Making movies isn’t always fun and games. Actors are often put through the ringer and have to endure extreme conditions. James Cameron famously pushed his actors so hard on the set of The Abyss that they broke down in tears and Ed Harris punched him after a scene in which he almost drowned. Stanley Kubrick was even worse and essentially tortured Shelley Duvall on the set of The Shining. 

For all the torment directors inflict on actors, the tables have been turned several times as well. More than one director has been faced with the desire to throw in the towel entirely after an experience with a film pushed them to the brink.

10. Mike Judge’s Fake Movie Had Him Losing Faith in The Process

Beavis and Butthead creator Mike Judge has only made a few feature films, but they have been cult favorites including Office Space and Idiocracy. The latter was the one that almost pushed the man to the edge, and for an almost unbelievable reason. 

The movie takes place in a future where the human race has steadily gotten dumber and dumber. In one scene, audiences have assembled at a movie theater to watch a movie called Ass, the Movie. The joke is that everything in the future is dumber and audiences would watch a movie which is literally just a closeup of a bare ass, laughing the whole time.

Judge had to film the fake movie which, again, is just bare butts. The production then assembled 200 extras to be the film audience. Much to Judge’s dismay, once the extras were seated and the butt movie started playing, the audience genuinely started laughing as was written in the script. The problem was it wasn’t scripted laughter, they genuinely found it funny. 

It was at this point that Judge began to question why he was making his movie at all since he’d get just as many laughs out of the stupid fake movie. 

9. Chevy Chase Almost Made John Carpenter Give Up Directing

It’s an open secret in Hollywood that Chevy Chase is not well-liked. An entire list could be assembled of the various accusations that have been leveled against him during his career, but suffice it to say he’s difficult to work with.

Legendary horror director John Carpenter discovered how hard Chase was to work with back in 1992 when they joined forces on the film Memoirs of an Invisible Man. If you don’t recall the movie, don’t worry, most people don’t. It was a flop across the board.

Ivan Reitman had been tapped to direct the movie but ended up quitting after not being able to handle working with Chase. Carpenter was called in as a replacement and, though the movie got made, it made Carpenter consider quitting Hollywood altogether. To get an idea of his feelings, he described Chase as “he shall not be named who needs to be killed.” He then went on to suggest he should be set on fire. 

Chase apparently hated wearing the makeup the role required and would often remove it in the middle of a scene, ruining hours of filming in the process. This was in addition to his standard habit of being insulting and walking all over others on set.

8. David Ayer Said Changes to Suicide Squad Broke Him

Comic book movies have been box office titans for well over a decade now thanks to the MCU and, to a lesser extent, the DCEU. DC never really found their footing though and in 2023 the universe was scrapped to be replaced with the cleverly named replacement… DCU. 

The DC slate of movies have their fans, of course, and some did better critically and commercially than others. One much maligned film was David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, which introduced the world to Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn.

Ayer has long teased that there’s a director’s cut of the movie that is much better than the theatrically released movie. Ayer said the movie broke him as the studio completely changed the tone of the movie he was trying to make. 

He said his version was originally a dark and soulful film. But after the studio released Batman V Superman to horrible reviews and Fox released Deadpool to great reviews, the studio flip-flopped and turned his movie into a comedy. 

He called the movie his biggest Hollywood heartbreak but shared that, maybe, the director’s cut would see the light of day, eventually. 

7. Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp May Have Broken Peter Weir

We’ve all heard that some actors are harder to deal with than others. Take Chevy Chase from a few moments ago as an example. He’s far from the only one, however, and not every actor is difficult in the same way. 

According to actor Ethan Hawke, director Peter Weir effectively quit Hollywood despite making hugely popular movies like The Truman Show and Dead Poets Society. The reason? Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe.

Weir stopped making movies after 2010’s The Way Back. Hawke, who starred in Weir’s Dead Poets Society, said Weir used to like making movies but actors got in the way. He specifically called out Russell Crowe, who Weird directed in Master and Commander, and Johnny Depp. 

You may be asking yourself when Weir and Depp made a movie together, and the answer is that they didn’t. Weir was set to direct Depp in a movie called Shantaram but the director and the actor butted heads so badly over the way the film should play out that he quit. 

6. Paul Brickman Hated His Own Success

Many people remember Risky Business as Tom Cruise’s breakout hit that set him on the path to box office domination, all thanks to him sliding into a room in a pair of sunglasses and underwear. It also proved to be a hit for writer and director Paul Brickman. But unlike Cruise, Brickman’s star didn’t keep rising, and that’s mostly because he didn’t want it to.

Brickman has only directed three movies in his career and after Risky Business he waited seven years to do Men Don’t Leave, a comedy starring Kathy Bates and Jessica Lange. It would be another 22 years before he directed again, and that was a short film.

Audiences and critics loved Risky Business, but it was more than Brickman could handle. He didn’t want to be Hollywood’s golden boy, so he moved out of LA and basically became a recluse. Fame just didn’t agree with him and, as he told Salon, “some people like the visibility. I don’t.”

5. Chadwick Boseman’s Death Nearly Caused Ryan Coogler to Quit

The MCU runs the gamut from critically beloved to movies that landed with a shrug. And if you want to use Rotten Tomatoes as a metric for success and quality, then Black Panther is the number one MCU movie. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%, it grossed over $1.3 billion at the box office and even won three Academy Awards, more than any other comic book movie in history. 

Director Ryan Coogler was definitely on a career high after Black Panther’s success until tragedy struck. Chadwick Boseman, the star of the film, died. He had colon cancer which he had not shared publicly, so his death at age 43 came as a huge shock. 

Coogler, who had become close friends with Boseman, nearly gave up filmmaking after the loss. The pain of losing a friend, and the idea of making a sequel without him, caused him to question his future. Obviously Coogler chose to forge ahead, citing a conversation he’d once had with Boseman about the importance of the character as motivation. 

4. Stephen King Thinks Maximum Overdrive Was a Moron Movie 

Stephen King is world renowned as the Master of Horror, and has published almost 100 novels and novellas so far in his career. He’s sold over 350 million books, too. For all of his amazing success as a writer, one thing he didn’t excel at was directing.

King has long had a love/hate relationship with the film adaptations of his novels. And while many people consider Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining a classic, King was not among them. He hated that Kubrick changed so much of the novel, but especially how the hotel affected main character Jack Torrance.

Annoyed with how Hollywood handled his work, King decided he would try to direct a movie based on his short story Trucks. This was renamed Maximum Overdrive and it would prove to be one of the most maligned movies of all time. It made King decide to not direct again any time soon. 

King has admitted he had no idea how to direct a movie and that he was incredibly high for most of the production. He was also drunk, too. He chalks it all up to a learning experience which he more or less hated and has no desire to repeat.

