Who are the only filmmakers to win a ‘Best Director’ Oscar and a ‘Worst Director’ Razzie?
Receiving a ‘Best Director’ Oscar is one of the highest honours you can achieve in Hollywood, although it doesn’t automatically make you better than your other filmmaking peers.
Despite what that golden statuette might suggest, being a winner doesn’t always make you superior when some of the most undeniably great directors, like Stanley Kubrick, never got one.
To further prove my case that ‘Best Director’ Oscars really don’t mean much at all, let me present to you the fact that quite a large handful of filmmakers have been graced with nominations for both ‘Best Director’ at the Academy Awards and ‘Worst Director’ and its opposite counterpart, the Golden Raspberry Awards, often known as the Razzies.
Founded in 1981 as a parody of the Oscars, the ceremony really pokes fun at the ridiculousness of the award ceremony, taking the time to highlight the worst contributions to Hollywood every year – and there’s a lot of them. Some of the supposedly greatest filmmakers in cinema history have been humbled by nominations by the Razzies, even those who have actually won ‘Best Director’ in the past.
On four occasions have the Razzies have given a ‘Worst Director’ prize to a ‘Best Director’ winner, one of whom is the creator of some of Hollywood’s most accomplished films.
The only filmmakers to win a ‘Best Director’ Oscar and a ‘Worst Director’ Razzie
Of course, Francis Ford Coppola makes it onto the list with his Razzie win for Megalopolis (or MegaFLOPolis, whatever you want to call it), helping to dethrone him from a once mighty place in Hollywood as the director of The Godfather series and Apocalypse Now. Coppola first won a directing Oscar for The Godfather Part II back in 1975, but those days as a successful filmmaker are long gone.
Then there’s Michael Cimino, a beacon of light during the New Hollywood era who won a ‘Best Director’ Oscar for The Deer Hunter, while he also took home ‘Best Picture’. The movie was lauded, but within two years he had made a movie many considered one of the worst of all time. Heaven’s Gate was hugely controversial, landing Cimino on the pile of Golden Raspberry winners.
Kevin Costner hasn’t been able to escape this curse either, with his Oscar win coming in 1990 with Dances With Wolves, his directorial debut. People were really impressed, but soon Costner proved that maybe he wasn’t as talented a filmmaker as critics first thought. He ended up winning ‘Worst Director’, ‘Worst Picture’, and ‘Worst Actor’ for The Postman in 1998.
A more recent addition to this list comes in the form of Tom Hooper, who landed himself a ‘Best Director’ Oscar for The King’s Speech in 2011, only for his career to quickly slide downwards into pure despair. He might have garnered plenty of praise with Les Misérables and The Danish Girl, but my God did he experience a mighty downfall when he made everyone’s biggest nightmare, Cats. Naturally, he won multiple Razzies for the abomination, including ‘Worst Director’. Who’s surprised?
