The awards season is chock full of the same anecdotes being passed around with each interview, but give a group of directors a few hours, and more interesting, new insight into the filmmaking process will arise. This is always the case with the Directors Guild of America’s yearly talk with their nominees, and thankfully in recent years they’ve published the talk in full for our viewing and listening pleasure.
This year, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film Award nominees Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma), Peter Farrelly (Green Book), Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman), and Adam McKay (Vice) gathered, with moderation from Jeremy Kagan. It’s certainly a shame that one of the great female directors of this year (Marielle Heller, Claire Denis, Chloé Zhao, Josephine Decker, Lynne Ramsay, Tamara Jenkins, and Debra Granik, to name a few) weren’t represented, but one can skip through McKay and Farrelly to get some compelling insight into Cuarón (who went on to win the top award), Lee and even Cooper’s processes.
Ranging from the early inception of their projects to deep into pre-production and production, it’s a masterclass like none other this year. Watch below or listen to in podcast form here.