George Miller is likely best known for his writing and directing of the Mad Max movies. Spanning the course of 35 years, Miller brought to life the post-apocalyptic Australia of the Mad Max movies. His final installment of Mad Max: Fury Road began pre-production in 1998, didn’t start even start filming until the 2000s, was met with delay after delay, and finally wrapped in 2012. The film is a masterpiece.
Conversely, Miller also wrote and directed two Happy Feet movies, as we as the Oscar-nominated Babe and its sequel, Babe: Pig in the City. These are VASTLY different films, to the point that it’s just really hard to reconcile the two ends of that creative arc.
Excluding actors, who are much more likely to have drastically different roles, who do you nominate for this category?
George Romero made short films for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood before going on to direct Night of the Living Dead. (Supposedly, Fred Rogers himself caught a showing and later told Romero “It’s a lot of fun, George.”)
For that matter Babe and its sequel were vastly different films. The sequel was far more mature, dark, and disturbing than the original. (I actually liked it quite a bit.)
Playwright Tom Stoppard had a sideline writing screenplays for such heady fare as Brazil and Empire of the Sun…but he was also an uncredited screenwriter on the family-friendly dog-themed movies Beethoven and 102 Dalmatians.
In Ye Olden Days, directors were hired hands working for the Studio System. The studio executives ordered them to do a picture, and they did the picture. Many of the old-timers had quite diverse resumes.
One example, chosen mostly at random:
Jacques Tourneur:
Toto (comedy)
Nick Carter, Master Detective (mystery)
Cat People (horror)
Experiment Perilous (drama)
Out of the Past (film noir)
Anne of the Indies (pirates)
Wichita (western)
War Gods of the Deep (science fiction)
I’m amazed that David Lynch made such dismal, grim looking films as The Elephant Man and Eraserhead… and later in his career did The Straight Story. I would never have guessed it was the same director.
To me, Spy Kids made total sense coming from him. I’ve only ever seen the trailer, but at the time my thought was it looked exactly like a story line from his comic strip in the Daily Texan when I was in college.
I do agree he fits for this thread.
How about Steven Spielberg for quick turnaround doing both Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in the same year.
Pierre Boulle wrote both the war drama Bridge on the River Kwai and science fiction film Planet of the Apes. (Well actually the novels they were based on.)
Are you talking about directing? Because Tobe Hooper directed Poltergeist, although IIRC Spielberg cowrote and produced, and the direction does have Spielberg’s fingerprints all over it.
Spielberg created both films as parallel projects, telling similar stories from totally different directions (friendly alien befriending a family, evil alien tormenting a family). But his contract for E.T. prevented him from directing another film simultaneously, so Tobe Hooper was made the official director of Poltergeist, and the rumor is that Spielberg “consulted” on the film to the extent that was the primary director on the film.
There are conflicting testimonials, and I doubt that we’ll ever know for sure (and for the record, both Spielberg and Hooper insist that Hooper was the main director), but whatever the real story, it seems pretty complicated.
And regardless of who was the director, the films were certainly both Spielberg’s children, even if his involvement wasn’t the same in both.
Stanley Kramer was known for serious, socially conscious “message films” (Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind, etc.), but he also directed the zany slapstick comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.