PRIMER: Tonight's 61st Annual DGA Awards

This evening, the Directors Guild of America will announce the winner of the 2008 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.

This year's nominees are Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire"), David Fincher ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"), Ron Howard ("Frost/Nixon"), Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight") and Gus Van Sant ("Milk").

Here are some other things you should know about the event:

• The DGA has been dishing out awards since 1948, making this the 61st annual DGA Awards ceremony.

• The DGA is effectively the union for all film and TV directors, and consists of roughly 13,000 members. According to my colleague Tom O'Neil, the majority of the members work on the TV side of the business, and only 8,000 or so live in the Los Angeles area, with the rest scattered across the country. DGA members are not allowed to receive DVD screeners of films, so they must actually take the initiative to see the films at industry screenings or their local Cineplex, which would seem to give an inherent advantage to early and commercially successful releases over films that came out late in the season and screened primarily in art-house theaters.

• The DGA Award winner and Academy Award winner for best director have corresponded on all but six occasions:
  • 1968 DGA honored Anthony Harvey ("The Lion in Winter"); AMPAS honored Carol Reed ("Oliver!")
    
  • 1972  DGA honored Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather"); AMPAS honored Bob Fosse ("Cabaret")
  • 1985 DGA honored Steven Spielberg ("The Color Purple"); AMPAS honored Sydney Pollack ("Out of Africa")
  • 1995 DGA honored Ron Howard ("Apollo 13"); AMPAS honored Mel Gibson ("Braveheart")
  • 2000 DGA honored Ang Lee ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"); AMPAS honored Steven Soderbergh ("Traffic")
  • 2002 DGA honored Rob Marshall ("Chicago"); AMPAS honored Roman Polanksi ("The Pianist")

• The film directed by the DGA winner has gone on to be named best picture by the Academy (AMPAS) on all but 13 occasions, making it one of the most accurate precursors out there:
  • 1948 DGA honored "A Letter to Three Wives"; AMPAS honored "Hamlet"
    
  • 1951 DGA honored "A Place in the Sun"; AMPAS honored "An American in Paris"
    
  • 1952 DGA honored "The Quiet Man"; AMPAS honored "The Greatest Show on Earth"
    
  • 1956 DGA honored "Giant"; AMPAS honored "Around the World in 80 Days"
    
  • 1967 DGA honored "The Graduate"; AMPAS honored "In the Heat of the Night"
    
  • 1968 DGA honored "The Lion in Winter"; AMPAS honored "Oliver!"
  • 1981 DGA honored "Reds"; AMPAS honored "Chariots of Fire"
    
  • 1985 DGA honored "The Color Purple"; AMPAS honored "Out of Africa"
  • 1989 DGA honored "Born on the Fourth of July"; AMPAS honored "Driving Miss Daisy"
  • 1995 DGA honored "Apollo 13"; AMPAS honored "Braveheart"
  • 1998 DGA honored "Saving Private Ryan"; AMPAS honored "Shakespeare in Love"
  • 2000 DGA honored "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"; AMPAS honored "Gladiator"
  • 2005 DGA honored "Brokeback Mountain"; AMPAS honored "Crash"

• This year, four of the five nominees for the DGA Award and for the Academy Award for best director overlapped; the DGA's fifth nominee was Nolan, while the Academy instead opted for Stephen Daldry ("The Reader"). This is the second time Daldry has received an Oscar nod without first receiving a DGA nod.

• This year's Academy Award nominations were announced Jan. 22. Final ballots for this year's DGA Award were due Jan. 23. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that the former -- and, in particular, the Academy's high-profile snub of Nolan -- had any influence on DGA voters' selection.

• Nolan could conceivably become the first person in history to win the DGA Award for a film that was not even nominated for the Academy Award for best picture.

• Four of this year's nominees have been invited to the DGA Awards before: David Fincher won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials (2003), and is nominated again for that honor tonight; Ron Howard was nominated three times before this year, losing for "Cocoon" (1985) but winning for "Apollo 13" (1995) and "A Beautiful Mind" (2001); Christopher Nolan was previously nominated for "Memento" (2000); and Gus Van Sant was previously nominated for "Good Will Hunting" (1997). This evening's favorite to win, Danny Boyle, is the only first-timer of the group.

• The presenters of this evening's nomination certificates will be Dev Patel and Freida Pinto (to Boyle); Jodie Foster and Taraji P. Henson (to Fincher); Frank Langella and Michael Sheen (to Howard); Christian Bale (to Nolan); and Josh Brolin and Sean Penn (to Van Sant),

• The DGA Award will be presented to this year's winner by last year's co-winners Ethan Coen and Joel Coen ("No Country for Old Men").

• I am fairly certain that Sean Young ("Blade Runner"), the unintentional star of last year's DGA Awards ceremony, will not be in attendance.

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Photo: Joel and Ethan Coen accept the 2008 DGA Award for "No Country for Old Men." Credit: Getty Images