Bong Joon Ho Apologizes to Oscars Engravers for Winning Too Many Awards - Vanity Fair

The marketing materials Neon used to promote Parasite last year focused on one phrase: "act like you own the place." But on Sunday night at the 2020 Oscars, director Bong Joon Ho didn't have to worry about performing. He lived in the Academy's head rent-free, taking home three individual Oscars—including best director and as a producer for Parasite, the surprise best picture winner. (The film also won best international feature, a prize that technically belongs to the nation of South Korea.)

That bounty of little gold men led to a viral moment at the Governors Awards immediately after the ceremony, when Bong sheepishly apologized to the Oscar engravers tasked to handle all his hardware. "Sorry for the hard work," Bong said in a video posted by Variety. "Too many."

Bong's three individual Oscars, and the fourth he accepted for Parasite as best international feature, put him in the same conversation as Walt Disney, who won four individual Oscars at the 26th annual Academy Awards. In fact, some claimed the Bong’s wins meant the director tied Disney for the honor—but again, the best international feature award goes to the film's country of origin, not the individual filmmaker.

Even still: winning three Oscars is a feat that puts Bong into some special company. Only 11 people have taken three awards in a single Oscars ceremony, with Birdman writer-director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu the most recent person to score the hat trick at the 2015 ceremony. Joel and Ethan Coen (for No Country for Old Men), Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh (for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), James Cameron (for Titanic), James L. Brooks (for Terms of Endearment), Francis Ford Coppola (for The Godfather Part II), EGOT recipient Marvin Hamlisch (for The Way We Were and The Sting), and Billy Wilder (for The Apartment) are the other people to win three Oscars in a single year. Bong, Inarritu, and Wilder are the only three to win original screenplay, director, and picture.