Best Creative Writer/Director

I guess there are more names than the 8 listed, but I just put down the most well known.

A little bit about each:

Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs (1992)/Pulp Fiction (1994)
David Lynch - Eraserhead (1977)/Blue Velvet (1986)
David Cronenberg - Shivers (1975)/Naked Lunch (1991)
Oliver Stone - Platoon (1986)/Wall Street (1987)
Stanley Kubrick - A Clockwork Orange (1971)/The Shining (1980)
Christopher Nolan - Memento (200)/Insomnia (2002)
Martin Scorsese - Mean Streets (1973)/Goodfellas(1990)
Terry Gilliam - Brazil (1985)/Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)


Others that I can think of not in the poll:
Darren Aronofsky - Pi (1998)/Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Alex Proyas - Dark City (1998)
Ken Russel - Tommy (1975)
Alan Parker - The Wall (1982)

Other than Parker, everyone wrote and directed their movies. If you vote other, please state the Writer/Director and what they did. I didn't put Coppola on here because he's in his own league.

Wes Anderson
Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums
and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Hmmm. A lot of those films were taken from source material not written by the director. A Clockwork Orange was written by Anthony Burgess, while The Shining was written by Stephen King. Fear and Loathing was written by Hunter S. Thompson, and Gilliam uses a lot of the novel, verbatim, for the VO in the film. As for Goodfellas, Nicholas Pileggi wrote both the novel and the screenplay, with Scorsese assisting with the screenplay. Mean Streets is all Scorsese. As for Brazil, I am pretty sure Gilliam was making 1984 (Orwell), then the studio laughed him out of the building and forced a name change, as they felt he had drifted too far from the source material and besides, 1984 was already being made, he found out. Tom Stoppard stepped in to doctor the screenplay that existed, and he and Gilliam stayed on the writting together until they presented us with the masterpiece we have now. I believe Charles McKowen was involved in some early drafts, as well....

Not too many great directors are truely GREAT screenwriters from what I have seen, and usually enlist the help of another writter to help tighten the script. Stone DID nail it with Platoon, and all the credit goes to him, but I feel he an exception to the rule, and so is the film this time around. Tarantino is a quality writer and a good director, I don't think he is a great director though, IMO. Lynch is a god to me, so I won't comment on his stuff, It is all top notch, IMO, from the directing to the writing to the editing etc...
yeah...I love most of the films you listed, and a few of those dudes are my favorite directors ever, and I wish great directors could be great writers more often. Kubrick is a GREAT director, but himself admitted he needed a good source to inspire him to create the best of his works. I am pretty sure all of Kubrick's works were originally books.

Good thread


Since you said Creative, I had to go with Lynch, as I feel he is out there in his own dimension, doing the work he loves. As for directoral prowess, Scorsese is by far the most well rounded of the bunch, and participates in almost every step of the film making. One only need watch how Marty constrcted the fight sequences in Raging Bull to see the level of involvement the man has with his projects, and the care and conviction with which he approaches said projects... Kubrick is right up there with Marty though as far as that is concerned....

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I don't know what your source is for this, but it is wrong. Brazil was never a version of 1984. It was always an original screenplay. The idea was Terry's, he and Charles McKewon wrote it together, then at a later stage Stoppard came in and did a pass. But it is and always was an original screenplay. Gilliam sold it at the Cannes Film Festival when he was there with all the Pythons for The Meaning of Life.

The entire genesis of Brazil, from script to production to bloody struggle over the cut of the film and its distribution, is covered in incredible detail in both Jack Matthews book The Battle of Brazil and in the wealth of supplements on the Criterion disc of the movie.

I'm going to write in John Cameron Mitchell for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which he also stars in. The script is meaningful, funny, beautiful. The direction is crazy in a way that works well with the story, and tells the story clearly. And it's semi-autobiographical, so I'm sure it was original material.

