My Directors
Man, all I wanted to be back in my late teens and early twenties was a movie director. These were the guys, man, the rock stars of the medium. The creative geniuses. I dreamed of hearing phrases like "I hear they're getting O'Connell to direct that one", or "The film is passable, I suppose, pretty much what we've come to expect from your average O'Connell film". To have that power, to be the creative force that brings all the pieces together and makes them come alive, to put your stamp on something that will be watched and rewatched throughout the ages.
I realized later that I was more suited to be a writer or producer, but I never lost my fascination for these guys, or my respect for what they do. There are a lot of directors that I love from over the years. Some have done one or two films and disappeared, some have done films I've loved and then started making garbage. But there are a select few directors that I consider to be "my" directors. These are the guys whose movies I will go see just because their name is one it. I'll look to the internet to find out when their next film is coming out. Here are a few of my guys, and what I love about them.
P.T. Anderson
I really had no interest in seeing a film about the porn industry, nor was I filled with warm fuzzies over the idea of Burt Reynolds (who'd spent the previous decade making horrible straight-to-video films) or Marky Freaking Mark starring in it. But I finally listened to the critics and rented Boogie Nights, and was summarily blown away.
Paul Thomas Anderson definitely falls into that "renegade filmmaker" category. There's a reason he became the Hollywood's golden boy when the Boogie Nights buzz started flying. I could get into the camera work in his films that mark them as his, or his regular actors (some of my favorites) that he puts in them to make them work so well. But it's his ability to find the honesty in a situation, to bring out the truth in a character, that makes certain you can't take your eyes off his work. Character is the operative word, for that is the driving force behind the films he makes. Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love all have casts of unforgettable characters that he writes--and directs--like he loves them. And it shows, because ultimately, so do we.
Kenneth Branagh
I was a lousy student in high school. Hence, what limited exposure we did get to Shakespeare in the Seventh-day Adventist school system was wasted on me. I didn't really discover Shakespeare until I happened to take a chance on a much-talked about Shakespeare film by a young British actor/director named Kenneth Branagh. My friend Cindy and I went and saw Henry V. Not only were the critics right, but, because of a film, I was transformed into a Shakespeare fan for life. Appropriate, I think, because in this day and age, Shakespeare, I believe, would have been a screenwriter. And if he didn't direct his films himself, he was most certainly be begging Kenneth Branagh to shoot them.
Henry V was a revelation, a vast and epic telling of a work that Branagh was certainly well-versed in from his stage work. He would go on to adapt other Shakespeare works, like Much Ado About Nothing (priceless) and the STILL NOT ON FREAKING DVD AS OF THIS WRITING masterpiece Hamlet, which I was lucky enough to see on the big screen, intermission and all, when it came out. And Love's Labour's Lost as well, a definitely different take on his usual Shakespeare style. Not wanting to be too pigeonholed, Branagh stepped out and successfully tried other genres, like Hollywood noir (with a spiritual twist) in Dead Again, gothic horror in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and romantic comedy in Peter's Friends, an often overlooked film with an amazing cast and wonderful touch of 80s nostalgia. He is an actor first, and this shows in his direction, be it in the lavish drama of Hamlet (where his attention to costume and set details are remarkable) or the touching character moments of Peter's Friends. His films just do not disappoint me, and I look forward to meeting and thanking him one day for, if nothing else, opening the mind of a pop culture junky to the arts.
John Carpenter
Okay, let's be honest. This man has made some really bad movies. But you know, I've got some really bad shirts in my wardrobe, too, but they still feel right when I put them on. I just don't always wear them in public...
I grew up on John Carpenter movies, and they just feel comfortable and familiar to me. He's not one of my directors for his full body of work, but he's a sentimental favorite. An anti-establishment rogue filmmaker ("I AM the studio," I once heard him say at a live speaking engagement of his I attended), Carpenter loves the art of exploitation. His films are violent, with often (wonderfully) two-dimensional characters, lots of fake blood and body parts, and, of course, the ever-present bad John Carpenter film scores, with the music he usually makes himself (most of the time, it sounds like he does so on his Casio). His films can be summed up in my description to a friend of Ghosts of Mars--"Oh, dude, it's crap. You have to see it!"