3. The Trauma of Schindler’s List Almost Made Spielberg Pack It In

Not many filmmakers rise to the ranks of Steven Spielberg, a titan among directors. But even the biggest name in directing had his moment when he almost gave it and it was his own work that brought it on.

His 1994 film Schindler’s List was critically well-received and is one of the most poignant films ever made about the Holocaust but it almost made him give up. The personal trauma of telling that story made him take a step back from his work and consider ending it. 

In the end he just needed time to come to terms with the experience before he could move on. He was inspired again later and returned to directing with Jurassic Park II.

2. David Fincher Despised Alien 3 

David Fincher has become one of the most popular directors in Hollywood thanks to movies like Gone Girl, Fight Club, and Se7en. But his first movie, Alien 3, nearly ended his career on the spot.

The third Alien film was plagued with so many issues it’s become something of a legend. The original story went through numerous changes and writers. At some point it didn’t even feature Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and focused on “the Corporation,” with Corporal Hicks as the main character. 

Sci-fi legend William Gibson wrote one of the scripts that took place at a galactic shopping mall. One version involved monks, one involved a planet made of wood. Writers eventually included David Twohy, Eric Red, David Giler, Gordon Carroll, Walter Hill, Rex Pickett and Vincent Ward. Original director Ridley Scott couldn’t commit and it went to Renny Harlin, then Vincent Ward and eventually to David Fincher, a first timer who was walking into a nightmare.

The studio had already released a trailer for Alien 3 before Fincher even started filming. He had a firm deadline and no idea what the movie was about. He’d get script changes daily and have to scrap the previous day’s work as a result. Actors and the studio hated his penchant for multiple takes as he tried to perfect every scene.

Fincher made his own rewrites and took two years to get the movie done during which he was fired three times. The studio hated it and made numerous reshoots which Fincher had nothing to do with and has disowned the movie. He returned to music videos for a few years before making his next film, Seven.

1. Studio Interference Made Scorsese Consider Quitting

When people rank movie directors, there’s always a lot of debate over who is best, since that’s just a subjective choice. But most everyone agrees that Martin Scorsese ranks among the best. Films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed, and numerous others have met with audience and critical adulation. 

Despite his amazing success, it hasn’t always been easy. Like many directors, Scorsese has to deal with studios that want to make changes to his vision. By the time he was working on the movie Casino in 1995 he was starting to feel he’d done all he could do as a filmmaker. Worse, the studio didn’t like that he kept making long movies and wanted them shortened. 

The same thing happened with 2004’s The Aviator. Scorsese said the studio kept telling him to edit the movie down for a shorter runtime, which he tried to do for weeks before nearly deciding he was done with directing altogether. It was too stressful, and it was not how he wanted to work.

Almost in defiance of what studios had wanted previously, Scorsese would make The Irishman in 2019 for Netflix with a 209 minute runtime.

Making movies isn’t always fun and games. Actors are often put through the ringer and have to endure extreme conditions. James Cameron famously pushed his actors so hard on the set of The Abyss that they broke down in tears and Ed Harris punched him after a scene in which he almost drowned. Stanley Kubrick was even worse and essentially tortured Shelley Duvall on the set of The Shining. 

For all the torment directors inflict on actors, the tables have been turned several times as well. More than one director has been faced with the desire to throw in the towel entirely after an experience with a film pushed them to the brink.

10. Mike Judge’s Fake Movie Had Him Losing Faith in The Process

Beavis and Butthead creator Mike Judge has only made a few feature films, but they have been cult favorites including Office Space and Idiocracy. The latter was the one that almost pushed the man to the edge, and for an almost unbelievable reason. 

The movie takes place in a future where the human race has steadily gotten dumber and dumber. In one scene, audiences have assembled at a movie theater to watch a movie called Ass, the Movie. The joke is that everything in the future is dumber and audiences would watch a movie which is literally just a closeup of a bare ass, laughing the whole time.

Judge had to film the fake movie which, again, is just bare butts. The production then assembled 200 extras to be the film audience. Much to Judge’s dismay, once the extras were seated and the butt movie started playing, the audience genuinely started laughing as was written in the script. The problem was it wasn’t scripted laughter, they genuinely found it funny. 

It was at this point that Judge began to question why he was making his movie at all since he’d get just as many laughs out of the stupid fake movie. 

9. Chevy Chase Almost Made John Carpenter Give Up Directing

It’s an open secret in Hollywood that Chevy Chase is not well-liked. An entire list could be assembled of the various accusations that have been leveled against him during his career, but suffice it to say he’s difficult to work with.

Legendary horror director John Carpenter discovered how hard Chase was to work with back in 1992 when they joined forces on the film Memoirs of an Invisible Man. If you don’t recall the movie, don’t worry, most people don’t. It was a flop across the board.

Ivan Reitman had been tapped to direct the movie but ended up quitting after not being able to handle working with Chase. Carpenter was called in as a replacement and, though the movie got made, it made Carpenter consider quitting Hollywood altogether. To get an idea of his feelings, he described Chase as “he shall not be named who needs to be killed.” He then went on to suggest he should be set on fire. 

Chase apparently hated wearing the makeup the role required and would often remove it in the middle of a scene, ruining hours of filming in the process. This was in addition to his standard habit of being insulting and walking all over others on set.

8. David Ayer Said Changes The Suicide Squad Broke Him

Comic book movies have been box office titans for well over a decade now thanks to the MCU and, to a lesser extent, the DCEU. DC never really found their footing though and in 2023 the universe was scrapped to be replaced with the cleverly named replacement DCU. 

The DC slate of movies have their fans, of course, and some did better critically and commercially than others. One much maligned film was David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, which introduced the world to Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn.

Ayer has long teased that there’s a director’s cut of the movie that is much better than the theatrically released movie. Ayer said the movie broke him as the studio completely changed the tone of the movie he was trying to make. 

He said his version was originally a dark and soulful film. But after the studio released Batman v Superman to horrible reviews and Fox released Deadpool to great reviews, the studio flip-flopped and turned his movie into a comedy. 

He called the movie his biggest Hollywood heartbreak but shared that, maybe, the director’s cut would see the light of day, eventually. 

7. Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp May Have Broken Peter Weir

We’ve all heard that some actors are harder to deal with than others. Take Chevy Chase from a few moments ago as an example. He’s far from the only one, however, and not every actor is difficult in the same way. 

According to actor Ethan Hawke, director Peter Weir effectively quit Hollywood despite making hugely popular movies like The Truman Show and Dead Poets Society. The reason? Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe.

Weir stopped making movies after 2010’s The Way Back (not to be confused with Ben Affleck’s 2020 film of the same name). Hawke, who starred in Weir’s Dead Poets Society, said Weir used to like making movies but actors got in the way. He specifically called out Russell Crowe, who Weir directed in Master and Commander, and Johnny Depp. 

