Kumail Nanjiani had the Beverly Hilton ballroom in stitches Saturday at the 78th DGA Awards about how backwards the guild been for quite some time, specifically with regard to its lifetime achievement award.
No, the jab wasn’t over the fact that it’s not being bestowed this year to a notable filmmaker (last year’s recipient was Ang Lee).
“In researching the awards, the lifetime achievement award used to be known as the D.W. Griffith Award, named after the director who in 1915 made the movie Birth of a Nation, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, the most reprehensible racist film.”
“So, of course, we had to change the name of the award as soon as we could,” before punch-lining, “Which was 1999!”
Watch on Deadline
“Because, until 1999, we said, KKK — let’s see how things play out,” said the Oscar-nominated The Big Sick scribe and star. “1999! That’s when The Matrix came out.”
Later on in Nanjiani’s monologue, he called back again to the DGA’s history with the Griffith Award.
“I am so excited to see Steven Spielberg here; genuinely, you won Best Director here in 1986 for The Color Purple. That same year, they gave out an award called the D.W. Griffith Award, doing it for another 13 years.”
It was Nanjiani’s first time emceeing at the DGAs following Judd Apatow’s five-year run.
“I am your host, Kumail Nanjiani,” he said atop the show. “You don’t have to know where I’m from to know I’m the first person from there to host this show.”
“You may remember me from The Big Sick, a movie that RFK denies the existence of.”
Following Oscar winner and DGA president Christopher Nolan on the stage, Nanjiani made a nod to the Nolan’s movie Inception: “Thank you, Chris Nolan, for opening for me. I love to give a chance to young up-and-comers. Sharing the stage with Christopher Nolan has been a dream inside a dream inside a dream.”
When Apatow hosted the awards show, the feed for his wild comedic opening — which targeted everyone from Donald Trump to Elon Musk to Harvey Weinstein — was traditionally cut off in the press room, and only for the ballroom’s consumption. That changed this year, with Nanjiani’s full speech made available on the show’s streaming feed to the press room.
Similar to how Apatow hit sacred cows on the head, Nanjiani continued to address the turbulent political times: “We’re in a moment when people are focused on the differences in us,” he said.
Talking about Sinners, which has its director Ryan Coogler up for a DGA Award for feature film tonight, Nanjiani said, “Every bad guy in Sinners is a white person, which makes it the most realistic movie of the year. … No offense, that’s almost everyone here.”
Then, sending it home, the comedian exclaimed, “The film has so effectively captured the true horror of white people dancing.”
The Eternals star spoke about growing up in Karachi, Pakistan. “We did not get official Hollywood releases in the theaters around VHS. We really did[n’t]. We only got bootlegs. I mean, like a guy with a camcorder in a theater, and you could see, like, people’s heads moving around. So, it was like watching Mystery Science Theater without any commentary.”
“I remember, I was watching The Sixth Sense, and the guy in front got up to go to the bathroom right after the twist was revealed. He came back after it was revealed. So that guy still doesn’t know that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!” The first big U.S. movie to arrive in Karachi was Jurassic Park, which Nanjiani said he watched with his family at the cinema. “It was dubbed in Urdu,” said the comedian, who remembered Dr. Ian Malcolm’s (Jeff Goldblum) line “big pile of sh*t” getting a big reaction from the crowd.
In closing, Nanjiani said both warmly, and hysterically, to the room full of filmmakers: “You remind us of our shared humanity while also celebrating our differences, because our commonality may make us human, but our differences make us beautiful, and that is what D.W. Griffith stood for alone.”