I read that Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t sit in a car going over 30mph.
Fritz Lang and Peter…
Well, there are Alfred Hitchcock’s frequent cameos in his own films and the obligatory foot fetish scene in Quentin Tarantino’s movies.
ETA: also Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Wes Anderson is the king of idiosyncrasies: Nearly all shots symmetrically composed, nearly all motion going from left to right, camera that rarely moves, etc.
This could go 3 pages on Woody Allen alone.
The only one I know is that he takes his temperature twice a day.
What is it with David Lynch and head wounds? Too many to list.
Mel Gibson likes to show a character persevering in the face of adversity. But it frequently morphs into torture porn.
Many of Robin Williams’ movies ostentatiously proclaimed, “Children are good; grownups are evil.” I often wondered whether that attitude would survive when his own children became teenagers.
Every Monday night, Woody Allen plays clarinet with the New Orleans Jazz Band at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. He has snubbed prestigious award ceremonies, rather than miss his Monday performances.
I remember reading that he went to the same restaurant for breakfast for years. (Surprised the place wasn’t inundated with fans)
Hang on. Fritz didn’t EAT monkey along with his scrambled eggs and martinis, did he?
Because scrambled eggs with salami is really a preferable option. Some people say it’s better than sex.
Martinis with breakfast, I have no quibble. They make it easier to go straight back to bed afterwards.
He started doing that in the 1970s. Is it still a thing with him? Has he gotten any better on the clarinet?
Not “frequent.” He had a cameo in every movie starting with The Lodger in 1926. In Lifeboat, which takes place entirely in a lifeboat, he was in the “before” photo in a newspaper ad for a diet system.
His real and ugly idiosyncrasy was his penchant for ice-cold blonde actress torture.
Paul Verhoeven has a funny habit of physically trying to get a reaction out of his actors by pretending to be something the actors can’t see: special effects, be it practical props added in later or CGI.
First to mention Peter Greenaway? He has made films which are almost entirely composed of idiosyncrasies. Drowning By Numbers is maybe the most extreme - the numbers 1 to 100 appear in sequence through the film (for you to identify), which is largely concerned with games played by the characters.
Another game, if I remember correctly, played by the viewer, concerns the composition of the initial shots of scenes, which are based on renaissance paintings, for you to identify.
It’s not the only film he made which is monumentally odd. Prospero’s Books is a relatively straightforward version of The Tempest - except that all of the characters’ lines are spoken by John Gielgud (who also plays Prospero). A Zed & Two Noughts (about the efforts of two twins to become conjoined) is filled with time lapse video clips of growth and decay.
Always interesting, mind.
j
Darn! I completely forgot about Greenaway!
Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover are like logic puzzles. You spend the first part of the movie trying to figure out the rules of the game, and then spend the rest of the movie trying to see if he ever breaks the rules.
In The Draughtsman’s Contract, the sex and violence are basically a pretext to get you into the theater, so he can give you a lecture on architecture and drafting techniques.
In The Pillow Book, the sex and violence are basically a pretext to get you into the theater, so he can give you a lecture on papermaking, calligraphy, and weird forms of poetry.
In Prospero’s Books . . . . Well, it’s John Gielgud doing Shakespeare, with a lot of naked people running around in the background. Who cares what his intentions were? It’s fun to watch.
As of last year it is. There was a documentary about him touring Europe with his band, and to my untrained ear he sounded very good.
Of course Hitchcock is known for his cameos, but most people miss the fact that he often staged key scenes on stairways. Some examples (spoilered so no one gets huffy):
Number Seventeen – most of the film
The Thirty-Nine Steps – sort of: Pamela realizes Hannay is telling the truth when she stands on a landing near the stairs
Suspicion – the glass of milk
Shadow of a Doubt – an attempt at murder by sawing through a step, and Charlie descending the stairs with the ring.
Notorious – Grant rescuing Bergman
Strangers on a Train – Guy’s attempt to murder Bruno’s father
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) – Villain dies falling down stairs
Vertigo
Psycho – Arbogast’s murder
Frenzy – The dolly shot down the stairs to the street.
Family Plot – Final scene
Truffaut once asked Hitchcock about it, and Hitchcock replied “Stairs are very photogenic.”
There’s always John Landis and his running gag of See You Next Wednesday:
That might be the origin, but I can’t help but think that there’s a relationship to the quasi-risqué See You Next Tuesday in there.
While shooting the Blue Velvet scene introducing Frank (with Jeffrey hiding in the closet), Lynch was constantly fondling the severed ear that appeared at the beginning of the film.
Sam Peckinpah required sets of doors for throwing knives at, between takes.
In pressuring Menahem Golan for more funds for Barfly, Barbet Schroeder threatened to chainsaw off his finger.