You may be asking yourself when Weir and Depp made a movie together, and the answer is that they didn’t. Weir was set to direct Depp in a movie called Shantaram but the director and the actor butted heads so badly over the way the film should play out that he quit. 

6. Paul Brickman Hated His Own Success

Many people remember Risky Business as Tom Cruise’s breakout hit that set him on the path to box office domination, all thanks to him sliding into a room in a pair of sunglasses and underwear. It also proved to be a hit for writer and director Paul Brickman. But unlike Cruise, Brickman’s star didn’t keep rising, and that’s mostly because he didn’t want it to.

Brickman has only directed three movies in his career and after Risky Business he waited seven years to do Men Don’t Leave, a comedy starring Kathy Bates and Jessica Lange. It would be another 22 years before he directed again, and that was a short film.

Audiences and critics loved Risky Business, but it was more than Brickman could handle. He didn’t want to be Hollywood’s golden boy, so he moved out of LA and basically became a recluse. Fame just didn’t agree with him and, as he told Salon, “Some people like the visibility. I don’t.”

5. Chadwick Boseman’s Death Nearly Caused Ryan Coogler to Quit

The MCU runs the gamut from critically beloved, to movies that landed with a shrug. And if you want to use Rotten Tomatoes as a metric for success and quality, then Black Panther is the number one MCU movie. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%, it grossed over $1.3 billion at the box office and even won three Academy Awards, more than any other comic book movie in history. It’s also the only MCU film, to date, to have been nominated for Best Picture.

Director Ryan Coogler was definitely on a career high after Black Panther’s success until tragedy struck. Chadwick Boseman, star of the film, died. He had colon cancer which he had not shared publicly, so his death at age 43 came as a huge shock. 

Coogler, who had become close friends with Boseman, nearly gave up filmmaking after the loss. The pain of losing a friend, and the idea of making a sequel without him, caused him to question his future. Obviously Coogler chose to forge ahead, citing a conversation he’d once had with Boseman about the importance of the character as motivation. 

4. Stephen King Thinks Maximum Overdrive Was a Moron Movie 

Stephen King is world-renowned as the Master of Horror, and has published almost 100 novels and novellas so far in his career. He’s sold over 350 million books, too. For all of his amazing success as a writer, one thing he didn’t excel at was directing.

King has long had a love/hate relationship with the film adaptations of his novels. And while many people consider Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining a classic, King was not among them. He hated that Kubrick changed so much of the novel, but especially how the hotel affected main character Jack Torrance.

Annoyed with how Hollywood handled his work, King decided he would try to direct a movie based on his short story “Trucks.” This was renamed Maximum Overdrive, and it would prove to be one of the most maligned movies of all time. It made King decide to not direct again any time soon. 

King has admitted he had no idea how to direct a movie and that he was incredibly high for most of the production. He was also drunk, too. He chalks it all up to a learning experience, which he more or less hated and has no desire to repeat.

3. The Trauma of Schindler’s List Almost Made Spielberg Pack It In

Not many filmmakers rise to the ranks of Steven Spielberg, a titan among directors. But even the biggest name in directing had his moment when he almost gave up, and it was his own work that brought it on.

His 1994 film Schindler’s List was critically well-received and is one of the most poignant films ever made about the Holocaust, but it almost made him quit the profession. The personal trauma of telling that story made him take a step back from his work and consider ending it. 

In the end, he just needed time to come to terms with the experience before he could move on. He was inspired again later and returned to directing with Jurassic Park II.

2. David Fincher Despised Alien 3 

David Fincher has become one of the most popular directors in Hollywood thanks to movies like Gone Girl, Fight Club, Zodiac, and Se7en. But his first movie, Alien 3, nearly ended his career on the spot.

The third Alien film was plagued with so many issues it’s become something of a legend. The original story went through numerous changes and writers. At some point it didn’t even feature Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and focused on “the Corporation,” with Corporal Hicks as the main character. 

Sci-fi legend William Gibson wrote one of the scripts that took place at a galactic shopping mall. One version involved monks, one involved a planet made of wood. Writers eventually included David Twohy, Eric Red, David Giler, Gordon Carroll, Walter Hill, Rex Pickett, and Vincent Ward. Original director Ridley Scott couldn’t commit and it went to Renny Harlin, then Vincent Ward and eventually to Fincher, a first timer who was walking into a nightmare.

The studio had already released a trailer for Alien 3 before Fincher even started filming. He had a firm deadline and no idea what the movie was about. He’d get script changes daily and have to scrap the previous day’s work as a result. Actors and the studio hated his penchant for multiple takes, as he tried to perfect every scene.

Fincher made his own rewrites and took two years to get the movie done during which he was fired three times. The studio hated it and made numerous reshoots which Fincher had nothing to do with and has disowned the movie.He returned to music videos for a few years before making his next film, Se7en.

1. Studio Interference Made Scorsese Consider Quitting

When people rank movie directors, there’s always a lot of debate over who is best, since that’s just a subjective choice. But most everyone agrees that Martin Scorsese ranks among the best. Films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed, and numerous others have been met with audience and critical adulation. 

Despite his amazing success, it hasn’t always been easy. Like many directors, Scorsese has to deal with studios that want to make changes to his vision. By the time he was working on the movie Casino in 1995 he was starting to feel he’d done all he could do as a filmmaker. Worse, the studio didn’t like that he kept making long movies and wanted them shortened. 

The same thing happened with 2004’s The Aviator. Scorsese said the studio kept telling him to edit the movie down for a shorter runtime, which he tried to do for weeks before nearly deciding he was done with directing altogether. It was too stressful, and it was not how he wanted to work.

Almost in defiance of what studios had wanted previously, Scorsese would make The Irishman in 2019 for Netflix with a 209 minute runtime.

Typically, on the set, nobody wields more power than the director, whose vision as a storyteller brings the disparate elements of filmmaking together into a coherent, gripping, moving, and, if the stars are aligned correctly, highly profitable work of art. The egos, tirades, eccentricities, and influence of these Hollywood heavyweights are legendary, but they’re not the only power brokers in Tinsel Town.

Others have egos just as large or larger, possess even more clout, and hold greater sway in the entertainment business. Some are producers. Others are stars who are supposed to work for the very directors they oppose. When such titans collide, someone is bound to fall. Fortunately, many of their defeats, though humbling, are usually temporary, as directors of their stature and accomplishment are too valuable and talented to sideline for long.

Top 10 Movies Better Than The Best

10 Peter Godfrey and Joseph von Sternberg

Since both of these men directed different parts of the same movie and were fired by the same person, we’re counting them as a unit.

