Joseph P. Reidy: 2022 Frank Capra Achievement Award

January 20, 2022

1st AD Joseph P. Reidy will become the 36th recipient of the Frank Capra Achievement Award, which will be presented at the DGA Awards ceremony on March 12, 2022. The Capra Award is given to an Assistant Director or Unit Production Manager in recognition of their career and service to the industry and the DGA.

See video of Joseph P. Reidy's speech below.

A DGA member for over four decades, Joe Reidy is a prolific First Assistant Director. His credits include work on numerous DGA Award-nominated features such as Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Robert Redford’s Quiz Show; and he was a Second AD on Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie. Reidy has also had a long working relationship with Martin Scorsese, acting as his First Assistant Director on the DGA Award-nominated films Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York, The Aviator and his 2006 DGA Award-winning feature The Departed. He also worked with Oliver Stone on the DGA Award-nominated film JFK and the 1989 DGA Award-winning feature Born on the Fourth of July.

Reidy was a graduate of the New York Assistant Directors Training Program and has served as a Trustee of the Program since 2006. He was also a member of the 2020 DGA Negotiations Committee and COVID-19 Return to Work Committee that was tasked with formulating the protocols to bring DGA members back to work during the pandemic. Reidy was first elected to the Guild’s Eastern AD/UPM Council in 2016 as an Alternate member. Since then he has served seven terms on the Council including being elected as the Council’s 1st Vice Chairperson from 2019 to present and as the 2nd Vice Chairperson from 2017 to 2019. As Co-Chair of the AD/UPM Council’s First Assistant Director Committee, Reidy has participated in numerous Council-hosted events. In August 2021, he was also a panelist in the Special Projects Committee’s virtual event Dynamic Duos: The Collaborative Process of Directors and 1st ADs where he and Director Jon M. Chu discussed their collaboration on the feature In the Heights.

Upon learning he was chosen as the latest recipient of this prestigious award Reidy said, “This is incredible!  I am overwhelmed. It was a distinct privilege just to join the Directors Guild, and then to be able to work with Directors that I admire. Now, to be selected by my fellow members to receive the Frank Capra Award is a great honor and extremely humbling.”

Joseph P. Reidy accepts the 2022 Frank Capra Achievement Award

Past recipients of the Frank Capra Achievement Award: