Last night was a big one for director Bong Joon-ho. Not only did his film Parasite win Best International Film as many predicted, the filmmaker walked away with Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and (amazingly) Best Picture. It was the first time a foreign language film won the top prize at the Academy Awards, but the Oscar glory doesn’t stop there. With those four wins in a single night, Bong Joon-ho tied a 67-year old record set by none other than Walt Disney.
Even though plenty of movies have won more than four Oscars in a single night, those awards go to a variety of different people depending on the category. But in the case of Parasite‘s big wins last night, Bong Joon-ho not only directed and wrote Parasite, but he also produced it, which means the Oscars awarded to the film also went towards his personal total. The last time a single person won four Oscars in one night was at the 26th Academy Awards in 1953 when Walt Disney won the following awards:
- Best Short Subject – Cartoons (now known as Best Animated Short) for Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom
- Best Live-Action Short Subject, two-reel (now lumped in with Best Live-Action Short in general) for Bear Country.
- Best Documentary Short Subject for The Alaskan Eskimo of the People & Places series
- Best Documentary Feature for The Living Desert, a nature documentary
So Bong Joon-ho is now tied with Walt Disney for getting the most Oscars in a single night. Disney won Oscars for four different projects, so that means Joon-ho now holds the record for winning the most Oscars in a single night for the same production. One might argue that Disney’s achievement is a little more impressive since he produced so many projects in a single year, the competition in those subjects was far less stuff than it is today. Even so, winning four Oscars in one night is an incredible achievement on its own, especially since it’s been 67 years since the last time someone did it.
But Joon-ho isn’t letting any of this go to his head. In fact, while getting his awards engraved backstage at the Oscars last night, Joon-ho genuinely apologized to those engraving the awards for having “too many” awards for them to put his name on. Watch below.
Bong Joon Ho apologizes to the engravers for having too many #Oscars https://t.co/hWATPNesC8 pic.twitter.com/u5XuaKBdki
— Variety (@Variety) February 10, 2020
Now that’s a class act. Combine this wonderful moment with the fact that Joon-ho’s acceptance speech for Best Director paid tribute to the rest of the filmmakers nominated alongside him, and you can’t argue that this man is truly a treasure. We eagerly await the next project from this masterful filmmaker.
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