Howard Hughes had the stars for his movie lined up: Janet Leigh and John Wayne. He had his story: a Soviet spy defects, flies to Alaska, is assigned a handler whom she marries, and the newlyweds return to Russia, from which, after several twists, they flee for their lives. He also had funding: the billionaire would finance the production of the movie himself. What he needed was a director.

He hired Warner Bros.’s Peter Godfrey, but fired him within days, replacing him with Joseph von Sternberg. The brusque director promptly alienated both stars and was soon also dismissed, although he was rehired briefly, before being fired again. Sternberg retained credit for directing the film, but it was actually the movie’s third director, Jules Furthman, who’d written the script with Hughes, who finally finished the picture, seventeen months after filming had first begun. Hughes was not pleased with the result and refused to release the picture. By the time he relented, the aeronautical technology featured in the film was obsolete, and the movie “lost millions.” Although this sum may not have been all that much to the billionaire, Hughes’s injured pride might well have been painful.

Godfrey, himself an actor, had directed such luminaries as Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Ida Lupino, and Mickey Rooney. Sternberg’s credits included a host of films starring Marlene Dietrich, including The Blue Angel (1930), and he’d directed other major stars, such as Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Cesar Romero.

Only Furthman, who was primarily a screenwriter, lacked impressive directing credits, but neither he nor the two established directors the billionaire hired could please the financier, anymore than Hughes himself pleased critics or audiences with his disastrous 1957 dud Jet Pilot.^[1]

9 Anthony Mann

Despite a careful search for the director of Spartacus (1960), starring Kirk Douglas, the man originally hired for the job didn’t last long. Douglas’s friend and confidant Lew Wasserman, the president of the MCA talent agency, saw the need for a strong director if he and Douglas, who was also the film’s producer, were going to sell their proposal to Universal Pictures. Delmer Daves was unavailable due to “heart problems.” Peter Glenville was directing a Broadway play. Stanley Kubrick was signed to direct One-Eyed Jacks (1961). David Lean turned down the offer.

Douglas liked Joe Mankiewicz, but Wasserman vetoed his choice, saying the movie’s huge projected budget required a “technician they [could] manage,” rather than an artist. Initially, Douglas passed over Anthony Mann, who’d directed mostly Western films, commenting, “I had no interest in doing a ‘shoot ’em up’ with spears.” Finally, when he could find no one else, Douglas hired Mann, despite his own reservations, and filming got underway.

Explanations for Mann’s departure differ. Mann says that he wanted to present the story primarily in a visual manner, while Douglas insisted on using dialogue to tell the story. Douglas claimed that the decision to fire Mann was that of studio executives. Accounts also differ as to whether Mann’s departure was voluntary. Both Mann and producer Edward Lewis contend that Mann chose to leave the picture, while Douglas suggests that his departure was involuntary. According to Lewis, Mann left of his own accord, although he was helped along in making the decision to leave by being “under the weight of dealing with what amounted to four additional directors and screenwriters.

Another view is more decisive in its conclusion as to whether Mann quit or was canned. Douglas’s biographer Michael Munn concludes, “The film was first and foremost Douglas’s vision,” which is why he “named himself executive producer “to ensure it was made his way.” According to Tony Curtis, who played the slave Antoninus, Douglas wanted the focus of the film to be on both “the love story” and the slaves’ rebellion, and the “disagreements over this basic concept led to Mann’s dismissal two weeks into production.”^[2]

8 Alex Cox

After a few false starts, Alex Cox had put together a solid record for producing hit movies, including Repo Man (1984), Sid and Nancy (1986), and El patrullero (Highway Patrolman) (1991). Then, the chance to make Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) arrived. He was fired soon after landing the job, though, and the directing gig went to Terry Gilliam instead.

The reason for Cox’s firing appears to be the quarrel he had with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, on whose book the film was based. The conflict between the director and the author became itself fodder for part of another movie of sorts, the documentary Breakfast with Hunter (2003).

It seems that Cox might also have been given the ax as much for his “fiercely independent punk spirit” and political point of view as for any creative differences he may have had with Thompson. His independence appears to have caused “him to be increasingly shunned by mainstream Hollywood” in general and from Fear and Loathing in particular. His ostracism by the Tinsel Town powers-that-be has led him, more and more, to lean toward making movies in Europe, rather than in Hollywood.^[3]

7 John Avilden

John Avilden, who directed Save the Tiger (1973) and Rocky (1976), which won him the year’s Academy Award for Best Director, came to Saturday Night Fever (1977) with a list of accomplishments that highly recommended him as a director. Nevertheless, his arguments with the movie’s producer led to Avilden’s ejection from the director’s chair.

According to the producer, Robert Stigwood, Avilden annoyed him because he kept “changing the script,” wanting to turn Saturday Night Fever “into another Rocky.” When associate producer Milt Felsen approached Avilden about Stigwood’s concern, the director stated that he merely wanted “a few changes” so the movie could “have an upbeat ending.” Although Felsen advised Avilden to “back off” because he was making Stigwood angry, Avilden persisted. Soon afterward, he was fired.

Being canned wasn’t anything new to the director. Avilden had also been fired from The Stoolie (1972) and Serpico (1973), just as he’d later be booted from Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Space Camp (1986), and Gone Fishing (1996). In addition, Macaulay Culkin’s father Kit refused to work with Avilden on Richie Rich (1994). Independence in Hollywood was expensive, but Avilden was willing to pay the price.^[4]

6 Philip Kaufman

Although Philip Kaufman’s direction of Goldstein (1964) earned him not only the New Critics Prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival of the same year and the applause, during the middle of the film, by the esteemed French director Francois Truffaut and Kaufman had directed both Jon Voight and Robert Duvall in Fearless Frank (1967) and The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), respectively, it wasn’t until the director teamed up with Clint Eastwood to film The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976 that Kaufman had his chance to direct a superstar.

In revising the movie’s script, Kaufman decided not to have Wales’s enemies give up their quest to kill the outlaw, as they had in the earlier version of the screenplay, but to have them continually hunt Wales throughout the film. Eastwood believed the new approach would maintain suspense, and he was so impressed by the plot change that he decided Kaufman should be the one to direct the movie.

It wasn’t long, though, before others on the crew began to have misgivings about Kaufman. He seemed “indecisive,” a trait that wouldn’t complement Eastwood’s impatience. The uneasiness with Eastwood’s selection increased when Kaufman filmed a Comancheros’ attack on Wales’s wife, Laura Lee, before Eastwood arrived on location. Neither producer Bob Daley nor Eastwood was pleased with the shots, Daley calling them “milquetoast.”