He's the king of the unashamed man movies. I started early on with Assault On Precinct 13 and one of the staples of my adolescent years, Escape From New York (which gave us the ultimate anti-hero, Snake Plissken). And then came The Thing, still one of the scariest, grossest and manliest movies ever made. "Scary" was a big theme for him, and he made some of the most memorable scare films of all time, like Halloween and Christine. He went a little more mainstream with the very enjoyable Starman, but then totally won me over for life with the cult classic Big Trouble in Little China, a film that tried to squeeze as many genres as possible into one film. It's a film that you either get or don't, but those that get it swear by it (most of my friends do). Most people missed Prince of Darkness, which, while not a great film, was one that creeped me out so badly that I loved it. And in the 80s, all the guys I knew loved They Live, a subversive alien invasion film that used a professional wrestler as its lead (no one had done this before) and gave us one of the best (and longest) fight scenes in cinema. After this? Well, John kind of started to lose it. This is most evidenced in the really insulting and campy Escape From L.A. He did, however, come back into my good graces with the misogynistic vampire film Vampires that's almost refreshing in its lack of political correctness. And, of course, I mentioned Ghosts of Mars, a pretty bad and silly movie that descends into glorious hack-and-slash combat, explosions, flying limbs and lots of bullets. Was it bad? Yes. Was it Carpenter? Most definitely. And sometimes, that's enough to still bring a smile to my face. If the cigarettes don't kill him soon, I hope John keeps cranking out schlock for me for many years to come.
Cameron Crowe
One of the first filmmakers I always check on to see what's coming up from him next, Cameron Crowe and his films have always really connected with me. It started with Say Anything, which I saw because John Cusack was in it. I wasn't expecting to find a director that I'd be sticking with for the next fifteen years, but it happened. Not too far out of high school, I found this just-post-high school comedy to be so dead on, in everything from its great use of music--from the Chili Peppers to Fishbone to Depeche Mode to the famous Peter Gabriel boom box scene--to the emotional realities of young love, and right down to having to stick a matchbook into the tape deck to get a tape to play in the car stereo. It all resonated as genuine, from the characters of my age to the middle-aged John Mahoney. I seek directors who seek (and find) emotional truth, and Crowe does this in every one of his works.
Just as Say Anything came out for me at the right time, Singles did the same, looking into the post-teen world of seeking love and direction in life. Jerry Maguire, his biggest hit, came for me at a time when I was working up in the corporate world, so that hit home, too. And Maguire showed Crowe in all his greatness, casting these brilliant actors, finding the comedy in unexpected places, and somehow touching something universal in us all in our search for greatness and peace. But his biggest surprise for me was Almost Famous, a film that a lot of people didn't seem to get. Again, I had a connection. This was about an era I remember (though history seems to have forgotten), the era of Frampton and Seger, the 70s before they became the stereotype 70s. It was a wonderful coming of age movie, with again dead-on casting (I fell in love with Kate Hudson straight away, and any film that uses Jason Lee has my thumbs-up) and an obvious love for the material, since it was a mostly autobiographical film. Crowe puts a lot of himself in all the films he does, and the love for the material shines through. His films feel like home to me, and that's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
David Mamet
There's nothing quite like a Mamet film, and you may see that as a good or bad thing, depending on how you respond to his work. It's definitely an acquired taste.
Best known and most successful in theater, David Mamet first started in film with his screenwriting, either adapting his own plays to film (like Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which became About Last Night..., or Glengarry Glen Ross) or writing originals like The Verdict or The Untouchables. But in 1987 he decided to try his hand at directing films, starting with a film I first discovered in a film class, House of Games, followed the next year by Things Change. Both films used one of his perennial favorite actors (someone used often in his stage work) Joe Mantegna Hmm. How do I describe Mamet films properly? They're very theatrical. In other words, though you are watching a film, you feel like you're watching a play. Famous for his rhythmic and wonderfully crude dialogue, Mamet definitely influences his actors' delivery of it through his direction. And depending on how you look at it, the result is interpreted by people either as theatrical...or as bad acting. Kind of a crap shoot.
Me, I love Mamet films...most especially Things Change, one the last works of the great Don Ameche, but also The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, and Heist. Mamet's obsession with the grift and with overtly tough guy characters is fun, and even if the dialogue is sometimes too much or doesn't ring true when spoken, its some of the most inventive and brilliant turns of phrase you'll ever hear. I love the regular actors he uses, from his wife Rebecca Pidgeon to the brilliant Ricky Jay to one of the my favorite character actors in film, the versatile and genuine William H. Macy. His films, in a sense, are like Carpenter movies for me (oh, I'm sure Mamet would love THAT comparison)...when a new one comes out, its like coming back to your home town again after living away for a long time. I know I'm going to get some slick music (often jazzy), some snappy, ingenious dialogue, a lot of irony and a feel like they should be closing the curtains between scenes to change the sets. Can't guarantee you'll click with Mamet, but he's sure clicked with me.
