The Directing Oscar is perhaps the most competitive award out there.
Not only does Hollywood have more than its fair share of high profile
director's, but there is also a long line of actors, photographers,
writers and costume designers, that also aspire to that field.
While Steven Soderbergh had a
respectable following prior to 2000, he wasn't exactly a household
name. That year, however, two of his films would put him on the map,
and they would give him the honor of being only the fourth director in the
past seventy four years, to receive two nominations for Best Director in
the same year.
Frank Lloyd was the first to earn
multiple directing nomination. He did it for three films; The Divine
Lady, Weary River and Drag, all nominated for the 1928-29 ceremony.
He was the winner, beating out Lionel Barrymore, for Madame X, Harry
Beaumont, for the Best Picture of that year, Broadway
Melody, Irving Cummings for In Old Arizona, and Ernst Lubitsch for The
Patriot. Lloyd's win was typical of the times, taking honors for all
three films, just as Best Actress winner, Janet
Gaynor, and Best Actor
winner, Emil Jannings, did the year previous.
The next year saw two
actresses, Greta
Garbo and Norma Shearer, earn double Best Actress nods. Garbo's
director, Clarence Brown, for both of her films, Romance and Anna
Christie, was likewise nominated for both films. Like his actress,
however, Brown didn't win it, losing to Lewis Milestone for All
Quiet on the Western Front.
The
only other occurrence was 1938, when Fay
Bainter became the first actress to receive a nomination in both the
Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories. Michael Curtiz
was nominated that year for directing two films, Four Daughters and Angels
With Dirty Faces. Curtiz didn't win it, but his status as a director
was boosted, and he would later go on to direct the Best Picture winner,
Casablanca, in 1943.
Soderbergh's double nomination in 2000, seemed
somewhat different. When the other director's were nominated, they
were working for studios, and it wasn't unusual for them to pump out four
or five pictures in one year. Today, a director is committed to a
project, and in many cases, they are there from the beginning, right
through to the final edit.
Soderbergh was nominated for
Traffic, a gritty look at the lives that are affected by the drug trade,
and for Erin Brockovich, a Julia Roberts-vehicle, about the real life law
clerk who took on the bad guys and won.
He
was a big name at that year's Oscar ceremony, with both of his films as
frontrunners for Best Picture, and two of his actors, Roberts for
Brockovich, and Benicio Del Toro for Traffic, as sure things in the acting
races.
While Sodergergh's films lost to
Gladiator, he would go on to win the Best Director Oscar for Traffic,
beating out Gladiator director, Ridley Scott.
