# What directors first movie was the best?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 21, 2003, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791 "2003-10-21T23:30:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@CyberPundit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CyberPundit)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/21 "2003-10-22T15:51:10Z")
IMDB lists Tarentino’s first film as My Best Friend’s Birthday.
> **[Quentin Tarantino - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000233/)**
>
> Quentin Tarantino, Writer: Reservoir Dogs. Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee....
It also lists a couple of films before Citizen Kane for Welles but they were shorts so they presumably don’t count for the purposes of this thread.
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### Author:  [@Raymond\_Luxury\_Yacht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raymond_Luxury_Yacht)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/22 "2003-10-22T17:36:33Z")
John Singleton’s **Boys in the Hood**.
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/23 "2003-10-22T18:21:37Z")
Boys in the Hood is a definite contender, as is the Hughes Brothers’ Menace II Society.
Then there’s Bound, and sex lies and videotape, and one of my favorite movies, Strictly Ballroom. All debuts.
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### Author:  [@Mystery\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mystery_Dog)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/24 "2003-10-22T20:49:01Z")
**The Shawshank Redemption** , directed by Frank Darabont. (IMDB credits Darabont with two earlier movies, but one was a short and the other was made for TV, so I say they don’t count.)
**Blood Simple** , directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. (Not their best movie by a long shot, but a very good movie that happened to be its directors’ debut.)
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/25 "2003-10-22T21:12:13Z")
Except that The Shawshank Redeption sucked, and Darabont is a bad director.
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### Author:  [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/26 "2003-10-22T22:56:06Z")
“Dances with Wolves” by Kevin Costner
“Big” by Penny Marshall (I believe this was her first directorship (is that a word?)
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### Author:  [@FilmGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FilmGeek)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2003, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-directors-first-movie-was-the-best/208791/27 "2003-10-22T23:26:18Z")
I’d have to go with _Bound_. It’s a better movie than _The Matrix_, (and I love _The Matrix_).
I think this needs to be more specific. With directors like Spielberg and Lucas, whose student films are now part of the vocabulary of film buffs, and directors like Penny Marshall (whose directorial debut was episodes of _Laverne and Shirley_ and _Working Stiffs_, and whose feature film directorial debut is _Jumping Jack Flash_)… it’s hard to tell when they began. Then there are the Coens and the Wachowskis, who probably have had experience before their breakthroughs (school, low budget, etc.) but we only know them for _Blood Simple_ or _Bound_.
I’m also confused as to what the ‘best’ refers… better than other first films or better than later films by the same director?
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