First, “Mystic River” did NOT earn any Oscars for Clint Eastwood. It earned awards for two of the actors in it, but Eastwood didn’t receive one for his direction. The only Best Director Oscar he’s won was for “Unforgiven,” which you say yourself was a worthy film.
It’s also worth noting that it’s directors who select the winner of the Best Director Oscar (that’s why the winner of the Directors’ guild award is usually the same as the winner of the Oscar). So, it’s not as if a bunch of actors and actresses are picking fellow thespians like Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson over “serious” professional directors. It’s DIRECTORS who are making the choices you don’t like.
So, if you’re angry that someone like Robert Altman (incredibly overrated) or Martin Scorsese has never won the Oscar as Best Director, you have to blame his fellow directors!
As for the worthiness of the actor-directors who HAVE won the Oscar as Best Director… well, people can argue all day about the merits of their films AND about the real contribution each man made as a director. I happen to think both “Dances With Wolves” and “Goodfellas” were excellent (though VERY different) films- so while Martin Scorsese was certainly deserving of an award, Kevin Costner’s victory didn’t strike me as a great injustice.
If there’s an injustice, it may lie in this: Oscar voters seem to have a preference for a certain type of film: they like historical epics, preferably epics filled with sweeping, panoramic landscapes and period costumes. David Lean specialized in just the type of films the Academy likes to honor. Smaller, more personal films usually don’t charm voters or win awards.
So, it’ll be ironic (but not surprising) if Martin Scorsese (who earned his great reputation by making small, gritty, personal films) finally gets his Oscar for “The Aviator,” which is the kind of traditional, historical epic the Academy likes.
An anecdote from Bobby & Peter Farrelly comes to mind. The Farrelly brothers told Newsweek once, “We wish EVERYBODY could direct a movie. BEcause you know what? Everybody COULD!”
They weren’t saying this to disparage serious, capable directors. They were simply making the point that the title of “director” doesn’t NECESSARILY Mean much. The Farrelly boys get “Director” credits in all their movies, but they’ll freely concede that on their shoots, the cinematographer is pretty much on his own and the production designer does most of the real work in getting scenes set up. So, if “Dumb and Dumber” turned out to be a hilarious movie (a matter of opinion) and a smash hit (it was!), that doesn’t mean the Farrellys are geniuses (they themselves would scoff at such a notion).
A movie director, like a head coach in football, CAN be a tactical genius who’s involved in every aspect of his team’s performance. Or he CAN be a loose supervisor who hires smart people to handle the details, and lets them do their jobs. Both types of directors/coaches can be successful, and both types have been. If a team wins a Super Bowl under a coach who’s NOT a micromanager, I’d say he’s worthy of the Coach of the Year award, even if he’s not as smart or hard-working as some of his less-successful colleagues. And in the same way, IF it were to turn out that (for the sake of argument) Mel Gibson was a hands-off director on “Braveheart,” and that his crew did most of the real work, I’d say “So what?” If the end result was a great movie (I think it was; others will disagree), the director deserves whatever awards he gets. He’ll sure take plenty of abuse if the end result is a turkey (ask Kevin Costner about his subsequent films!).
