Parasite director Bong Joon-ho now shares Walt Disney's 67-year-old Oscar record
The groundbreaking South Korean filmmaker proves anything Disney can do, he can do equally.
- Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards
Bong Joon-ho appreciates those Oscars.
You probably already know Bong Joon-ho, director of genre-bending South Korean film Parasite, won the Oscar for best picture Sunday night. But did you know he matched a 67-year-old record set by Walt Disney ?
In 1953, Disney became the first person to win four personal awards: best animated short, best live-action short, best documentary short subject and best documentary feature.
On Sunday, Joon-ho won best director, best original screenplay, best international film and best picture. You might be thinking plenty of movies have won more than four Oscars in a single night. However, those awards are spread across different contributors on the movie.
Not only is Joon-ho the writer and director of Parasite, but he produced it too. So the best picture win counts toward his personal tally.
One minor detail setting Joon-ho apart from Disney: Joon-ho won his awards for the same production. Disney's Oscars were awarded for different projects: Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom; Bear Country; The Alaskan Eskimo; and The Living Desert. Disney produced all those projects in a single year.
But that takes nothing away from Joon-ho's achievement with Parasite. The film is best watched knowing as few details as possible going in, but essentially it follows the poor Kim family, which comes across a means of turning its luck around.
For those who've already seen Parasite, now it's time to watch it again (it's equally good second-time round), and then move on to Joon-ho's back catalog of movies, including The Host, Okja and Snowpiercer (here's how to watch them all). And for the full list of Oscars winners, head here.
