Friday, 21 September 2007
The Ten Bad Dates Directors Hall of Fame...
posted @3:48 p.m. by Richard Kelly
Okay: I’ve written elsewhere that Ten Bad Dates doesn’t go in for humdrum ‘critics’ favourite’ lists, whereas what follows might indeed look like a list of All-Time Greatest Directors... But it’s actually just a ranking of those directors whose films are most regularly cited within Ten Bad Dates – and not always for complimentary reasons...
Directors with Most Cited Films in Ten Bad Dates With De Niro
So, to repeat, this list is just an aggregate, not a pantheon. Still, it makes for a pretty good bunch of directors, and a vulnerable guide to the current climate of who’s held in high esteem.
For instance: after all these years, might Hitchcock still be the world’s most famous moviemaker? Spielberg would presumably be his chief contender, though he lies quite a few points back on this particular league table. But Coppola is on terms, and still working. (The New York Times recently ran a good piece about his upcoming picture Youth Without Youth, endearingly titled ‘A Kid To Watch’, which you can read here, registration required.)
I ought to say that the highly-placed Joel Coen and Paul Verhoeven each enjoyed the benefit of a list of ten titles drawn solely from their respective outputs (‘The Coen Bros’ Ten Most Memorable Minor Characters’ and ‘The Ten Most Gratuitous Uses Of Sex & Nudity In The Oeuvre Of Paul Verhoeven’). But then that’s a tribute in itself, isn’t it?
Scorsese – our champion, probably to no-one’s surprise – also benefited from lists specifically devoted to Cool Steadicam Shots, and to aggressive behaviour toward women by characters played by Robert De Niro (from which comes our book’s title...)
That Steadicam list was also a friend to De Palma, as was the increasingly solid (or should I say phat) cult of Scarface (1983) – but, to be fair, no less than 9 different De Palma titles are cited across the book. Roman Polanski’s 12 mentions were similarly split between 8 different titles, though Chinatown (1974) is clearly reckoned to be his masterpiece.
Further down, we can gauge that the fan-bases of the late Messrs Kubrick and Altman remain formidable; that Lynch and Cronenberg are still huge cult figures; and that Powell and Wilder, sometimes thought to be neglected, remain much in our contributors’ thoughts. Godard and Welles, each held to be the World’s Greatest Director at various points in the past, continue to show respectably. And David Fincher must be building quite a body of work, having already motored past Bergman, Bresson and Hawks...
And so, to the envelope:
1. Martin Scorsese (17 citations)
2=. Francis Ford Coppola (16)
2=. Alfred Hitchcock (16)
4. Joel Coen (14)
5=. Brian De Palma (12)
5=. Roman Polanski (12)
7=. Michael Powell (11)
7=. Paul Verhoeven (11)
9=. Stanley Kubrick (10)
10=. Robert Altman (9)
10=. David Lynch (9)
10=. Billy Wilder (9)
13=. David Cronenberg (8)
13=. Jean-Luc Godard (8)
13=. Nicolas Roeg (8)
16=. Federico Fellini (7)
16=. Sam Peckinpah (7)
16=. Orson Welles (7)
19=. John Carpenter (6)
19=. David Fincher (6)
19=. Michael Mann (6)
19=. Steven Spielberg (6)
23=. Ingmar Bergman (5)
23=. Robert Bresson (5)
23=. Howard Hawks (5)
23=. Wim Wenders (5)
Comments
Christopher Nolan, Milos Foreman and "print the legend"...the great JOHN FORD...baby!!
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