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Directors who fell from grace

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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 323 ✭✭Underdraft


    pixelburp wrote: »
    I realise there's already a video posted about it, but reading the unpopular opinions thread got me thinking - what about George Lucas? Surely there's no better example of a pronounced fall from grace.

    There's no shortage of rants, editorials and opinions showing up his deficiencies as both a director & creative visionary in the modern age - god knows there's good reason for it - but it's easy to forget that back in 1977 he was a young auteur that seemed to have an eye for a good movie and had a bright future ahead of him (even if people predicted Star Wars to bomb). He did after all direct & write THX 1138, American Graffiti & definitely had talent. And as much as we like to castigate the franchise now, Star Wars was/is a classic; a fairytale retold in a revolutionary format. And if you include his producing work for things like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it adds up to something of a disparity between that & the figure he eventually became. Maybe his story is the most dramatic of all falls from grace: from young, home-movie auteur to creatively bankrupt millionaire

    He's definitely worth a mention.

    I'm of the opinion that Lucas was a talented ambitious uncompromising auteur with a lot to offer, but who got corrupted by his own obsession with gaining independence. He paid the price for it by putting business ahead of art in order to gain that independence an I think you can't spend 20 years behind a desk making deals and building empires and then suddenly think you go back to your previous profession and hope to be just as good as you were right away.

    I think the smartest thing Lucas could have done would have been to still make the prequels and earn all the billions but to leave the directing to someone else. Forget for one minute whether one thinks Lucas was a good director or whether not the replacement would do a better or worse job with the material. By getting back into the directors chair after 22 years out of the game Lucas had already set himself up to fail.

    Lucas has had his fair share of spectacular production turkeys down the years (Howard the Duck, The Radioland Murders, More American Graffiti etc) but they've pretty much been forgotten about because they weren't "Directed by GL". However once you add a director credit to your CV it follows you like a bad smell. He was playing a no-win game directing the Star Wars prequels and he should have been smart enough to just let someone else do the job. He'd have still earned a fortune, probably got a better trilogy and still have had a short but excellent directorial career to look back on.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,965 ✭✭✭Syferus


    I think most of the discussion on Lucas centers on his films rather than his most impressive characteristic; his vision as a company director.

    He funded Lucasarts and all those legendary adventure games, ILM remains one of the singularly influential and skilled studios in the history of cinema and of course without Lucas we'd never have Pixar and all the brilliance and change it brought about.

    Sure, as a director and script writer he has shown serious weaknesses but he's also done a huge amount of work that's broadened the boundaries of cinema and entertainment in general.

    At this point I tend to roll my eyes when I see a 'sly' insult aimed at Lucas - it's became much more of a cliche than any of his worst moments.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


    because everybody already knows the reasons
    George Lucas for reasons everybody already knows.


  • Registered Users Posts: 12,948 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    Frank Darabont seemed to drop off the Radar after the late 90s, when he made The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. He's had more success as a writer, and recently he's been writing and directing the TV series Walking Dead, which is getting raves.

    Jonathan Demme might be another one, since he has some great movies under his belt: Stop Making Sense, Silence Of The Lambs, Philadelphia - and Married To The Mob was fun. More recently ... meh. Beloved, remake of The Manchurian Candidate, Rachel Getting Married ...

    From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.

    — Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,101 ✭✭✭Technocentral


    Syferus wrote: »
    I think most of the discussion on Lucas centers on his films rather than his most impressive characteristic; his vision as a company director.

    He funded Lucasarts and all those legendary adventure games, ILM remains one of the singularly influential and skilled studios in the history of cinema and of course without Lucas we'd never have Pixar and all the brilliance and change it brought about.

    Sure, as a director and script writer he has shown serious weaknesses but he's also done a huge amount of work that's broadened the boundaries of cinema and entertainment in general.

    At this point I tend to roll my eyes when I see a 'sly' insult aimed at Lucas - it's became much more of a cliche than any of his worst moments.

    On a forum about cinema and a thread about directors, now why would that be :rolleyes:


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    Here's a question:

    Is it better to be a director who makes a few truly great and influential films and nothing else really worth talking about (à la Coppola), or be a director who consistently and prolifically makes good, solid films which even at their worst aren't that bad but at their best aren't that great (à la Clint Eastwood)?

