If your sleepy neighborhood was laden with mysterious screams of stupefied glee on Sunday evening, worry not. That was just the Bong Hive: a devoted community of fans of filmmaker Bong Joon Ho and his 2019 masterpiece Parasite. Going into the 92nd Academy Awards, we of the Bong Hive were cautiously optimistic. Could Bong best viable contenders like Sam Mendes and Quentin Tarantino for the Best Directing award? And could Parasite become the first foreign language feature film to win Best Picture in the history of the Oscars? We hoped. We believed. But we didn’t know.
But now we know. On Monday morning, we can account for certainty that it was not a dream that Parasite won its expected International Film Oscar, the somewhat less expected Best Original Screenplay Oscar, the darn near shocking Best Director Oscar, and—and this one sent a few of us into hyperventilation for a hearty half hour—the Academy Award for Best Picture.
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This was a good night for all of us, no doubt. But it was a historic night for the film’s director, producer, and screenwriter Bong Joon Ho. See, it’s been almost 70 years since an individual pulled off winning four Oscars in a single night, and it’s only been done the once before… and by, of all people, Walt Disney.
At the 26th Academy Awards in 1953, Disney took home Oscars for four different movies. He won for…
…Best Short Subject – Cartoons (which has since been renamed to Best Animated Short Subject) for Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom, an educational animated film about the varied classifications of musical instrument.
….Best Live Action Short Subject, Two-Reel (which has since been combined with its complementary award, Best Live Action Short Subject, One-Reel, into the unified Best Live Action Short Subject award) for the nature film Bear Country.
…Best Documentary Short Subject for The Alaskan Eskimo, an entry in Disney’s decade-spanning People & Places series.
…Best Documentary Feature for The Living Desert, a nature doc about the lives of animals indigenous to the Southwestern United States.
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Disney served as producer on all of the above, allowing him the honor of accepting the trophies in aforesaid categories. Bong, likewise a producer for Parasite, was eligible for winning Oscars on its behalf in the International Feature Film and Best Picture categories, sharing the latter with co-producer Kwak Sin Ae. He shared the Best Original Screenplay honor with co-writer Han Jin-won. The Directing trophy was our boy’s alone.
Though Bong Joon Ho may only tie Walt’s record, we can note that he becomes the first ever individual to win four Oscars for the same film. That is an incredible superlative in its own right—perhaps even more impressive, some might say—and one that it might take even more than 67 more years to best.
So in the meantime, why not join us in some celebrating? Stick your head out the nearest window and cheer into the heavens over Bong Joon Ho and Parasite‘s historic, significant, and deserved wins! It’s a good day for Hivin’.
Featured Image: CJ Entertainment