Will Chazelle become the youngest-ever Best Director winner?
The DGA best director winner has gone on to win the Oscar on all but six occasions since 1948.
Toward the end of the night, Alejandro Iñárritu, the Best Director winner, found himself in the awkward position of delivering a plea for racial harmony with Wagner galloping in the background.
Sean Penn's intro to best director winner Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?") didn't go over too well with fans who found it just a little bit racist.
Martin Scorsese, a hugely popular first-time best director winner, said after the show that he never envisioned the film as an awards contender, a sentiment that was echoed by producer Graham King.
Paramount held its atop the Hilton on Park Lane, where I saw best director winner Joel Coen and his wife Frances McDormand tenderly dancing around their Bafta trophy as if it were an Essex girl's handbag.
Damien Chazelle, "La La Land" — If Chazelle wins, which he most likely will, he'll be the youngest Best Director winner in Oscar history, at thirty-two years, one month, and seven days old.
Inarritu, 51, prevailed over four other nominees: two-time DGA best feature director winner Clint Eastwood for Iraq war drama American Sniper, Richard Linklater for coming-of-age tale Boyhood, Morten Tyldum for British World War Two story The Imitation Game and Wes Anderson for colorful caper The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Plus, this year's "playing off" song was the entirely unsubtle Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner, played miles too early for poor best director winner Alejandro González Iñárritu – and downright inappropriate when it came to Son of Saul's László Nemes.
"Our work will be judged, as always, by time," best director winner Alejandro González Iñárritu said in one of his several acceptance speeches, which is a good sentiment for the Oscars themselves, but less so for the kind of movies that tend to win Oscars.