Additional problems, including Kaufman’s perceive inefficiency and concerns with bringing the movie in on time and on budget finally decided the issue, and, reluctantly, Eastwood fired the director. “It’s the hardest thing I ever did in my life,” Eastwood said. With Kaufman gone, the actor added to his existing duties that of directing the film. As a result of Eastwood’s action, the Directors Guild prohibited the replacement of its members by anyone else working on the crew of the movie from which the Guild member had been removed.^[5]

10 Crazy Sides Of Famous Directors

5 Kevin Jarre

Another director who had a setback in his career due to his work on a Western movie is Kevin Jarre, who was fired from Tombstone (1993), starring Kurt Russell. A number of considerations led to Jarre’s dismissal. The film was behind schedule and costs were spiraling. Actors resented being told how to move and how to deliver their lines. Jarre seemed to have trouble sequencing film shots and producing coherent scenes. Executives were not happy with the dailies—the film footage shot during particular days. The film was becoming overly long; more than thirty scenes had to be cut.

Jarre, who several crew members, including Kurt Russell, believed to be over his head, refused to listen to advice from seasoned members of the cast and crew. Co-star Val Kilmer said, “I had a conversation with Kevin . . . and said, ‘Listen, Kevin. It’s collaborative. Kurt’s been doing this since he was three years old. He knows what he’s doing. Listen to him.” He also suggested that Jarre heed the advice of other members of the cast and crew.

Finally, Kilmer and Russell warned the young director that he was likely to be terminated if he continued to insist on his way. “It’s not working,” Russell told Jarre, “and they’re going to come in here and can you.” When Jarre insisted on going his own way, producer Andrew Vajna finally fired him. “Kevin was incredibly crushed,” cast member Powers Booth recalled.^[6]

4 Richard Thorpe

The Wizard of Oz (1939), starring Judy Garland, is a classic musical, but Richard Thorpe’s two weeks as the film’s director were anything but harmonious for him or the cast. Following the first week of filming, producer Mervyn LeRoy called a meeting. Buddy Ebsen, who played the Tin Man until he discovered that he was allergic to the silvery makeup, recalls LeRoy’s telling the group that the week’s filming was “terrible,” an “utter confusion,” and “berating” the actors.

LeRoy himself suggested that the movie and the director were a mismatch. “He was a wonderful guy,” the producer said, “who made some fine pictures,” but Thorpe didn’t grasp the genre’s need for emotional “warmth.” “To make a fairy story, you have to think like a kid.” Presumably, Victor Fleming, who replaced Thorpe, had such childlike vision. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards and won three, although none were for Best Director.^[7]

3 Howard Hawks

Like many Hollywood figures, Howard Hawks was successful in several roles. A screenwriter and a producer, he also directed such famous and accomplished actors as Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Paul Muni, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Cary Grant, and Katherine Hepburn, among many others. His films include such respected classics as The Dawn Patrol (1930), Scarface (1932), Today We Live (1933), Barbary Coast (1935), Ceiling Zero (1936), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Sergeant York (1941).

It’s hard to believe that anyone would want to fire such a talented virtuoso, but he was dismissed from The Outlaw, a 1943 film starring Jane Russell and Walter Huston. The man who dismissed him? Billionaire Howard Hughes, whose name appears in the movie’s credits as its director. Hawks had just finished directing Sergeant York, when Hughes decided to discharge him because Hughes didn’t appreciate the extreme attention to detail the director exhibited or, for that matter, Hawks’s walking “off the set.” It seemed that Hughes took an uncommon interest in at least a couple of details related to his movie, though: he himself designed the scandalous, figure-enhancing bra that Jane Russell wore in the film.^[8]

2 George Cukor

One of the truly great Hollywood directors, George Cukor, was fired from the 1939 epic Gone with the Wind. The reason? Scuttlebutt had it that producer David O. Selznik cashiered him because Clark Gable, the megastar who played the film’s Southern rogue Rhett Butler, took issue with Cukor’s homosexuality, despite Cukor’s and Gable’s having worked together on a previous film, Manhattan (1933).

Although Gable’s alleged homophobia might have been a contributing factor to Cukor’s getting sacked, another reason for the producer’s firing Cukor might have been, as Selznik himself suggested, personal differences. The producer felt that the director couldn’t see the movie’s “scope” and “breadth” and was focusing too much on “the more intimate scenes and female characters.”^[9]

1 Stanley Kubrick

By 1976, Stanley Kubrick had already directed a string of colossal hits, often to critical acclaim, including Spartacus (1960), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and A Clockwork Orange (1971). Although beyond impressive, his resume wasn’t enough to prevent him from being dismissed as the director of One-Eyed Jacks (1976).

Before then, Kubrick had wanted to direct a movie based on a 1935 novel he’d read, World War I veteran Humphrey Cobb’s Paths of Glory. However, MGM refused to finance the film. The story concerned French soldiers who were executed for mutiny before being posthumously exonerated, and the studio had only recently released the anti-war film The Red Badge of Courage (1951), based on Stephen Crane’s 1895 novel.

Kubrick would have to direct something else. Marlon Brando asked him to take charge of The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, a film, based on Sheriff Pat Garrett and the outlaw Billy the Kid, in which Brando was starring. Things didn’t go well. Different opinions and lots of changes caused arguments that became so intense that Brando felt compelled to bang a gong to restore order. Ultimately, the star fired the director, renamed the film One-Eyed Jacks, and took over the duties and responsibilities of directing the picture.^[10]

Top 10 Best of the Best in Movies

“This film is so…” Fill in the blank with directors whose signature techniques have not only encaptivated moviegoers but also left an indelible mark on the art of filmmaking itself.

It’s one thing to make a great movie. It’s quite another to make one in a way instantly identifiable for its directorial calling cards. Here are ten directors whose distinctive styles helped make them legends.

Related: 10 Brilliant Directors Who Were Notoriously Cruel

10 Wes Anderson

The director of such classics as The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is modern filmmaking’s most effectively weird filmmaker. With few exceptions, Wes Anderson movies are more live-action storybooks than conventional films, with relatively simple plots serving as vehicles for ornate typography, elaborately embellished set designs, and quirky characters toggling between outcasts, antiheroes, and flat-out oddballs.

One telltale sign of an Anderson film is that flourish is at the forefront. Characters like Royal Tenenbaum, Steve Zissou, and Rushmore’s Max Fischer are exaggerated caricatures of themselves, faux elitist Anglo-Saxons in exclusive settings. Artistic angles, stop-motion techniques, and color schemes varyingly muted or extreme help add to the eccentricity.

Throughout most of Anderson’s films, one common thread is symmetry, which he tends to incorporate in angles ranging from bird-eye panoramas to single-character closeups. The device serves to make shots simultaneously aesthetically pleasing and somewhat disorienting, as many scenes often seem too picture-perfect to be realistic. Again, with Anderson, it’s typically art first, storytelling second.

