Robert Rodriguez dropped out of The Director’s Guild of America so he could co-direct ‘Sin City’ with Frank Miller, because the Guild forbids multiple directors.
Why does the Guild care if a film has multiple directors?
It’s to avoid a situation where director A gets fired, director B does slipshod work, and director A gets blamed for the result (Caligula, 1979; Bob Guccione fired Tinto Brass, directed the remainder of the movie himself, and left Brass’s name on a horrible mess of a film) or director A gets fired, director B takes over and gets credit for director A’s stellar labor (Wizard of Oz, 1939; King Vidor was fired midway and replaced with Victor Fleming, who received sole credit for possibly the most popular film in history).
Ultimately, one person gets the credit or blame for the movie. The Director’s Guild would prefer that it be the person who actually directs it.
The same reason why the Writers Guild of America limits screenwriting credits to three persons* — so that producers don’t treat directors as disposable personnel whenever disagreements occur. The rule encourages the integrity of the director’s work. The DGA will make exceptions to this rule upon appeal.
- Writing teams are treated as one person.
The text of the rule is here – http://www.dga.org/contracts/agreements_ctr_crh_summary.php3
From what I understand, there are several reasons, the most important being that the D.G.A.'s position is that the director is the “real” author of the film and the director credit is the most prestigious. They want to preserve the prestige of the credit and so they demand that only one person can be given that credit. For comparison, look at the multiple people who get credited as “producer” and “executive producer” on movies and television shows. Often these credits are handed out to people who had little to do with the actual creative work in question. The D.G.A. doesn’t want to go down that slippery slope.
They do occasionally make exceptions, such as for the Coen brothers.
Rodriguez, along with Quentin Tarantino, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell directed Four Rooms. Was this an issue with this film or not? Was Rodriguez out of the Guild and then back in and now out again?
From the DGA newsletter:
They only give waivers if you learned to direct as a team, which doesn’t apply in the case of “Sin City”.
Note that this isn’t the first time that Rodriguez has clashed with union rules. Rodriguez has the ability and inclination to do multiple jobs on a movie (directing, editing, scoring, etc.) all by himself – he’s equipped his house so he can basically do a film alone. Most directors aren’t able to do this and the union wants to protect directors from pressure from studios to take on more than is usually desirable. So they have rules about how many different things one guy can do on a film. Rodriguez tends to violate these rules.
Forget to add: does anyone know how they did the credit for Four Rooms? It had four different directors for the four sections of the movie.
Oh, BTW, there have been plenty of “anthology” films with multiple directors, like Aria, The Twilight Zone and New York Stories. Each director tells one small story. But when it’s one single story, it gets diluted when there are too many chefs, so to speak.
Jonathan Frakes is credited with Star Trek: First Contact. I’d be shocked if he actually ‘directed’ the entire film in the traditional sense, although the witty character interaction is certainly him.
Actually, I think he did. It isn’t uncommon for various people to try their hand at directing during long-running TV shows, and Frakes seems to have had some talent for it.
Actually, if you check the credits for Coen Brothers films, only Joel Coen is credited as director. They share writing credits and Ethan Coen gets the title of Producer. (However, they both do some directing - only one gets credit, though, in keeping with Guild rules.)
Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker (**Airplane!, Top Secret[/b) were billed as co-directors, but had to prove to the guild that their methods were indeed a collaboration.
Casino Royale is credited to five directors. That may have been before the Guild created the rule, though, since the directors involved were most certainly not working as a team.
In this particular case, I don’t think it helped that Miller has absolutely no film directing experience, so the DGA would be particularly reluctant to legitimize his role based on what’s likely to be a one-time incident. A similar instance was when Jerome Robbins was allowed to direct West Side Story, only to be replaced by Robert Wise. They were both credited as director and shared that year’s Academy Award, but didn’t even acknowledge each other in their acceptance speeches. Robbins (a stage vet but film newbie) never received another film directing credit.
The DGA will co-credit when the pairing is accepted as a genuine team. The Wachowski Brothers are one example, Campbell Scott & Stanley Tucci (co-directors of Big Night) and Warren Beatty & Buck Henry (co-directors of Heaven Can Wait) are others.
Tarantino is not in the Director’s Guild. Don’t know about the other folks there, but it’s likely that they aren’t either.
This mentions that he refused to join in 1993, and I’ve read a more recent interview with Rodriguez where he mentions that QT is not a member.
Actually, it’s much more likely that they are–after all, Rodriguez was until recently too. Not being a member is much more difficult career-wise and is not a decision that your ordinary director (one who’s dependent on contract gigs) is going to make lightly. This is particularly true for Anders, who has been doing quite a bit of television in addition to movies since 4 Rooms.
Tarantino’s profile on IMDb says he is not in the DGA. The ads for Sin City say he is a “special guest director” on the movie in addition to Miller and Rodriguez.
From what I’ve seen, Tarantino directed one sequence in the movie and probably wouldn’t have been an issue if his credit indicated that.
IIRC, they’re listed as co-directors on The Ladykillers, but it’s the first film on which they’re so credited.
(It’s also their worst film. Maybe they should switch back.)
Jonathan Frakes has been a Director since the late 1980’s. His credits are way beyond the guest director nod given to many actors in hit series. He has solid chops, and has produced as well.
** Krokodil**, try to research such remarks before making them. 
You could easily have chosen from many other valid examples to prove your point vis a vis an actor being thrown a bone. Unfortunately, Mr. Frakes is a poor example.
Similarly, Charles Haid is a lot more than just the former actor from Hill Street Blues…
Cartooniverse
What he’s trying to say in his scene is that, like, there’s violence everywhere. It’s even in breakfast cereals, man.