Michael Mann
Michael Mann started in television. He actually started before my time, working shows like Police Woman and Vega$. But it was in 1984 that I became a fan for life, when we gave me Miami Vice, simply the coolest show I had ever seen. And "cool" seems to be the operative word in his work, including the his film work.
I started with his movies when Manhunter came out in the middle of his Vice success in 1986. This was my introduction to one of my favorite actors, William Petersen, and it worked for me because it was, in many ways, Miami Vice: The Movie. Fans of the novel Red Dragon were a little put off by this fact, but I thought it was great, a manly suspenseful FBI movie with a great Vice-like soundtrack and patented Mann visual style. While style would remain a big part of his films, his work would mature quite a bit in the films to come, from Last of the Mohicans to Heat to The Insider to Ali. Heat is still one of my favorite movies, using all his elements (haunting music in this one, creating a really unique mood for what looks like it should be just an action film...great use of action, including the best shoot-out scene in film history after the bank job...characters that surprise you with their depth and dimensions and vulnerability), and is probably the main reason that whenever a new Mann film comes out, I'm on Fandango buying up tickets.
M. Night Shyamalan
I was talking to a girl I know about movies, sometime after The Sixth Sense came out. She hadn't seen the film. But she told me that a guy she knew found out she hadn't seen it, and because of this proceeded to tell her everything about the movie, including the end. I wanted to find that man and beat him to death with something large and rusted.
If you've seen the Sixth Sense, then you understand what I'm talking about. The great and frustrating thing about M. Night films (we all started calling him M. Night around my circle before we found out how to pronounce his last name)--from Sixth Sense to Unbreakable to Signs--is that you can't tell people about them! His trademark for his films, which he both writes and directs, is his twists, and his endings. Unfortunately, I think that's also to his detriment, because now everyone sort of expects that out of his movies and will be disappointed if there isn't some big shock at the end. He does big surprises, yes. But that's not what makes his beautifully original stories work. He does the unexpected. He takes simple ideas, takes the ordinary, and makes it extraordinary. He steers clear of tradition and rules. He tells stories that he really wants to tell. In fact, one of my favorite stories about him is the fact that he was offered a whole lot of money to write the screenplay for the fourth Indiana Jones film, but he ended up turning it down because "I really just want to tell my own stories". This is a creator. This is a man, it's very clear to me, that spent his childhood like I did, making up stories and characters, inspired by movies and TV and comic books, wanting to create adventures of his own to share with people and make them happy. You can see that sort of childish optimism in his work, and that anticipation, where he's waiting not to find out how much money his film grosses, but how people will react to it. I can imagine him sitting in the back of a theater on opening night, tense, holding his breath to see if people laugh or gasp at the right moments. This man loves film for all the right reasons. He is the proverbial breath of fresh air, and has become one of my favorite directors. His films are hands-down can't miss affairs for me.
Bryan Singer
If you saw The Usual Suspects, chances are you're a Bryan Singer fan. Simple as that. Slick, stylized, groundbreaking and, in the end, somewhat shocking (and if you've seen the film, you get that), Suspects announced that there was a new flavor in town, a new golden boy named Bryan Singer.
He followed his success on Suspects with Apt Pupil, a deeply creepy film based on the Stephen King story, one that got Singer started with his now regular actor, the great Ian McKellen I was a fan of his work up to this point, but when I found out that he was taking on the upcoming X-Men franchise, and then saw what he did with it? If he hadn't been up until then, he was definitely one of my directors now. He's part of this new generation of directors that's "one of us"...someone roughly the same age as my friends and I, with the same influences and taste in movies and literature and such. I love what he does visually, love what he gets out of his actors, love his use of music (most especially in Suspects). I'll always be looking to see when that next Bryan Singer film is coming out.
Steven Spielberg
Okay, so it's kind of a mainstream answer, but I can't deny it. When I was growing up, and when I first fell in love with movies, Steven Spielberg was a major reason for it. It all started with Jaws, which--of course--scared the piss out of me as a kid. But I loved that about it, loved that a movie could take me on a ride like that. Soon after this, Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, and became one of my favorite movies ever made. And a fine example of everything that works about Spielberg. Spielberg is a believer. There's a lot of Norman Rockwell in him. In Close Encounters, he really showed a cross-section of American people and families in his characters. I remember specifically feeling the connection when one of Richard Dreyfuss's kids wanted to stay up and watch "The Ten Commandments", and that was a moment right out of my own childhood. You find that in a lot of his films...very believable people and families. And there's the Spielberg sense of wonder, of course. Nobody brings that like him. You see it here, and in E.T., and Poltergeist, and in the "Cadillac of the sky" moment in Empire of the Sun. And the awakening scene in Hook. The arrival at Jurassic Park. The map room scene in Raiders. He raises films to something mythical, makes you believe in fairy tales.