Through the years, Anderson’s success has snowballed upon itself in one important way: terrific actors eager to work with him again and again. Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, Adrian Brody, and Jason Schwartzman have all graced multiple Anderson films, with B-level actors like Owen Wilson made more effective by the star-studded cast around them.^[1]

9 Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone is an incredible filmmaker who may also be incredibly insane. But nuts or not, his strategic sensationalism has yielded some exceptionally memorable movies.

Stone’s at his best when using innuendo to leave audiences suspicious of conventional wisdom or convinced of official malfeasance. Any Given Sunday is a strong example. At its surface, the film follows the successes and setbacks of a pro (American) football team. But bubbling barely underneath is the grotesque gladiatorialism that, in an inherently violent society, passes for family-oriented entertainment.

Stone’s bomb-throwing doesn’t always land. Alexander, which chronicled the exploits of Alexander the Great, was a 3-hour, 27-minute snooze, and 2006’s World Trade Center somehow managed to make 9/11 tedious. Likewise, seemingly compelling flicks like 1995’s Nixon and 2008’s W.—released while its subject, George W. Bush, was still the sitting president—simply weren’t very good.

But two films cement Stone’s legacy. The first is 1991’s JFK, which employed Stone’s fanaticism by lending credibility to eccentric New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and, in doing so, helped birth a new generation of assassination conspiracy theorists.

The other is his masterpiece, 1994’s Natural Born Killers, which dramatically showcases the glorification of violence in the then-blooming age of sensationalist magazine TV “journalism.” Here, Stone shifts between gory murder, trippy illustration, and mockumentary to shine a mirror back on the audience. In the end, Mickey and Mallory are as American as apple pie, making us responsible for their Bonnie and Clyde-esque killing spree.^[2]

8 Spike Lee

The industry’s most famous African-American director has lent more than social justice and Black cultural celebration to filmmaking. Spike Lee is also the inventor of a particular type of scene called the double dolly shot.

A dolly is a camera mounted on a cart that travels along tracks, which allows a scene to move without unsteadying the camera. In use since 1907, dolly shots are nearly as old as moviemaking itself.

It was Lee, however, who introduced the double dolly, in which not only the camera but also the actor is dollied. The result is a motionless central character seeming to float as the background glides past.

Lee employs the double dolly quite frequently and for various reasons. Often, the shot is used to take a narrative timeout that allows a character to provide added commentary. At other times, the effect provides a trippy disorientation, signifying that the character doesn’t quite have a grasp on the situation. Invariably, the double dolly disrupts the audience’s conventional viewing rhythm, lending the shots extra emphasis.

Another Lee trait is leaning into controversy. With 1992’s Malcolm X, Lee came under fire for pinning the civil rights leader’s assassination on the Nation of Islam (though this was likely accurate). Most recently, he filmed and ultimately cut scenes showcasing 9/11 “Truthers”—conspiracy theorists who falsely believe the World Trade Center attacks were perpetrated by the U.S. government—from an HBO documentary chronicling NYC from 2001 through COVID-19.^[3]

7 Ken Burns

While other documentarians explore singular events or themes—9/11, the 2008 fiscal crisis, the opioid epidemic—Burns wrangles the Civil War, American westward expansion (The West), World War II, and jazz. These feats, often at least nine multi-hour episodes apiece, are akin to teaching a college course on the subjects.

Period music, grainy black and white photos, war plan maps, mini-personal histories. Add in a narrator and intersperse with subject matter experts, and Burns manages to condense something as complex as the Civil War into 11 hours and 30 minutes of brilliance.

But even Burns has his limits—and his talents extend to recognizing this. For his WWII doc The War, Burns circumvents the impossibility of comprehensively tackling humankind’s broadest, deadliest armed conflict by instead following the true stories of four Americans who, between them, seemed to pop up in nearly every major American battle.

Burns is also cognizant that, sometimes, a topic is not only exceptionally broad but living and breathing. For example, his comprehensive history of baseball, laid out in nine multi-hour “innings,” was released in 1994. Shortly thereafter, the game saw several landmark events, including a World Series-cancelling strike, the introduction of Wild Card playoff spots, and a sweeping steroids scandal that Burns knew required revisiting. So in 2010, his “10th Inning” covered all that plus the late-1990s Yankees dynasty, the introduction of advanced analytics into decision-making, and the end of Boston’s 86-year championship drought.^[4]

6 David Zucker

While David Zucker hasn’t elicited so much as a chuckle in over a quarter-century, he makes this list for two reasons. First, the comedy director has a decidedly distinctive style. Second, he has written and directed two of the 10 funniest films ever made. We’re talking, of course, about 1980’s Airplane! and 1988’s Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

The style is, simply, rapid-fire jokes that hardly let audiences catch their breath between laughs. Zucker is the master of throwing random, spaghetti-at-the-wall one-liners and slapstick and having an outsized portion of them stick. He throws jokes like a flyweight throws boxes—lots of quick jabs, followed up with the occasional haymaker that leaves audiences floored with laughter.

The highlights from his dueling masterpieces alone are Hall of Fame-worthy. An old white woman who speaks jive. An undercover cop posing as an umpire breakdances after a called third strike. An air traffic controller who, as the movie progresses, picked a bad week to quit smoking, drinking, and sniffing glue, respectively.

Zucker is also almost single-handedly responsible for transitioning Leslie Nielsen from an accomplished “serious movie” actor into one of the funniest film comedians of all time, despite often sharing the screen with terrible actor and double-murder enthusiast O.J. Simpson. Here’s O.J. nearly dying.^[5]

5 Quentin Tarantino

Casual, superfluous violence, anyone?

It’s tempting to see blood-spatter aficionado Quentin Tarantino as a one-trick pony—a director whose signature ultra-violent scenes are an attempt to distract from shortcomings elsewhere. But what’s exceptional about Tarantino is that, despite being most associated with bloodbaths, his filmography would be stellar even without them.

This was true right from his directorial debut, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. Easily overlooked among the bank robbery-turned-mass murder, hostage torture, and undercover cop slowly bleeding to death is a true act of filmmaking mastery: Tarantino manages to develop a cast of anonymous criminals so guarded they eschew names for colors (Steve Buscemi: “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?”). While Michael Madsen chopping off a cop’s ear to the upbeat rhythm of “Stuck in the Middle with You” may be the film’s marquee moment, the movie’s genius is borne of dialogue, pacing, and suspense.

Tarantino is at his best when protagonists have a clear, evil foil and a mission to accomplish, as such plotlines allow the audience to enjoy extreme violence guiltlessly. In 2009’s Inglorious Bastards, we revel in the scalping of Nazis during France’s occupation as we follow a team led by Brad Pitt at his smug, cocksure best. Three years later, Django Unchained flipped the script on the casual violence exacted against slaves as Jamie Foxx shoots his way through a notorious plantation to rescue his long-lost wife. ^[6]

4 Akira Kurosawa

Over a nearly 60-year career, Akira Kurosawa earned a reputation for being Japan’s greatest filmmaker—and one of the top few directors, period.

