At the Los Angeles awards ceremony, Marshall prevailed over fellow nominees Stephen Daldry ("The Hours"), Peter Jackson ("The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"), Roman Polanski ("The Pianist") and Martin Scorsese ("Gangs of New York"). The win is expected to bolster the movie's chances at Oscar time, especially in the Best Director category, given the significant overlap in voting constituencies for the DGA and Best Director Oscar. Despite a big push by "Gangs of New York" distributor Miramax to win the Oscar for Martin Scorsese, Marshall (whose movie is also distributed by Miramax) is now the frontrunner for the award: only five times since the DGA Award's inception — in 1949 — have the two awards not coincided. The last time the awards diverged was in 2000, when Ang Lee won the DGA Award for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for "Traffic".

Also at the DGA ceremony, director Matthew Diamond was awarded Best Director in the Musical Variety category for his work on "From Broadway: Fosse", which aired as part of the PBS series "Dance in America."