'King' rules over PGA Awards

The Producers Guild of America honored New Line's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" with the Darryl Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in theatrical motion pictures during its awards ceremony Saturday night.

Jan. 18, 2004

'King' rules over PGA Awards

By Jesse Hiestand
The Producers Guild of America honored New Line's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" with the Darryl Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in theatrical motion pictures during its awards ceremony Saturday night.

Producers Barrie M. Osborne, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh won for "King."

The 15th annual awards show made the PGA's honors the first industry trophies to be handed out during the shortened awards season.

Alan Ball, Alan Poul and Robert Greenblatt & David Janollari won the Norman Felton Producer of the Year Award in episodic television drama for HBO's "Six Feet Under."

The Danny Thomas Producer of the Year Award in episodic television comedy went to Michael Patrick King, Cindy Chupack, John P. Melfi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jenny Bicks and Jane Raab for HBO's "Sex and the City."

David Collins, Michael Williams, David Metzler and Lynn Sadofsky won in the best reality-game-informational television series category for Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." The category was added last year.

The David L. Wolper Producer of the Year Award in longform television went to Frank Doelger, Robert Allan Ackerman and Ann Wingate for HBO's "My House in Umbria."

The Producers Guild of America opted for the big picture with the six films it chose to nominate for its Darryl Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in theatrical motion pictures.

Conflict and conquest proved a common theme among the big-budget nominees, with the producers favoring epic-scale films rather than smaller indie efforts.

The PGA combatants included "Cold Mountain," Miramax Films' Civil War-set romance; 20th Century Fox's Napoleonic War naval adventure "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"; Warner Bros. Pictures' Japanese period piece "The Last Samurai"; and the men-vs.-orcs battles of New Line Cinema's triumph-over-evil saga "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

And for Universal Pictures' "Seabiscuit," the conflict moves to the racetrack, while in Warners' "Mystic River," it bubbles up out of the past to affect the lives of childhood friends in a working-class Boston neighborhood.

In the television race, HBO was again represented by a nominee in each of the four categories and took home a total of six nominations. CBS had five, and NBC and Fox tied with three each.

Because of a tie in the voting, the PGA announced six nominees in the feature film race rather than five. Ten of past 14 winners in the PGA's theatrical category have gone on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, including Miramax's musical drama "Chicago" last year. The principal reason, according to PGA executive director Vance Van Petten, is that most of the group's roughly 2,000 members also belong to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

"It is a bit of a bellwether because the same people are voting," Van Petten said after the nominees were announced.

The nominees were announced at the Century Plaza Hotel by Marg Helgenberger of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and Sean Astin, who co-stars in the "Rings" trilogy. Both productions were nominated in their respective categories, prompting the actors to pump their fists, congratulate each other and comment on the "stiff competition" each faced.

About half the PGA's members voted for the nominees.

The nominees for the Zanuck Award in theatrical motion pictures were Albert Berger & Ron Yerxa, William Horberg and Sydney Pollack for "Cold Mountain"; Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz and Paula Wagner & Tom Cruise for "The Last Samurai"; Barrie M. Osborne, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh for "Return of the King"; Samuel Goldwyn Jr., Duncan Henderson and Peter Weir for "Master and Commander"; Robert Lorenz, Judie Hoyt and Clint Eastwood for "Mystic River"; and Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Gary Ross for "Seabiscuit."

Nominees for the Norman Felton Producer of the Year Award in episodic television drama were J.J. Abrams, John Eisendrath, Ken Olin and Sarah Caplan for ABC's "Alias"; Jerry Bruckheimer, Carol Mendelsohn, Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann M. Donahue, Jonathan Littman, Danny Cannon, Cynthia Chvatal & William Petersen and Louis Milito for CBS' "CSI"; Alan Ball, Alan Poul and Robert Greenblatt & David Janollari for HBO's "Six Feet Under"; Joel Surnow, Robert Cochran, Brian Grazer, Howard Gordon and Normal Powell for Fox's "24"; and Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme, John Wells, Alex Graves, Christopher Misiano, Llewellyn Wells and Neal Ahern Jr. for NBC's "The West Wing."

Nominees for the Danny Thomas Producer of the Year Award in episodic television comedy included Ray Romano, Philip Rosenthal, Lisa Helfrich Jackson and Ken Ornstein for CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond"; Linwood Boomer, Jimmy S. Simons, Matthew Carlson, Gary Murphy & Neil Thompson, Michael Glouberman & Andrew Orenstein, Michael Borkow, Alex Reid and Rob Hanning for Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle"; Bill Lawrence and Randall Winston for NBC's "Scrubs"; Michael Patrick King, Cindy Chupack, John P. Melfi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jenny Bicks and Jane Raab for HBO's "Sex and the City"; and Max Mutchnick & David Kohan, James Burrows, Jeff Greenstein, Jhoni Marchinko and Tim Kaiser for NBC's "Will & Grace."

Nominees for best reality-game-informational television series, a category added last year, include Simon Fuller, Nigel Lythgoe, Ken Warwick and David Goffin for Fox's "American Idol"; Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore, Sean Bailey, Dan Cutforth & Jane Lipsitz, Eli Holzman and Tony Yates for HBO's "Project Greenlight"; David Collins, Michael Williams, David Metzler and Lynn Sadofsky for Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Three other shows also are nominated, though their eligible producers are still being determined through an arbitration process: CBS' "The Amazing Race," A&E's "Biography" and CBS' "Survivor: Pearl Islands."

Producers vying for the David L. Wolper Producer of the Year Award in longform television were Joshua D. Maurer, Mark Gordon and Larry Gelbart for HBO's "And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself"; Peter Sussman, Ed Gernon and John Ryan for CBS' "Hitler: The Rise of Evil"; Frank Doelger, Robert Allan Ackerman and Ann Wingate for HBO's "My House in Umbria"; Cary Brokaw and Lydia Dean Pilcher for HBO's "Normal"; and Joshua D. Maurer for FX's "The Pentagon Papers."

The PGA's Milestone Award was presented to Warren Beatty, the Vanguard Award to James Cameron, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures to Dino De Laurentiis and the David Susskind Achievement Award in Television to Lorne Michaels.

Mike Nichols and Cary Brokaw received the 2004 Visionary Award for "Angels in America."

The honor recognizes television or film producers whose work demonstrates a unique or uplifting quality. Last year's award went to Rita Wilson for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

James Cromwell presented the award to Nichols and Brokaw at the 15th annual PGA Awards at the Century Plaza Hotel.

"It's a tribute to the vision of Mike Nichols and Cary Brokaw that they chose to ignore the doubters who said that Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' was 'unfilmable' and instead marshaled a peerless cast and crew in the service of creating a truly unique and uplifting television event," PGA Awards co-chairs Lawrence Gordon and Debra Hill said.

Nichols also directed "Angels in America," which aired on HBO as a miniseries.

In a statement, Nichols and Brokaw said they were thrilled to receive the Visionary Award and be honored by their friends and colleagues.

"To make 'Angels in America' without compromise and to have it recognized in this matter is enormously gratifying," the pair said.

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