When I was writing the intro to our DGA predictions for yesterday, I was contemplating the Best Picture/Best Director split and how the Directors Guild of America (DGA) may help us forecast such an occurrence. Keep in mind, this is a theory as the Oscar electorate changes each year as younger members join. With the large influx of new members this year, much of our suppositions about the Oscar race will likely have to change. Here are my quick observations before the DGA awards tonight.

In the last 20 years, the Academy has split Best Picture/Director only 5 times. Of those five times, a more populist film has won Best Picture over a more serious film’s director (1998’s Saving Private Ryan lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love; 2000’s Traffic lost out to Gladiator; 2002’s The Pianist was topped in Best Picture by Chicago; 2005’s Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture; and in 2012, Argo won Best Picture while Life of Pi took Best Director). 2012 is obviously the anomaly. Life of Pi was hardly a more serious film than Argo, but the Academy’s directors branch hadn’t nominated Ben Affleck, making it impossible for him to win, forcing a split that likely would not have otherwise occurred.

In those 5 situations, 1998 and 2005 the Best Director Oscar winner matched DGA. In 2002 and 2012, the DGA winner matched Best Picture at the Oscars. In 2000, neither Best Picture or Best Director aligned with the DGA win, which went to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee, who happened to direct two of the five films that won Best Director, but didn’t win Best Picture (that in itself is a very interesting fact). If Steve McQueen wins Best Director from the DGA, the serious/populist trend would favor either American Hustle or Gravity for Best Picture. If Alfonso Cuaron wins DGA, the only potential matching year is 2012, which would indicate 12 Years a Slave as the winner. If David O. Russell wins, then history shows that American Hustle will take both prizes at the Oscars. That’s if you bet the split. McQueen could win here and presage a Best Director/Picture pairing at the Oscars, as could Alfonso Cuaron, though his chances are a bit dicier since no science fiction film has ever won Best Picture.