Get Your Film Fix

When I sit down to watch a movie I have to occasionally remind myself of the mindset we try to uphold here at Get Your Film Fix that a movie is a movie is a movie. Essentially, what this means is that regardless of anything that came before or is to come after this one particular film doesn’t matter. So while its okay to have expectations based on past films, its not necessarily fair to judge a film in comparison to another. When I saw It’s Kind of a Funny Story, I remember being really disappointed because I’d enjoyed Ryan Fleck’s and Anna Boden’s previous films Sugar and Half Nelson so much. That sentiment is understandable, I’m sure, but just about every good director is likely to make a film at some point or another that doesn’t live up to standards set by him or herself.  David Fincher made The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and contrary to what the Academy believed, that film is no where near the quality that we’ve come to expect and continue to see from Fincher.

It’s clear based on countless examples that a movie can be bad regardless of its director. I wonder, however, if it’s possible for a movie to be good in spite of its director. This is a difficult argument to dissect because there’s a difference between a bad director, continuing to be bad and a film still turns out good and a director who has made bad films in the past but finally puts his or her talents to good use and makes a good movie. Additionally, what makes a director bad? Is it someone who isn’t sure what he or she is doing on set? Is it someone unprepared and without a vision or goal for the film? Really, to understand if what I suggest is possible or not, it’s important to understand how a director influences the everyday production of a film.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the director. There are a lot of accurate conceptions as well however and what the director does is likely a mixture of the two. DVD special features show directors giving insightful notes to actors and ideas for interesting shots. While those things do often occur, in my experience much of what the director does is watch and attempt to put together the many pieces of the puzzle that is a movie prior to post-production. A director with a clear picture of how the movie will turn out will see how every five second shot will fit with another. Since movies are rarely shot chronologically, this can be a lot more complicated than it might seem. It also takes a lot of preparation and focus. The director that is designing shots and making decisions about characters and scenes while on set is less a creative director than an unprepared director. Depending on the budget of a film, and of course every filmmaker is different, directors spend months in pre-production making all the creative decisions with actors, with the director of photography and with other senior members of a production so that when it comes time to film, when time is of the absolute essence, there aren’t any delays. Best case scenario, every shot is planned and the crew can move swiftly from one shot to the next.

I don’t need to emphasize that this is easier said than done. However, if a director is constantly changing his or her mind while on set about what shot should go where, that suggests two things. It suggests that the director doesn’t have a clear picture of the final product thus isn’t opposed to changing a piece of it. It also suggests that the director doesn’t necessarily understand or perhaps doesn’t respect that the professionals surrounding him or her have prepared for X and will need to change to Y. I don’t mean to imply that a director’s decision to change something last minute is disrespectful because sometimes that change is necessary or right. It’s if done in abundance that it could be a sign of a bad director.

So, back to the question at hand. Can any of those aforementioned flaws occur but the film still turn out to be good? Consider some examples of good films from “bad” directors.

While this director was once likely considered great, M. Night Shyamylan has now made enough consecutive bad movies to suggest that perhaps his good ones in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were the exceptions rather than the rule. Catherine Hardwicke directed the very underrated Thirteen starring Evan Rachel Wood only to follow it up with Lord’s of Dogtown, The Nativity Story, Twilight and Red Riding Hood.  After working as the Director of Photography on a lot films, including greats like Die Hard, Jan de Bont began his directing career with Speed then continued with Twister, Speed 2, The Haunting and Lara Coft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. These three directors have something in common in that their better films came first. This suggests to me that perhaps their lack of freedom on set as rookie directors limited their abilities to “change their minds” about a shot or a scene. Perhaps the work done is pre-production which has proven to be successful with hundreds of thousands of films is the same work that made The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Speed and Thirteen successful.  The success that Hardwicke had as a director may have given her the freedom to decide to make it rain during one half of a scene in Twilight while perhaps forgetting that it wasn’t raining on the reverse shot! Yes, that happened.

Another way to look at this is the lightning in a bottle method. This would apply more to a film like The Rock from Michael Bay. This is perhaps the first film many would think of but the fact is that Bay didn’t really do much different with The Rock than he does with any of his other films. I would also maintain that Bay is not a bad director, but rather a director that knows exactly what kind of films he is expected to make and he makes them. Either way, The Rock is his best movie and is considered by many to be a good movie from a director who has consistently made bad ones.

A better example and the best example, I think, of a good movie by a bad director is Star Wars and George Lucas in general. The three new Star Wars films are proof of what George Lucas is, or is not capable of as a director. The man is clearly talented in a number of ways and he is as innovative as anyone in Hollywood but none of that has made him a good director. However, Star Wars: A New Hope is a great movie. American Graffiti is a great movie and THX 1138 is at least above average. It’s hard to pinpoint one thing or another that suggests that Lucas is a bad director. His inability to get a good performance from Mark Hammil is perhaps something or maybe his overuse of visual effects could be another but I think the best proof that he isn’t a good director is that after the enormous success his first Star Wars film had, he wasn’t considered the best choice to direct the next two in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of Jedi. Admittedly, I don’t know the circumstances surrounding those decisions and likely someone more in tuned to the situation than I will debunk my proof but either way, generally, I, and I think many others, wouldn’t consider Lucas a good director but can’t deny the quality of half of his films.

Even if proof exists that a movie can be good in spite of its director, there still remains to be a question as to whether these are bad directors who fell into good circumstances or if they were always good directors victims of bad circumstances. I’m inclined to assume the former because I will always maintain that regardless of changes made on set or regardless of how much or how little preparation is made in pre-production, a director is at the helm of a movie and is responsible for the final product. Since we can’t be on set to see these directors work, all we have are those final products and majority rules.  Batman & Robin, 8MM, The Phantom of the Opera and The Number 23 are the majority examples of Joel Schumacher’s talents as a director, even if he did direct Tigerland. Chasing Amy being good doesn’t make Kevin Smith a good director. He also directed Mallrats, Clerks 2, Jersey Girl and Cop Out.