DGA to honor Norman Jewison

[Big Magilla]

Almost lost in the shuffle:

Directors Guild of America President Taylor Hackford today announced that Norman Jewison will receive the Guild’s top honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Achievement in Motion Picture Direction, at the 62nd Annual DGA Awards on January 30, 2010.

“We are truly honored to present the Lifetime Achievement Award for feature film to Norman Jewison, a legend in this industry. He is an incredible filmmaker whose calm, affable manner belies a ferocious creative fire within,” said Hackford. “There are very few filmmakers whose body of work moves so fluidly between romantic comedy and political thriller, musical and satire, with an ease and an eloquence that few could hope to match. Norman well deserves to stand among the giants of cinema whom we have honored in the past.”

The DGA Lifetime Achievement Award winner is selected by the present and past presidents of the Guild. In the Guild’s 73-year history, only 32 directors have been recognized with the honor, including Cecil B. DeMille (1953), Frank Capra (1959), Alfred Hitchcock (1968), Orson Welles (1984), Billy Wilder (1985), Akira Kurosawa (1992), Stanley Kubrick (1997), Francis Ford Coppola (1998), Steven Spielberg (2000), Martin Scorsese (2003), and most recently, Clint Eastwood (2006).

Norman Jewison has been a vibrant force in the motion picture industry for four decades. Nominated for three DGA Awards, the filmmaker has been personally nominated for four Oscars; his films have received 46 nominations and 12 Academy Awards. He has also been nominated for three Best Director Awards. In 1999, Jewison received the prestigious Irving Thalberg Award at the Academy Awards…

His film debut as a director came with the 1962 comedy 40 Pounds of Trouble, followed quickly by several more romantic comedies. With The Cincinnati Kid, Jewison broke out of the romantic comedy genre as he began exploring a wide range of styles as well as the complex social issues such as racism and corruption that would characterize a number of his films throughout the coming years. 1966’s The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, garnered Jewison his first DGA nomination. The following year’s In the Heat of the Night brought another DGA nomination and won five Academy Awards including Best Picture in 1967. A Soldier’s Story brought his third DGA nomination; additional Academy Award nominations for Best Director followed for Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck.