An auteur is always in much more danger of making a bad movie than a director who just wants the script to come out faithfully on a screen. Risk much, gain much. Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers was entirely different from Heinlein’s, and I loved both of them. I think Verhoeven trod the line of subtlety and erred on the side of caution; when your meaning is hidden from the audience too well, you risk that too small a percentage of the audience will suss out that meaning.
When the small numbers who understand you get together, they are too busy congratulating themselves for “solving the puzzle” to debate (with any honesty) whether or not the message that came out was any good. I loved Fight Club, but I know lots of people who reject the film because they disagree with Tyler’s message. I count that as a minor failure on the part of Fincher, but I still love the film.
Let us discuss Quinton Tarrentino. Now, I know he does not make art, but I have always found him to be great at doing what he does: popcorn action style thrillers with a little bit more intelligence and style than usual. Perhaps it is just me, but I find a lot of his praise just in that he does what he does without trying to be anything more. He directs action-fuelled entertainment flicks with little underlying meaning, and seems to do well at it.
Fascinating question. Movie buffs who latch onto a particular director seem to believe all her/his movies are genius. I find it hard to believe someone who makes 10, 15, 20 movies NEVER coughs up a hairball.
Ilsa, I’m going to have to ask you what, precisely, a “hack” is. While you may feel Steven Spielberg is overrrated - and that’s a fair assessment in and of itself based on some of his material I think is pretty so-so - how is he a “hack”? A “hack” to me is someone who has essentially no real skill or artistic flair at all, who just goes through the technical motions. You could argue that Chris Columbus, for instance, is a hack. Oh, is he ever. But Spielberg a hack? “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Schindler’s List” and more were legitimately original, fascinatingly directed movies. Evern some of the more simplistic stuff, like “Jurassic Park,” was of a quality I would consider well beyond hackdom. A “hack” surely cannot make such films.
To use another example, unlike you, I don’t think Verhoeven is a big time genius. I think a most of his movies are boring and failed. But he ISN’T a hack, or even close to it. He’s got some legitimately original perspectives and methods, and he’s not just going through the motions by any stretch of the imagination.
That would be me. In my defense, I had no idea that some people were so passionate in their opinions about entertainment. Aside from the Trekkies and the Dead Heads, that is. Who knew little Paul Verhoeven had a fan club?
Robocop works on many levels at once. You can watch it as a straight action movie or as a satire or as a discussion of present and future societal trends or as a so-bad-it’s-good movie. It is all of those things. So, if you took it as a satire, you’re quite correct.
Yes. One of the drawbacks of choosing feature films as your art form is that you can’t throw out your mistakes and missteps. If Matisse was working on a painting, and felt that it just wasn’t going well, he could throw it out or paint over it. Nobody would know. If Lennon and McCartney were working on a tune that had some really awkward elements in it, they could just forget about it, and nobody would know they wrote a cheesy tune. But due to the scale and expense of making a movie, a director can’t just chuck it when it’s almost done and not as good as he would have hoped. So everybody sees his mistakes.
I find that almost all directors do, even if it is something in their distant past, before they hit their stride. I don’t think any directors are perfect, just that some are closer than others.
Perhaps ‘hack’ is the wrong word. Shallow sentimentalists with just enough visual talent and predilection for maudlin, audience pleasing scripts would be more accurate. That applies to Lucas and Spielberg. Frankly, I don’t think there is anything original about Schindler’s List. Jaws was fairly original, Raiders was just a pastiche.
Of course an auteur can make bad movies. Beethoven wrote some mediocre music, Rembrandt painted some mediocre paintings, Shakespeare has his “Titus Andronicus.”
The thing about a great artist is that his/her failures are of still interesting, at least to students or scholars. Thus, watching a Hitchcock failure (like, let’s say, TOPAZ) is still interesting – why did it fall short? what works? what doesn’t?
And, of course, when it comes to Art (Capital A), popularity is not necessarily a measure of anything.
Torn Curtain is not a failure! It is very calculated, and has some great Hitchcock moments. It’s coldness and impersonality was a play on the Cold War and surrounding mentality.
Thank you! My boyfriend and I have a recurring argument over Tarantino, and he likes to bring up the fact that I admit to having liked Reservior Dogs and Pulp Fiction when they first came out. I point out that I was a young college student at the time and didn’t know any better.
Since you posted in my thread about my boyfriend issue, I don’t want you to get the impression that we fight all the time. We actually do have a good relationship - really!
He might be overrated, but I hear he is not so highly rated in Spain, which is interesting. I just want to suggest that if you decide to give him another chance, try All About My Mother. I’ve seen most of his films and had mixed feelings about them, but I recently saw that one and really liked it. He managed to present a compelling story about misfits and transsexuals in which the characters were fully humanized. It was also funny, but you were always laughing with the characters, not at them.
He ain’t a philosopher, baby, he’s a post-structuralist called Derrida.
Oo’ ees Derrida?
Derrida’s dead, baby. Derrida’s dead.
No, I’m not really a Tarantino fan, either. Well, that thread didn’t turn out quite the way I had hoped. Maybe we should just stick with Star Wars and Simpsons quotes until things simmer down.
The barriers of his movies are pretty distinct. Elements that are introduced usually fit the entirety of his little world… I think some people don’t like his movies because he tries to portray real life. Nope. He portrays his own little fantasy world that just happens to wear the same clothes, work in the same buildings, and use the same guns as real life. Everything else is an alternate universe.
For Tarantino, I guess, the style is the substance. He looks at what makes these distinctive comic-booky overly-stylized movies work, and what doesn’t work… he crams in the former, with his own unique bend, and does his best to get rid of the latter.
