Academy Award Winning Director Mike Nichols to Receive Guild's Highest Tribute at 56th Annual DGA Celebration.Entertainment Editors LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 5, 2004 DGA DGA Directors Guild of America (movie directors union) DGA Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (France) DGA Directeur-Grootaandeelhouder (Dutch: Managing Director and Major Shareholder) President Michael Apted announced today that director Mike Nichols has been selected to receive the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of Nichols' distinguished career in motion picture directing. As the Guild's highest tribute, the Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Nichols, one of the industry's finest practitioners, at the 56th Annual DGA Awards on February 7, 2004. "There is hardly an entertainment medium that Mike Nichols hasn't pioneered and mastered," Apted said in announcing the award. "You can put any of these in front of his name with the word winner: Oscar(R), Emmy, Tony, Grammy. But it's the absolute brilliance that he brought to feature film directing from day one -- with his debut of `Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Noun 1. Virginia Woolf - English author whose work used such techniques as stream of consciousness and the interior monologue; prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group (1882-1941) Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, Woolf ?' followed a year later by his DGA and Oscar(R) Award winning direction of `The Graduate' -- that propels us to honor his legacy to motion pictures. In his 37 years of directing films, Mike Nichols has brought millions of movie-goers into the theater. He has done it with class, intelligence, and always good humor Noun 1. good humor - a cheerful and agreeable mood amiability, good humour, good temper humour, mood, temper, humor - a characteristic (habitual or relatively temporary) state of feeling; "whether he praised or cursed me depended on his temper at the time"; ." The DGA Lifetime Achievement Award winner is selected by the present and past presidents of the Guild, although the award is not presented on an annual basis. In the Guild's 68-year history, only 30 directors have been recognized with the honor. Nichols now joins this illustrious list, which includes Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola Noun 1. Francis Ford Coppola - United States filmmaker (born in 1939) Coppola , Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra and John Ford. (A complete list of winners appears below.) In addition to the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award, Nichols received the Filmmaker Award at the 2000 DGA Honors as well as the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for his 1967 film "The Graduate," which also won him an Academy Award for Best Director The Academy Award for Best Director is one of the awards given to directors working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations are made by Academy members in the Directing branch, while the winners are chosen by the Academy . He was nominated for both DGA and Academy Awards a year earlier for his film directorial debut of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and for his direction of "Working Girl" in 1988; he also received a Best Director Oscar(R) nomination for "Silkwood" in 1983. Nichols has won seven Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards and, in 1961, shared a Grammy Award for Best Comedic Performance with his longtime artistic partner, Elaine May. He is one of only a handful of people to win all four of the major entertainment awards. With a film directing career that has spanned nearly four decades, Nichols' other acclaimed features include such notables as "Catch-22" (1970), "Carnal Knowledge Copulation; the act of a man having sexual relations with a woman. Penetration is an essential element of sexual intercourse, and there is carnal knowledge if even the slightest penetration of the female by the male organ takes place. " (1971), "Heartburn heartburn, burning sensation beneath the breastbone, also called pyrosis. Heartburn does not indicate heart malfunction but results from nervous tension or overindulgence in food or drink. " (1986), "Biloxi Blues" (1988), "Postcards From the Edge Postcards from the Edge is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Carrie Fisher, first published in 1987. It was later adapted, by Fisher herself, into a motion picture directed by Mike Nichols which was released by Columbia Pictures in 1990. " (1990), "Regarding Henry" (1991), "Wolf" (1994), "The Birdcage" (1996), "Primary Colors" (1998) and "Wit" (2001, HBO Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) A form of oxygen therapy in which the patient breathes oxygen in a pressurized chamber. Mentioned in: Ozone Therapy ). His most recent project was the critically acclaimed movie for television, "Angels in America Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is an award winning play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. It has been made into both a television miniseries of the same name and an opera by Peter Eötvös. " (HBO), where he directed a stellar cast that included Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Mary-Louise Parker. Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany of a Russian father and German mother. His family immigrated to the United States when he was seven. Raised in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , Nichols attended the University of Chicago where, together with Elaine May and Paul Sills, he was one of the founding members of the comedy group The Compass, later renamed Second City. Nichols is a recipient of the 2003 Kennedy Center Honors The Kennedy Center Honors are held to be the highlight event in the cultural life of the United States. The idea was the brainchild of George Stevens, Jr. (who remains involved), and he and his partner, the late Nick Vanoff, put together the first event, launching it in 1978. and is Chairman of the Board of Friends In Deed, a non-profit organization founded to provide support to those affected by life-threatening illness. On Tuesday, January 6, 2004, the DGA will release the names of its five nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film in a 10 a.m. press conference at the Guild's Los Angeles headquarters at 7920 W. Sunset Blvd. The DGA Lifetime Achievement Award was first presented in 1953, and has been bestowed thirty times. 1953 Cecil B. De Mille 1954 John Ford 1956 Henry King 1957 King Vidor 1959 Frank Capra 1960 George Stevens 1961 Frank Borzage 1966 William Wyler 1968 Alfred Hitchcock 1970 Fred Zinnemann 1973 David Lean 1973 William A. Wellman 1981 George Cukor 1982 Rouben Mamoulian 1983 John Huston 1984 Orson Welles 1985 Billy Wilder 1986 Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1987 Elia Kazan 1988 Robert E. Wise 1990 Ingmar Bergman 1992 Akira Kurosawa 1993 Sidney Lumet 1994 Robert Altman 1995 James Ivory 1996 Woody Allen 1997 Stanley Kubrick 1998 Francis Ford Coppola 2000 Steven Spielberg 2003 Martin Scorsese |
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