    I mean, take John Ford for example. With the exception of The Searchers and a few other films, I don't think most of his films were that great. But I would still consider him a great director because he made many very good to excellent films in a long and successful career. Ditto Clint Eastwood. I guess with some directors their career when taken as a whole is greater than the sum of the parts, i.e. the individual films that made up that career.

    Compare this to directors like Coppola or Lucas, both of whom clearly lost something along the way, leading many people to suggest that the few great films they did make were flukes or accidents or the result of collaboration.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,556 ✭✭✭Nolanger


    I mean, take John Ford for example. With the exception of The Searchers and a few other films, I don't think most of his films were that great.
    He's one of the greatest Hollywood directors from the last century and doesn't belong in this thread as he never fell from grace. He made good films up to the end of his career.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 88,978 ✭✭✭✭mike65


    I guess it depends on the directors most of whom just want to make films which is why the prolific tend to have lesser or downright poor patches/eras. To be fair Coppola made a string a genuinely great films between 1969 and 1979 and some pretty interesting ones up to and including Tucker: The Man and His Dream in 1988 so that's 20 years of goodness.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    Nolanger wrote: »
    He's one of the greatest Hollywood directors from the last century and doesn't belong in this thread as he never fell from grace. He made good films up to the end of his career.

    That's my point. I wasn't naming Ford as a example of someone who fell from grace.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,101 ✭✭✭Technocentral


    Here's a question:

    Is it better to be a director who makes a few truly great and influential films and nothing else really worth talking about (à la Coppola), or be a director who consistently and prolifically makes good, solid films which even at their worst aren't that bad but at their best aren't that great (à la Clint Eastwood)?

    I mean, take John Ford for example. With the exception of The Searchers and a few other films, I don't think most of his films were that great. But I would still consider him a great director because he made many very good to excellent films in a long and successful career. Ditto Clint Eastwood. I guess with some directors their career when taken as a whole is greater than the sum of the parts, i.e. the individual films that made up that career.

    Compare this to directors like Coppola or Lucas, both of whom clearly lost something along the way, leading many people to suggest that the few great films they did make were flukes or accidents or the result of collaboration.

    Eastwood is probably my favourite current American director, his stuff is solid and consistent and he's had a quite a journey from the horrible reactionary of the "Dirty Harry" films to the compassionate stance of the likes of Iwo Jima.


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  • Administrators, Computer Games Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 32,074 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭Mickeroo


    I think some of Clint's best films (Unforgiven, Outlaw Joesy Wales to name two) are up there with the best work of any of the greats.

    I haven't watched Hereafter or J. Edgar yet, apparently they're not all that good so we might have seen his last great film :(


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    mike65 wrote: »
    I guess it depends on the directors most of whom just want to make films which is why the prolific tend to have lesser or downright poor patches/eras. To be fair Coppola made a string a genuinely great films between 1969 and 1979 and some pretty interesting ones up to and including Tucker: The Man and His Dream in 1988 so that's 20 years of goodness.
    Yeah, I wouldn't completely dismiss Coppola's later output either, but he clearly lost something. The guy who once tried to make great films was suddenly content to make mediocre and downright bad films. He's one of the best examples of a director falling from grace. And I think that early ambition was one of the reasons he fell. He just burnt out. Where as I think one of the reasons why Scorsese didn't was because he never set out to make great films, just good ones, but some of them ended up great. Same with Woody Allen, Spielberg, Eastwood etc. Like you said, those guys just love making movies and i guess they don't mind if some of them turn out less-than-great provided they are allowed to continue making them.


  • Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 34,942 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    Personally, I'd have more respect for a director who tries a lot of varied projects at the very real risk of them being disasters, with some being masterpieces, than a 'safe' director who makes a handful of quality films over his/her career.

    Of course it's better if the masterpieces are not all concentrated at the beginning of your career with two decades of dross thereafter.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 865 ✭✭✭FlashD


    I agree that Lucas has fallen from grace.

    He didn't need to start messing around with the original trilogy of Star Wars, sticking in BS scenes of CGI.

    Added to that all his later films are full of CGI, and bad CGI at that. Its like he forgot how to use a camera and decided to adopt a computer.

    Finally as if he couldn't do anymore damage, his fingerprints are all over that abomination that is the Kingdom of Crystal Skulls. I know Speilberg directed it but when I saw all those CGI scenes popping up all over the place I knew....Lucas you muppet!!!

