Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite and Avengers: Endgame won trophies for period film, contemporary film and fantasy film, respectively, at the Art Directors Guild's 24th annual Awards on Saturday at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown.
Parasite and Once Upon a Time, along with ADG period film nominees The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit and 1917, are contenders for the Oscar in the production design category.
Over the past five years, the winner of the ADG's period film prize went on to win the Oscar for production design twice, in 2015 for The Grand Budapest Hotel and in 2018 for The Shape of Water. The production design Oscar went to the winner of the fantasy category twice, in 2016 for Mad Max: Fury Road and 2019 for Black Panther. And in 2017, La La Land picked up the ADG Award for a contemporary film on the way to winning the Oscar for production design.
Additional ADG Award winners this year included Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 4 in the animated feature category, as well as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Chernobyl, Russian Doll, The Umbrella Academy and The Big Bang Theory.
Also on the evening, Chuck Lorre accepted the Guild's Cinematic Imagery Award, while four lifetime achievement awards were presented, to Joe Alves, from the art directors council; Denis Olsen, from the scenic, title and graphic artists council; Stephen Myles Berger, from the set designers and model makers council; and Jack Johnson, from the illustrators and matte artists council.
Upon accepting his award, Alves (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) recalled driving 3,000 miles to find a "strange mountain" for Close Encounters, during which he located the iconic Devil's Tower. He got a laugh as he reminded the crowd that today you would just Google it.
Syd Mead, the late "visual futurist" and concept artist best known for his work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Aliens and Blade Runner, received the William Cameron Menzies Award posthumously. The award was presented by Denis Villeneuve.
Oscar nominated art director and production designers William J. Creber, best known for his work on The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno and the first three Planet of the Apes movies, and Roland Anderson, best known for Breakfast at Tiffany's, White Christmas and Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra, were inducted into the ADG Hall of Fame.
A complete list of winners is below.
