‘Oppenheimer’, ‘The Bear’ continue winning run; Scorsese recalls Hitchcock’s advice

Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Chuck Roven and their producing team took home the Darryl F. Zanuck Award, which recognises excellence in producing for a theatrical feature film.

Los Angeles: ‘Oppenheimer‘ continued to steamroll its path to Oscar glory on Sunday night (US Pacific Time), claiming the top prize at the 2024 Producers Guild of America Awards, reports ‘Variety’.

Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Chuck Roven and their producing team took home the Darryl F. Zanuck Award, which recognises excellence in producing for a theatrical feature film.

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Thomas, according to ‘Variety’, told the crowd that many may not know that Nolan, the film’s writer and director (and her husband), excelled most in his role as producer: “He’s absolutely brilliant, we’ve worked on 12 films now.”

‘The Bear’, another unstoppable awards force that won big at this weekend’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, got the PGA’s Danny Thomas Award for best episodic comedy series.

The ceremony also saw several career achievement awards. Sarah Michelle Gellar stepped out to present super-producer Gail Berman, who made the former a star with ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, with a trophy named for Norman Lear.

“When I say that not a single person on this earth was interested in buying that television show, I mean not a single person on earth was interested in buying that television show,” Berman told the crowd at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood.

She persisted and wound up creating an iconic character that empowered young women around the world. Berman dedicated her award to her husband and children — the people who “lift me up when there’s barely any air left in the punching bag”, adds ‘Variety’.

At the evening’s end, Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro gave a moving tribute to Martin Scorsese, the 2024 recipient of the David O. Selznick Achievement Award. While celebrating his defining works such as ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Goodfellas’, del Toro said Scorsese is now living one of the more transformative moments in his professional life.

“An artist’s spirit cannot be tamed,” del Toro said, according to ‘Variety’. “It will remain vital, savage and even undomesticated — even in the fourth or fifth decade of a prestigious career.”

Scorsese brought the ballroom to its feet with a standing ovation. He recalled meeting a previous winner of the Selznick award, director Alfred Hitchcock, who had advice for producers in his own PGA acceptance speech.

The ‘Psycho’ director lectured filmmakers on “runaway productions”, or films that ran too long and over budget. And he advised the crowd, per Scorsese, “Make producers and directors more faithful to their wives.”