambled that the young theatrical director could pull off the complicated, darkly humorous tale.

Mendes thanked the studio for allowing “a bloke from England [to make] a movie about American suburbia and allowing me to make the film I wanted to make.”

One of the evening’s biggest moments came when Spielberg stepped to the microphone to accept the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award.

By receiving the honor, the famed director of such blockbusters as “Jaws,” the Indiana Jones trilogy and “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” as well as historical-themed films “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad” and “Saving Private Ryan,” joins an august group of filmmakers, including legendary names like John Ford, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille and Akira Kurosawa.

In his remarks, Spielberg addressed a controversy that has been swirling around the guild since the DGA board of directors decided last November to rename its lifetime achievement award, which since 1953 had been named after pioneer filmmaker D.W. Griffith. Guild executives took the unprecedented action because Griffith’s 1915 silent film, “The Birth of a Nation,” is widely perceived to glorify the Ku Klux Klan and contains racial stereotypes.

“Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ the first motion picture masterpiece, was deeply tainted with racial stereotyping,” Spielberg told his peers. “I had to ask myself a very tough question . . . : Would I have agreed to changing the name of one of the highest awards of our profession if it was widely known that that award had been named after a director whose portrayal of Jewish people fostered racial stereotyping and these prejudices were ingrained in that director’s landmark work?”

Someday, Spielberg pointed out, an African American director will stand before this same body to receive the lifetime achievement award.

Yet, even though Griffith’s name won’t be attached to future lifetime achievement awards, Spielberg took pains to note Griffith’s landmark achievements in cinema.

“We must never forget that D.W. Griffith was a pioneer,” Spielberg said. “We must never stop acknowledging that he created the feature film, that he invented the profession of director, and that he wrote the first handbook on cinema. He is widely regarded as the father of the moving image and, I think, like some fathers, he was flawed. But in this case, I think we can separate the man from the breakthroughs in the medium of film.”

Other DGA Award winners included:

Documentary: Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen, “On the Ropes.”

Television movie: Milt Jackson, “Tuesdays With Morrie.”

Television dramatic series: David Chase, “The Sopranos,” pilot episode.

Television comedy series: Thomas Schlamme, “Sports Night.”

Television musical variety: Dennie A. Gordon, “Tracey Takes On . . . End of the World.”

Television daytime serial: Roger W. Inman and Herbert D. Stein, “Days of Our Lives,” Episode 8557.

Television children’s program: Amy Schatz, “Goodnight Moon & Other Sleepy Time Tales.”

Commercials: Bryan Buckley.

Diversity Award: Home Box Office.

Frank Capra Achievement Award: Cheryl Downey.

Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award: Scott L. Rindenow.

Lifetime Achievement in Sports Direction Award: Chet Forte.