    I read recently that he's retiring from Hollywood.:) :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,556 ✭✭✭Nolanger


    What you don't realise about directors like Coppola, Bogdanovich, Scorcese, and Demme is that they started out making bad or routine stuff and only got good later on.


  • Posts: 15,814 ✭✭✭✭ Crew Embarrassed Vent


    Nolanger wrote: »
    What you don't realise about directors like Coppola, Bogdanovich, Scorcese, and Demme is that they started out making bad or routine stuff and only got good later on.

    I think what you mean to say is that they learned their craft working in low budget exploitation cinema for producers such as Roger Corman. As routine and run of the mill as some of their early films are all showed a directorial style and vision which would marked them out as something more than a journey man director.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,556 ✭✭✭Nolanger


    William Freidkin is another example. He made an early movie called Good times which was inept but a few years later did those classics. John Boorman started off the same way with the silly Catch us if you can, before going on to do much better movies.


  • Registered Users Posts: 829 ✭✭✭OldeCinemaSoz


    Sadly David Cronenberg has been disappearing up his own backside
    in recent times. :(


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,555 ✭✭✭Kinski


    Scorsese. The man who brought us Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull, and wound up making snoozefests like Bringing Out the Dead and The Aviator; crap like The Departed (bad remake of bad HK movie); and most recently, the boring-but-for-some-nice-3D Hugo.


  • Registered Users Posts: 38,923 ✭✭✭✭Mellor


    Kinski wrote: »
    Scorsese. The man who brought us Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull, and wound up making snoozefests like Bringing Out the Dead and The Aviator; crap like The Departed (bad remake of bad HK movie); and most recently, the boring-but-for-some-nice-3D Hugo.

    mark_alec_police_jpg.jpg


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  • Registered Users Posts: 25,243 ✭✭✭✭Jesus Wept


    Leonard Nemoy.

    All went downhill after the fantastic 3 men and a baby.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,255 ✭✭✭Renn


    Scorsese is still banging out some good films. Hugo was one of the more enjoyable cinema experiences I had last year - the guy clearly still loves the art of filmmaking and it shows. Shutter Island is another one that has been quickly forgotten about but will resurface in about ten years time and people will go 'oh yeah, that was actually a pretty damn good film'. Thought the pacing was a little off in it but the atmosphere he creates is fantastic.

    So no, I don't think Scorsese belongs in this thread.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    Anytime Scorsese comes up in this context people always list the same four or five films as examples of his previous work: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. You'd never think that he made 15-20 films during the same period, most of which weren't gangster films.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,555 ✭✭✭Kinski


    Anytime Scorsese comes up in this context people always list the same four or five films as examples of his previous work: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. You'd never think that he made 15-20 films during the same period, most of which weren't gangster films.

    Of those listed, three (Mean Streets, Casino and Goodfellas) are what I'd consider gangster films, though I'm not sure of the relevance of that?

    He directed thirteen pictures from Mean Streets in 1973 to 1995's Casino, including concert film The Last Waltz (Out of thirteen, is it surprising that five keep coming up? How many would be representative? Ten? Fourteen?)The five films you list just happen to be his most famous - the ones which spring to mind readily - but he made plenty of other interesting, challenging and diverse movies in that period, from the superb King of Comedy to The Last Temptation of Christ.

    Nothing I've seen from him in the last fifteen years suggests he's anything other than a spent force. The likes of Hugo and Aviator were okay, Gangs of New York was pretty silly, and his big Oscar moment, The Departed, is a dreadful film.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    Raging Bull and Taxi Driver aren't gangster films, no, but they take place in the same kind of violent underworld of Italian American street life that Scorsese became famous for. I just feel most of the criticism (though not necessarily in your case) that gets directed at Scorsese now days is based on the idea that violent gangster films are all that he can do.

    He’s still making interesting and diverse films, maybe not as challenging, but not all his earlier work was that challenging and he is working within an industry that has become totally averse to such films. He’s had to adapt and become more mainstream, but has managed to do so without sacrificing his artistic integrity or enthusiasm for filmmaking. Hugo and The Aviator were a great deal better than okay and have a lot more depth than, say, The Colour of Money. And while GONY, The Departed and Shutter Island might not be on the level of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, that’s no basis for dismissing him as a spent force. He remains one of America's finest and most important filmmakers.