While the Hollywood spectacle was his earlier forte--and still is, to some degree--its his more important dramatic work that really elevated him. He had a controversial start in this with the Color Purple. It was Empire of the Sun, though, that established him, for me, as more than just a blockbuster special effects guru. This film blew me away, a sprawling (yet personal) historical epic following a young English boy surviving in occupied Japan in WWII. Planes, explosions, thousands and thousands of extras... It was beautiful. But it was only the first in what would be his WWII trilogy, and the next two films would transcend from movies to historical documents. I'm talking, of course, about Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Shindler's List spoke for the victims of the holocaust and told their story. Private Ryan spoke for the American WWII soldier, and showed all the horror and heroism of war. In both cases, Spielberg's obsession to detail and accuracy helped bring them to life and transport us all back in time, making us feel like we were there. That's the true mark of a Spielberg film. You don't just watch it, you live it. That's what a movie's supposed to do. And that's why--though he does sometimes go for the money only with things like Jurassic sequels that miss the mark--I'm usually going to be there when a new Spielberg movie hits the multiplex.
Quentin Tarantino
I got on the Tarantino boat late. Everybody (you remember) was talking about this Pulp Fiction movie. I hadn't seen it. But finally, I borrowed someone's tape to check it out. Wow. Like nothing I'd ever seen. Beyond pop culture references...this movie hit in ways no one had thought of. It was about criminals, but criminals you loved. He sent Sam Jackson into super-stardom. He brought Travolta back from the dead. He somehow even got Bruce Willis to do his movie (how did that happen?). He gave us a strange, raw, time-slipping storytelling style with a vicious wit and fantastic use of music. It was a revelation. I got in late, but I got there and stayed.
And even better, I then got around to seeing Reservoir Dogs, one of the most shockingly good (and sickeningly fun) films I'd ever seen. His casting was magnificent, and he drew out performances from down in the depths of his actors. It was daring and stark, blunt and masterful. It cemented the fact that, for me, he wasn't a one-hit wonder. He made us wait three years for another film--while we had to sit through other people directing his scripts (Natural Born Killers? Ugh! True Romance? Ehhh, not bad. From Dusk 'Till Dawn? Money!), and I saw it opening day (Christmas Day), and fell in love with Jackie Brown, his most mature film to date. From then on, waiting for that next Tarantino film became a most. He changed the way films were made and started a new revolution--causing us to deal with lots of bad knockoffs. But he's the one that started it all, and he's still the King.
My Former Directors
I love a lot of directors, and there are some that used to be on my list, but that lost it along the way. John Hughes is one. He gave us great teen movies and some of the best comedies of the 80s. Then he started making Home Alone movies...and then disappeared. My theory is that he had kids. This ruins many filmmakers. Robert Rodriguez used to be my guy. He gave us El Mariachi and Desperado (actually the same film), From Dusk 'Till Dawn and The Faculty. Then what happened? He had kids. And he started making Spy Kids movies. Which would be great for me, I know, if I had kids. I don't. I was big on Peter Hyams, too. Gave us Outland, 2010, Running Scared, The Presidio... Then started making total crap like Sudden Death, The Relic and End of Days. I used to see every Ron Howard film, but I'm not going to blame this on Ron. He's still my guy. I just sort of fell out of his films when his whole EDtv/Grinch period started. But I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for being my guy for so long (Splash? Backdraft? Parenthood? Apollo 13? Please!), and even though I hadn't seen A Beautiful Mind, I was rooting for him at the Oscars since he'd been passed over so many times. Ah, but the biggest failure of all--George Lucas. Never a more perfect example of someone having kids and losing it. Funny, but people just assume he directed all the Star Wars films in the first trilogy, but we forget he only did the first one. But he still had total creative power, and the minute we opened on Tatooine in Return of the Jedi and saw saw some toad-like creature grab another one with its tongue, eat it, and belch, it was all over. He started making movies for kids, and left the rest of us, who had grown up with his trilogy but had still grown up, behind. The prequel trilogy proved that his time had passed. Sad, but it happens. But, that's the way of the business. Got to make room for that next director who was weaned, like me, on films by these guys, and can now step up and take over where the others left off.