Directors Whose First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

For better or worse...
(Let's skip shorts and just get on with their first Feature Film)

I'd answer first like usual, but I don't want to 'influence' anything. I'm sure someone will remind me of a better example, anyway.

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

M. Knight.

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Umm, like most directors ever?

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

david gordon green

Tarantino

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Cameron

David O. Russell

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Ari Aster's Heriditary.
What is with Ari and people having their heads caved in. He did it again in Midsommar. That becomes all I remember from the film. And it puts me right off anything else he might do. I think he is a very interesting storyteller. But I don't want to experience trauma myself when I watch a movie.

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

If you can throw the title of the movie in case we don't know.... Thanks...


Michelangelo Antonioni - Story of a Love Affair

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Kubrick's first film was rough.

Praying with Anger (1992)

George Washington (2000)

Reservoir Dogs?? (1992)

Piranha II? or The Terminator? since he doesn't often acknowledge the former.

Spanking the Monkey (1994)

Fear and Desire (1952)

Yep, Piranha II.

Oh fine I'm feeling balsy....Orson Welles.

Piranha II is pretty bad, but considering he wasn't even supposed to direct it, I tend to cut him some slack.

If you mean that he made something so great that he wouldn't be able to surpass it, thus dooming his career to a perennial feeling of apparent failure for never topping that... then I agree :D

Well, I am saying it was a BAD indicator of his future, so this cuts him maximal slack. He is King Midas of the Box Office, the billion dollar man.

Good choice I would never have thought of.

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Charles Laughton

Welles' first film was an ambitious monster that the world was hardly prepared for and that easily could have sunk his career from the get go


I think that is a pretty good indicator of his future films....except for the fact that his endless risk taking and bridge burning did eventually destroy him.


And as perfect as Kane is, I personally find the much less perfect movies that followed maybe even more fascinating.

Re: Directors Who's First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

It is easy to forget that David Fincher (one of my personal favorite directors, known for Seven, The Social Network, Fight Club, Gone Girl, Zodiac, and the Mind Hunter series) first directed Alien 3.

Do you have a favorite? I've seen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Stranger, and Lady from Shanghai, but that's it. Have heard good things about Chimes at Midnight and The Magnificent Ambersons. I also started F for Fake about a year ago, but wasn't really into it so I stopped 5-10 minutes in. Need to get back to it.

Since you're most likely thinking about The Sixth Sense, the first movie was Praying With Anger, featuring his only starring role to date.

Honestly, it's probably just Kane. Because how could it not be. It's perfect, it is ground zero for modern filmmaking and I find it entertaining and moving and awe inspiring in equal measure.


But something like Touch of Evil is clearly something that is directly appealing to my sensibilities, with it's b movie aesthetics made both sweaty and beautiful. And Ambersons, while considerably flawed next to Kane, has a sprawling and endlessly inventive quality that (if allowed to have been finished as intended) could have been better than Kane.


I really sort of love them all (although the stranger is kind of generic for Welles). As for Fake, it is unique to the point of being alienating if not on its wavelength. But as a piece of film made about film by a filmmaker who understands the similar hustles that exist between art, fraud and sleight of hand, it's close to the best document ever about art and how it is both nothing and everything.

Also Mr Arkadin is frequently overlooked (because no one can agree on what cut is the official cut, as well as the fact that it is an absolute disastrous mess). But for those who want to see a Welles' film presented to them as scraps, giving us an insight into the kind of creative process he used, the movie never hangs together as a whole, but has brilliant moment after brilliant moment scattered through its paranoid and frequently pointless meandering. I love it.

Chimes of Midnight is also probably the best Shakespeare adaptation I've seen. It's dense and impenetrable for those who aren't super familiar with the original works (ie me), but he understands how to elevate that language to something cinematic in a way few have

I stand corrected. Should I watch his first film?

No idea. It does sound interesting though, I could get back to you once I've seen it myself.

Cool.

I'm pretty sure it's well known as being terrible

He also has a second film from 1998 called Wide Awake. The Sixth Sense was his third, but most people mistake it for his first.

And not Fulci terrible? Just terrible, terrible, I take it?

Re: Directors Whose First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Terrence Malick

I would say nearly everything MNS has done is terrible terrible, but the fact that even fans of his anemic Spielbergisms find it bad means it's likely terrible terrible terrible with a side of terrible.

Re: Directors Whose First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

I'll defend his first three "major" films as all being very good. Unbreakable in particular is just such a lovely slow-burn and Signs is, while maybe a little schmaltzy, just wonderfully constructed and acted. In particular it's a great example of using suspense to amplify simple comedy.

I still don't really understand what happened to him. It's sad and confusing. There's still a lot of technical talent there (there's a couple of virtuoso sequences in Old, one weird little camera movement thing in particular that caught me totally off-guard), so I maintain a tiny glimmer of hope that. But I think that early run is probably going to stay his best by a wide margin.

Unbreakable, The Happening and pushing a dirty diaper into the face of a germphobic kid rapper are easily the best things he's done.


I have no idea how to rank the rest. Sixth Sense and Signs are respectably bad, and the rest are an utter disgrace of egomania, desperation and middling talent....and because of my perverse inclinations, I might prefer the latter group of films. At least I was embarrassed by them, which is sort of an empathetic response.