Kurosawa left an indelible mark on filmmaking at large, but his working methods were perhaps his most noteworthy legacy. Simply put, he was difficult to work with, from a film’s inception to its finished, theater-ready product. A true moving-picture perfectionist, Kurosawa took command of scripts and lorded over writers and, once in production, had a vision that often took both actors and cameramen dozens of takes to meet. In post-production, he was his own meanest editor, chopping and rearranging until his own lofty expectations were met.

Over time, Kurosawa’s perfectionism became Darwinian: as his fame and reputation grew, his filmmaking teams were drawn from an ever-winnowing pool loosely called “Kurosawa-gumi,” or “Kurosawa group.” It was an A-list director demanding an A-list moviemaking unit.

As a dictatorial director, Kurosawa had carte blanche to create and innovate as he saw fit. In the 1940s and 50s, his groundbreaking uses of axial cuts—a type of jump cut where the camera suddenly moves closer or further away—and screen wipes became part of filmmaking’s device repertoire in subsequent years.

Among Kurosawa’s finest and most influential works is 1954’s Seven Samurai, whose montage-esque build-up, ambitious action scenes, riveting underdog story, and seemingly inescapable situations have inspired (largely inferior) action films for nearly seven decades.^[7]

3 Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese thrives on violent subcultures. He’s a master at deep dives into seedy underworlds that protagonists and antiheroes must deftly navigate to thrive or survive.

The mafia (Goodfellas). Porn and prostitution (Taxi Driver). The mafia again (Casino). Boxing (Raging Bull). The mafia again (The Departed). Mid-19th Century slum gangs (Gangs of New York). The mafia yet again (The Irishman). Scorsese’s stories immerse audiences in an underbelly society—narrowing their focus before expanding upon it extensively.

Extensively, indeed. Scorsese makes some of the longest feature films in show business. Most eclipse two hours, and many approach three. Notably, his frequent use of protagonist voiceovers for context—typically at the beginning of a new scene—is a device to speed things up; without them, communicating that information visually may have made some Scorsese films too long for movie theaters, which have a monetary interest in maximizing showtimes.

In 2019, Scorsese was freed from the bondage of brevity with The Irishman, which was exclusively distributed by Netflix. The result was a three-and-a-half-hour gem chronicling the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

Finally, like many filmmakers, Scorsese has certain actors he favors. One is Robert De Niro, the other Leonardo DiCaprio, who has starred in five Scorsese films, including The Departed, which brought Scorsese a long-deserved Oscar for Best Director.^[8]

2 Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is the only director on this list who stands as the undisputed greatest in his genre. Buttressed by Hitchcock’s five Academy Award nominations for Best Director, every other horror filmmaker is competing for the silver.

Hitchcock’s most notable moniker, “Master of Suspense,” is as well-deserved as a superlative can be. His innovative pacing brought unprecedented levels of build-up not only into horror films but other genres. Moreover, Hitchcock inherently understood that fright was more psychological than physical—that the anticipation of something terrible was more terrifying than the terrible thing itself.

Ironically, it’s what Hitchcock didn’t have at his disposal during his filmmaking career—elaborate special effects—that helped cement his legacy. Necessity is often the mother of invention, and Hitchcock—already an exceptionally inventive director—had to find ways to enthrall and frighten moviegoers without repulsive monsters killing in superhuman ways. It’s also worth noting that Hitchcock managed to mortify at a time when abundant goriness simply wouldn’t fly and, even if it did, blood isn’t as scary in black-and-white.

A sterling example of Hitchcock’s ahead-of-its-time brilliance is Miriam’s death scene from 1951’s Strangers on a Train. Her demise has several eminently recognizable signs of modern horror-movie deaths: the “audience fake-out” as she screams in the Tunnel of Love, yet emerges unharmed; the stalker waiting for her to momentarily straggle away from her friends; the hushed deathblow seen through a warped lens—in this case, Miriam’s glasses, which fall to the ground as her killer strangles her.^[9]

1 Stanley Kubrick

Many (including me) consider Stanley Kubrick the greatest filmmaker of all time. Pigeon-holing Kubrick into a distinctive style would be unworthy of his genius, so instead, let’s focus on a common theme. Here, among Kubrick’s most effective directorial devices is his lack of faith in humanity. Many of his films serve as a blunt yet artistic warning that mankind is its own hubris-driven worst enemy.

Take, for example, arguably his masterpiece (“arguably” only because he has several masterpieces), 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in 1968 at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race, the film showcases the downsides of technological competition: a lack of checks and balances fueled by one-upmanship resulting in AI too smart for mankind to control.

Not surprisingly, Kubrick doesn’t trust humanity with nukes, either, as seen in 1964’s Dr. Strangleove. All it takes, he surmises, is one paranoid rogue general—mockingly named Jack D. Ripper—to usher in a snowball effect that leads to the obliteration of civilization as we know it. Patterned after a protégé of insanely hawkish general Curtis LeMay—who nearly led the U.S. to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis—Ripper is Exhibit A that many not only don’t fear nuclear war but, per Slim Pickens’s epic bomb-bucking descent into doom, would openly embrace it.

A Clockwork Orange. Full Metal Jacket. The Shining. A strong argument can be made that Kubrick claims five or more of the best 20 or 25 films ever.^[10]

Beginning roughly around 1967, Hollywood began changing its order of operations, focusing more on films that favored younger audiences and were more directly in response to popular culture. And while there are many names that have become synonymous with what came to be known as the “New Hollywood,” stories of this era tend to forget that it was an entire industry at the center of such a shakeup. Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola are household names, yet many other directors had just as significant an impact. Here are ten of them:

Related: 10 Films Where The Supporting Role Was Better Than The Lead

10 Jack Hill

Known by many as the “Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking,” Jack Hill made a name for himself in the world of student filmmaking at UCLA, which brought him in contact with Roger Corman. This gave him the opportunity to direct horror films throughout the 1960s, such as Blood Bath (1966) and Spider Baby (1967).

From there, he progressed into directing primarily within the Blaxploitation genre, collaborating multiple times with actress Pam Grier on films that sought to critique the flaws of their counterparts while still empowering African American voices. Even when viewed with modern eyes, his films lend an almost-Shakespearian level of pathos to his characters, trading in sex and violence for more nuanced human struggle, if only slightly.^[1]

9 John Milius

Most famous for his contributions to such scripts as Apocalypse Now (1979) and early drafts of Dirty Harry (1972), John Milius was branded by his anarchic world views, which often clashed with mainstream Hollywood politics. That being said, such an outlook was remarkably suited for the antihero mold that occupied the era’s silver screen.