    His next film should be Silence which he's been trying to get made for some time now and unless he's interfered with I see no reason why it shouldn't be another Scorsese masterpiece.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,965 ✭✭✭Syferus


    I listened to a short interview Scorsese did on Five Live a couple months ago, the sheer passion and love of film he has is unbelievable.

    He's had his hand in so many fantastic projects that rarely get mentioned lately - documentaries like Shine a Light and Public Speaking, being a producer on Boardwalk Empire, directing the feature length first episode of that show and setting its visual palette and themes starkly and beautifully - that to say he's a spent force reeks of iconoclastic thinking.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    I’m sceptical anyway about the idea that a director can just “lose it” at a certain point in the their career. I mean, it’s undoubtedly applicable to Coppola, among others, but in those cases it can usually be attributed to personal and financial factors. Scorsese and Spielberg are still extremely vibrant filmmakers and it’s ridiculous to dismiss their recent output because it doesn’t match their previous work, especially when those earlier films are considered among the greatest films ever made. No director, no matter how talented, can be expected to live up to that, not when they are at the mercy of Hollywood financiers who only care about money. Scorsese can’t just wake up in the morning and decide to make a film about Portuguese Jesuits in 17th century Japan. He has to get somebody to put the money up first and that can take years. Another thing is that a great film needs a great story and great stories don’t grow on trees. Why do you think Kubrick made so few films? Because it took him that long to find a story he thought was worthy of his attention. Scorsese and Spielberg aren’t perfectionists like Kubrick. They’d rather be making films than sitting around trying to find the idea for their next masterpiece.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,555 ✭✭✭Kinski


    He’s still making interesting and diverse films, maybe not as challenging, but not all his earlier work was that challenging and he is working within an industry that has become totally averse to such films. He’s had to adapt and become more mainstream, but has managed to do so without sacrificing his artistic integrity or enthusiasm for filmmaking.

    That's true.
    Hugo and The Aviator were a great deal better than okay and have a lot more depth than, say, The Colour of Money. And while GONY, The Departed and Shutter Island might not be on the level of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, that’s no basis for dismissing him as a spent force. He remains one of America's finest and most important filmmakers.

    Well, they might be better than Color of Money or After Hours, but I didn't care for either. As a piece of filmmaking, I'll concede that Hugo is highly-accomplished, but as a piece of drama, I thought it was weak.
    His next film should be Silence which he's been trying to get made for some time now and unless he's interfered with I see no reason why it shouldn't be another Scorsese masterpiece.

    It's the most interesting project he's mentioned in recent years, but as someone who's enthusiastic about Japanese culture (especially its literature and cinema), I would think that! And it could just as easily turn out to be mediocre...
    Scorsese and Spielberg are still extremely vibrant filmmakers and it’s ridiculous to dismiss their recent output because it doesn’t match their previous work, especially when those earlier films are considered among the greatest films ever made.

    Drifting a little OT, but does anyone (outside the pages of Empire magazine) really think Spielberg has made any of "the greatest films ever"?
    Syferus wrote: »
    He's had his hand in so many fantastic projects that rarely get mentioned lately - documentaries like Shine a Light and Public Speaking, being a producer on Boardwalk Empire, directing the feature length first episode of that show and setting its visual palate and themes sparkly and beautifully.

    Some of us don't give a **** about television!
    to say he's a spent force reeks of iconoclastic thinking.

    Good, thanks!


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,965 ✭✭✭Syferus


    Kinski wrote: »
    Some of us don't give a **** about television

    And that refutes the idea he isn't a spent force how exactly?

    Oh, and for the record, Shine a Light was a theater release and Public Speaking was an independently produced film that HBO aired in November 2010.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,555 ✭✭✭Kinski


    Syferus wrote: »
    And that refutes the idea he isn't a spent force how exactly?

    I'm arguing that Martin Scorsese is a spent force as a filmmaker - someone who makes feature-length motion pictures. I neither know nor care what Boardwalk Empire is like, nor what contribution he made to it. He may very well, for all I know, have done sterling work on it, but it's not that relevant to the argument I'm making, other than possibly showing that he may still be able to do it. But television drama is a very different medium from cinema, so I wouldn't really count it as compelling evidence.
    Oh, and for the record, Shine a Light was a theater release and Public Speaking was an independently produced film that HBO aired in November 2010.

    Oh, I know; my post was aimed at the Boardwalk reference. Shine A Light and Public Speaking are both documentaries, and, as above, not that relevant to my argument, which is about feature length film drama.


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