So, Clint Eastwood won the DGA for
Million Dollar Baby and that's a result of three things 1) Love for the movie and his accomplishments there 2) Timing --the movie hasn't peaked yet...and 3) Clint's 'legend' status and honoring his whole life in the movies. That this lifetime achievement comes at the expense of Martin Scorsese is the central problem of the upcoming Oscar race as well.
You'll hear in any given awards year these two arguments about any particular heated race...
Pro "Due" / also known as Career Longevity Yeah, so maybe it's not his/her best work. It's still better than most people can or will ever do and he/she still hasn't ever won an Oscar and this is getting ridiculous! Tons of people win for this reason, why not him/her?
Con "Due" also known as Career LongevityYes, he/she has a great body of work. And yes, it's not fair that he/she may never win. But the award is for the best of the year not the best of all time or the best of these careers of the nominees!
Now, where you stand on the issue is usually based on how you feel about the person that the question is about. The problem is that it needs to be one or the other. The problem and the anger that crops up is that the Academy and other awards giving entities are always flipflopping about their answer to this 'honors' problem. And, here's the other problem... given that sometimes two achievements are pretty much on the same level of accomplishments, why not give it to the more overdue person?
To some degree Clint already had his "due" year with
Unforgiven so if he's up for the prize again --against someone who is widely considered to be among the greats of all time (that'd be Scorsese) should he really win again if he's the best of this one particular year? It's just a hypothetical question when it comes from me because I don't feel like Clint deserves it this year but it's an interesting quandry. If Clint can win several Oscars in honor of good movies and his longevity why can't Marty? This question is also particularly hard to deal with when it comes to the Best Actress race. Inexplicably many people have decided that the least of the five performances (Swank's) is the best ...so the argument rises up there too: It doesn't matter if she previously won, she deserves it! But do you really award a non-interesting non-accomplished career Two freaking Oscars when you can never figure out a way to give one of America's greatest living filmmakers his first? Or two of the screen's best actresses
ever (Julianne Moore and Kate Winslet) their first prize?
This question "career or year?" is a good one to ask. But nobody seems to ever answer it the same way twice.