As a screenwriter, his body of work is unmatched, but Milius himself is just as accomplished as a director. His sense of personal work and knack for human fragility shows through in films like Dillinger (1973) and Big Wednesday (1977), which filled out his 1970s, before he moved on to larger films in the 1980s, such as Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Red Dawn (1984). He would later go on to co-create the HBO series Rome (2005–2007).^[2]

8 Herbert Ross

Beginning his career as a dancer, Herbert Ross transitioned to directing films in 1969 with the second adaptation of James Hilton’s 1934 novel, Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Primarily a journeyman from there on, Ross’s career in New Hollywood enabled him to brush up against such big names as Barbara Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss.

More akin to the Old Hollywood studio players that came in the generation before him, Ross’s directorial style is more chameleonic than his contemporaries, making his contributions to cinema no less dynamic as it is indistinguishable. He also has the honor of directing The Last of Sheila (1973), the only film that Tony award-winning playwright and composer Stephen Sondheim wrote.^[3]

7 Jerry Schatzberg

For all the great cinema that came out of New York in the 1970s, the name Jerry Schatzberg is not uttered enough, even by the most devoted of film lovers. His career began as a photographer, but it was not long before he transitioned into independent feature filmmaking, collaborating with Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman.

Yet most regrettable is that Schatzberg is not remembered as an integral stepping stone in the ascension of Al Pacino to movie stardom. Just as Francis Ford Coppola directed him in three Godfather films (1972, 1974, 1990), or Sidney Lumet with Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), so too did Schatzberg while directing Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) and Scarecrow (1973). Both films exhibit a sense of naturalism that only further emphasizes the sense of humanity of that era’s cinema.^[4]

6 Bob Rafelson

Finding his initial success as an executive producer on Easy Rider (1969) (he co-created the company Raybert Productions, which eventually evolved into BBS), Bob Rafelson went on to make a slew of films responsible for “legitimizing” actors viewed only in B movies and as day players. These include Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces (1970), Arnold Schwarzenegger in Stay Hungry (1976), or the actors who portrayed The Monkees, whose careers diverged in different directions once their show was canceled (of which Rafelson had co-created, written, and directed for).^[5]

5 George Roy Hill

Similar to Herbert Ross, the visuals of a “George Roy Hill Picture” might not be easily identifiable. Yet, one need not look further than the films listed on his filmography to shut down any question of his talent. Mostly known for his musicals and comedies that populated the 1960s, it was not until 1969 that Hill found his breakout work in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

He would go on to collaborate with both of them again, either paired together, as in The Sting (which won Hill an Academy Award for Best Director) or separately, as in the cases of The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) or Slap Shot (1977). What makes Hill doubly astute and underrated is his ability to hide counterculture rebellion within the confines of genre filmmaking, whether it be science fiction films of the 1980s with Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) or family comedies of the 1980s, with The World According to Garp (1982) or Funny Farm (1988).^[6]

4 Alan J. Pakula

Modern crime cinema would not be what it is without Alan J. Pakula. His impact on cinema has been simultaneously underrated and felt deeply since producing To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. And while much of the slew of crime procedural programs that populate network television is attributed to Jonathan Demme for his 1991 film, The Silence of the Lambs, one need not look further than Alan J. Pakula.

Not only did his films Klute (1971) and The Parallax View (1974) tap into a sense of Nixon-era paranoia, but he also directly addressed such themes in 1976 when he directed All the President’s Men, arguably the greatest film about investigative journalism. Pakula’s presence was felt throughout the 1970s, and he continued to make quality films into the 1990s, once his influence was already felt through other filmmakers who specialized in the very style he developed.^[7]

3 Melvin Van Peebles

Here is a filmmaker who is undoubtedly held in high regard among the pantheon of Black filmmakers yet should be held just as high in relation to independent cinema. Noteworthy for being one of the few African American directors to be hired by a major Hollywood studio, Van Peebles would then go on to self-finance his film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). This was in direct response to his inability to find studio backing despite the success of his previous film, Columbia Pictures’ Watermelon Man (1970).

Historical relevance aside, his films stand up against the most prestigious of social issues films, as well as alongside the crassest of lowbrow comedy of the decade. His roots as a playwright inform his rather theatrical visual style, allowing him to play with the medium in a manner reminiscent of the theater, if not outright heightened by the tricks and techniques cinema has to offer.^[8]

2 Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby is by no means unknown, yet he somehow manages to go underrated in his recognition, especially when viewed through the guise of 1970s auteurism. His success rate is almost inseparable from the 1970s, as personal struggle and studio meddling all but rendered his subsequent films unwatchable, or at least under-seen by most. Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), and Shampoo (1975) may seem disparate at first glance, but all of these films offer microcosmic dreamscapes that do not ignore the outside world but rather offer solace in direct opposition to the current issues of the day.

The films of Hal Ashby are not films devised, so much as they feel found. Beginning his career as an editor (for which he was awarded an Academy Award), Ashby’s films seek to pick out small moments used to articulate larger themes. This notion is most strongly summed up by critic Roger Ebert in his review of Being There (1979), where he reflects on the film’s final moments, in which the protagonist Chance (played by Peter Sellers) walks across water in a seemingly Christlike allegory. Ebert writes that “a movie is exactly what it shows us, and nothing more,” which may sound oversimplified but cannot be more precise, as Ashby always shows us just enough to speak eons on the human condition.^[9]

1 Elaine May

If Hal Ashby is the unsung director of 1970s cinema, then Elaine May may very well be one of, if not the most, unsung directors of all time. She begins her career blazing a trail of a separate kind in 1960s New York as half of the comedy duo Nichols and May (the other half being the equally revolutionary Mike Nichols). Together they made numerous albums and won multiple awards, so it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

With Nichols directing his seminal adaptation of Charles Webb’s novel The Graduate in 1967, May was soon to follow with her equally biting The Heartbreak Kid (1972) five years later. This was preceded by A New Leaf (1971) and followed by Mikey And Nicky (1976), the latter of which all but tarnished her relationship with the major studios. This resulted in May herself eventually stealing reels from the studio backlot and hiding them in a close friend’s garage, only ever returning them after some of her creative demands had been met.

That said, almost all of her films were critical and box office successes. However, May herself was labeled difficult due to misogynistic hierarchies and a sense of particularism linked to the auteurism of her male colleagues. To this day, she has only made four feature films, with a fifth one purported to be on the way. All her films have their merits if they are not outright masterpieces. The financial chaos of her 1987 flop Ishtar has been the subject of multiple media frenzies, a film that itself has not aged as poorly as it would have appeared upon its initial release three decades ago.^[10]