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

Darren Aronofsky looks promising. He both writes and directs and does it bloody well in Pi (1998) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). It will be interesting to see what this Fountain (2005) will be like.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

some OTHERs conspiculously absent...

Joel & Ethan Coen
Woody Allen
John Sayles
Kenneth Branagh
Pedro Almodovar
Jim Jarmusch
Albert Brooks

and the dead, since you included Kubrick for some reason...
John Huston
Preston Sturges
Orson Welles
Billy Wilder
John Cassavetes

Hmm, I remember Terry Gilliam himself saying something along the lines of he was forced into a title change, at some point. I don;t know if the original title was 1984, but I remember he said he just sort of randomly picked Brazil because he was frustrated (when is Terry not frustrated?) and just decided to chose the title of the opening song he had chosen for the film. I'll do some digging for the exact source, as I am pretty sure it was an article I read on the film, somehwere online. More later...

That's all wrong too. The first kernal of the idea came when he was on a beach with giant smoke stacks churning out pollution in the background and there was one lone man sitting there listening to a walkman. Terry imagined that in this Hellish landscape the man was listening to some happy wistful song, and "Brazil" popped into his head. THAT is where the whole idea originated. All this stuff about 1984, just ain't so.

I'll go through the book and supplements tonight, get the exact quotes for you. But you're just wrong.

Au Contraire. It isn't me that is wrong, just the source I am referring to. Ok, I am wrong too, allegedly, but I remember the bit about the opening song and Gilliam's Frustration. But you know, this all just stems from me having a ****ty DVD with no extras, that I received as a gift. Alas, I MUST get the Criterion edition, as I hear it's one of the best Criterion discs out there... But still, I must question this whole "all this 1984 stuff, just ain't so", as the story clearly draws it's inspiration from the Orwell work. The different Ministries (re-named in Brazil), the similar protaganist, the vac tubes shooting work to everyone, the final interrogation of Lowrey...

Ah ha!! I have found the quote....

From IMDB (which I know could be wrong)

" Early title for Brazil was "1984 and a 1/2", an ode to Federico Fellini, but the film Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) was released and the idea was scrapped."

"Gilliam originally wanted to call the film "1984 1/2", as a tribute to George Orwell's book "1984", a major inspiration behind the film, but was prevented by Orwell's estate."

So...both of those are from IMDB, but seem to conflict slightly.

Regardless, If the information is incorrect, I was misled, and will adjust my knowledge if shown evidence to the contrary, but there is a fair amount of information supporting that Gilliam was indeed thinking about 1984 quite a bit whilst creating Brazil and may have in fact been attempting a loose interpretion or a loose sequel, done the Gilliam way of course...

However, I do realise there are also major differences in the two works, such as the type of government/society the work attacks, the methods used by the government to control the citizens (although the outcome is the same), and the amount of freedom the citizens have. Gilliam's work also isn't anywhere near as grim in it's execution. Still, the similarities/allusions to 1984 are clear to me.

Mike Leigh

Vera Drake (2004)
All or Nothing (2002)
Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Career Girls (1997)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Naked (1993)
Life Is Sweet (1990)

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Anything set in a totalitarian state with no privacy is going to be called Orwellian, and anything dealing with intractable and illogical bureaucracy is going to be called Kafkaesque. Yes, there are elements of Orwell and Kafka both swirling throughout Brazil, but Gilliam's script is an original.

Love that shot....Just love it....

Ok, The script is original. Methinks I will pop this gem of a film in when I get home in about 20 minutes. Take it easy, and have a frosty one.... good discussion.

Jim Jarmusch


Stranger than Paradise (1984)
Down by Law (1986)
Mystery Train (1989)
Night on Earth (1991)
Dead Man (1995)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

hmm i still have only seen one of kubricks films (dr strangelove) i still am waiting for a clockwork orange to come back on british t.v (anyone wth an idea please tell me) but now then it's a dram between.... tarintino (duh) and oliver stone...