How do you feel about The Trial? I usually think it's brilliant, but some watches have left me feeling like it's a self-indulgent mess, so I've decided to average it out and just call it brilliant. But I also wouldn't argue with someone that thinks it's a mess.

It might be the Welles film that suits me most, even though Kane is without a doubt the one I'm going to watch most often.

Also want to say that Othello and Macbeth are full of eye-candy for the cinematogra-philes out there.

The Trial is also great but it's been a long time since I've seen it. It also doesn't hurt that it's based on one of my favorite books and has Anthony Perkins in it, who was always so much more than just Norman Bates.


Is it indulgent? From my memories, yeah. But when someone is really good at what they do, I will rarely hold this against them. In fact I encourage it, even if it ultimately makes their films less perfect so that they will never stand a chance getting on a supposedly best movies ever list

Re: Directors Whose First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

Edgar Wright (I'm counting Shan of the Dead as his first film not his high school film)
Taika Waititi - Eagle Vs Shark
Guillermo Del Toro (Cronos)
Rian Johnson (Brick)

Tony Scott, maybe? The Hunger didn't indicate that he'd go on to be an action blockbuster master.

There's also Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Batman), who started out with Future Shock, a horror anthology movie that is a must for MST3K fans since it features Soultaker alumni Vivian Schilling and David Shark, a.k.a. the "listen, can't we just rock?" guy.

I dunno, this one fits pretty well. Sure he hasn't made any more horror comedies, but the blend of absurdity with genuine heart as well as the energetic directing/quick editing is pretty reminiscent of his later work.

Re: Directors Whose First Movie Was a Bad Indicator Of Their Future
 

I feel like Clerks fits the bill, if only because it is at once the kind of rough proof-of-concept debut that directors make before refining their skills and yet Kevin Smith never really made anything better no matter how much more resources and talent he was able to access.

Smith is such a weird case. Whether you like it or not, Clerks is such a unique film in terms of concept and how it was done. And yet, as far as I'm concerned, every subsequent film of his has been increasingly worse. I mean, Clerks II and Zack and Miri were almost unwatchable trash.

I don't think it's necessarily that unique (he cites Spike Lee and Richard Linklater as influences in the credits so it's easy to spot parallels to other day-in-the-life films like Do the Right Thing or Slacker), but he still put together a fairly accessible indie comedy that rode the '90s boom just fine. The problem is that he's constantly caught between trying to replicate it through added "View Askewniverse" films or branching out into new territory (and when examples of the latter are rejected for whatever reason he falls back on the former), resulting in him never truly managing to grow as an artist.

The Trial is one of my favorites. It's probably indulgent, but while I would normally agree with that criticism, since Welles did such a terrific job with the film, I'm completely fine with it and am willing to make an exception.

Sad, but true. An excellent example.

What was unique about Clerks may have been its near artlessness. It's very much predominantly a 'point and shooter. Film as a means to record conversation.


Sure Linklater is an influence (him citing Lee might be him getting ahead of himself by citing him as a visible influence), but Linklater, as unobtrusive as his style may be, is also clearly influenced by 'real cinema. Smith seems to have been predominantly influenced by conversations he had with his friends while smoking pot and trying to do as little work as possible. I see very few real cinematic influences in his work.....which is probably a good reason why everything else is so incredibly bad.

Clerks is still a classic, for me. Even Dogma is. Both were highlights of the 90’s. But even with Dogma, you could see his penchant for sophomoric jokes and this weird obsession with poop. In many ways, Smith is his own worst enemy.

What made Clerks so interesting in later viewings is the literary allusions that me, as a teenager, wasn’t going to fully grasp.

I don't particularly like Clerks much anymore, but I get what it is doing and that is fine. It has its place and I think it's important in its own way.


Dogma is the kind of film where someone bit off way more then they could chew and he really doesn't have either the filmmaking skill or the ability to say what he wants in anyway that interests me. So we are left with this really visually flat, poorly edited, pedantic, pseudo profound reach towards serious artistry and all of the nuts and bolts start showing. It drives me absolutely bonkers.

It is somewhat disarming in its artlessness. Indeed, there is a queer verisimilitude of it--it's seems real because it seems too coarse to be an actual movie. I think we're back to Fulci here.



There's something wrong in the way he makes films. He's certainly intelligent and passionate, it seems like we should've seen him blossom, but I think Iroquois has it right in saying that he's floundered between memberberries and awkward steps in new directions. He seems to have accepted his failure and is trapped in the world of Silent Bob.

Tony Scott's arthouse debut Loving Memory bears absolutely no resemblance to his usual thriller/action-heavy career :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K31WNznrm6o

I can see the Lee influence - She's Gotta Have It definitely has a similar focus on frank discussions of relationships and sexuality, plus Do the Right Thing has the whole day-in-the-life structure set in one area full of off-beat characters - but I'll agree that Smith's definitely not working on as deep a level when it comes to the crux of the story basically being a love triangle about a guy, his ex, and his current girlfriend.

I think there's also the matter of him having acquired such a devoted fanbase that he doesn't feel like he can stray too far from what they'd want anyway so even his attempts to branch out still feel like they have one foot in the Askewniverse (especially since his first such film was Jersey Girl and that just flopped with everybody).

Nothing he has done since has matched it. Hot Fuzz was quite good, The World's End was poor, Baby Driver is an absolutely terrible film.