Hmmmm scince my fave. oliver stone movis was natural born killers, which was written by tarintino, i have to go ith him.

But on the others... it would be

tim burton. but tarintino for me

Another one of my favourites -

Takeshi Kitano

Zatoichi (2003)
Dolls (2002)
Brother (2000)
Kikujiro (1999)
hana-bi (1997)
Kids Return (1996)
Getting Any (1995)
Sonatine (1993)
A Scene At The Sea (1991)

An aquired taste but definatly one of my favourites.

M. Night Shyamalan

(In Uber scary monster SIZE just for Slay and his dial up )


The Village
Signs
Unbreakable
Stuart Little
The Sixth Sense
Wide Awake
Praying with Anger

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Pumpkins scream in the DEAD of night!

Heres My Top 2:

Tim Burton-Edward Scissorhands is the msot magical thing ever
Daren Aronofsky- I love his style and the way he sets up his shots

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" I see in your eyes, the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, whe we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. May and hour of wolves and shattered shields before the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we Fight! For all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand men of the west!!"
-Aragorn: The Lord of the Rings the Return of the King

It is the best Criterion package ever assembled. And the DVD you have isn't only shotty because it has no wealth of extra materials, but even more importantly it is missing about ten minutes of Gilliam's original cut. You're missing a few scenes that you don't even know about yet. Yes, the Criterion 3-disc edition of Brazil is a must-have for everybody.


Indeed.

I can go through the whole script history if you'd like, as it is all presented in the Criterion materials. The first flush of the idea Terry got in about 1975. He had started working it into some loose kind of script by the later '70s. His original treatment is an 89-page draft with little dialogue titled The Ministry of Torture or Brazil or How I Learned to Live with the System and credited as "so far by Terry Gilliam". The second treatment, titled Brazil or The Ministry, he wrote with Charles Alverson who he had known from his days working on the magazine Help! and who co-wrote Jabberwocky. The first actual draft of a script was then written by Terry and Alverson, now called simply Brazil, and it lay dormant while Gilliam was in production on Time Bandits. But ultimately Terry wasn't happy with the direction the material was heading with Alverson, so Charles McKeown took a crack at it. He did a 37-page scene breakdown he called "Brazil and a bit", which pleased Gilliam more than a bit. It was at this point that Stoppard was brought in, given all the drafts and treatments and asked to give some kind of shape to it all. He did. Much of the structure that you see in the finished film came from Tom. And of course he added lots and lots of dialogue, as you'd expect. Gilliam says maybe the best single thing he added was the whole "Buttle/Tuttle" confusion that tied the two halves of the story together so brilliantly. In 1983 Gilliam and McKeown went back at the material again, reshaping it one last time. This was essentially the final version of the script, and is appropriately credited to Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown. This is the sript Terry sold at Cannes. This is what he shot, more or less.

At no point in all that was Orwell or 1984 being referenced by any of the four men who worked on it, including in the original creative impulses that became Gilliam's first and almost entirely visual and conceptual treatment.


As I said in a post above, anything set in a totalitarian state with privacy issues is going to be inherently seen as Orwellian. Sure. But Gilliam was never setting out to do "his 1984" or anything of the sort. Orwellian, sure. Orwell, no. Start adjusting.

Re: The junk DVD in my possession. I watched it last night, and the transfer could definitely be better. So, it's settled. I have about five or six titles in my collection that either need replacing or were gifts/blind buys that I will just never watch. I shall march down to Newbury comics, sell the crap discs, and put the proceeds towards a minty fresh Criterion Edition of Brazil. I just love the level of detail Gilliam acheives with his sets and his compositions. Not to mention the magnificent DOF shots in all his films, especially Brazil. It's a shame to have some of those details obscured by a shabby transfer. Shame on me.

BTW, Holds, the Gilliam thread is fantastic, and I'll hit ya for rep once I am allowed to again... I will also put The Battle of Brazil on my to-read list....