Who do you think the worst or most overrated film director is? I nominate that hack Paul Verhoeven because of the stool like Showgirls he’s responsible for.
Michael Bay represents in one person everything that is wrong with modern blockbusters.
Paul WS Anderson represents in one person everything that is wrong with modern hollywood science fiction.
Joel Schumacher really sucks.
I want to NOT nominate Ed Wood. He transcended bad.
Ivan Reitman and Chris Columbus. Competent directors who bring absolutely nothing to a project. Their sole function is to bring the script in on time and under budget. They’re incapable of improving a weak script or making a great script better.
But probably the king of big bad directors is George Lucas. What kind of career would he have had if “Star Wars” didn’t hit the way it did, and no sequels followed?
Vincent Gallo has to be on this list.
Well, this thing is going to get heated really fast…
I remember asking the SDMB for the name of a director and got my answer in a minute (typical SDMB efficiency).
I only remembered William “One Shot” Beaudine for this great quote.
Someone in the “front office” came to the director to complain that a film was running behind schedule. Mr Beaudine replied “You mean someone is actually waiting to see this?”
He may not have been a great director, but at least he had no exaggerated ego problems.
Uwe Boll. What an asshole.
Well, let’s remember that Ivan Reitman is responsible for Old School and Animal House. His best work has been as a relatively hands-on producer and has produced some classics. He doesn’t really identify himself as an uber-director and its probably unfair to label him as a bad director when that’s not really his forte.
Well, American Graffiti didn’t exactly suck. Maybe if Star Wars had flopped maybe he’d have not gotten so lazy and self-important. If he were forced to be a director with a studio and producer with authority over him perhaps he’d have been better than he was in the newer trilogy.
David Lynch. His close-ups on inanimate objects, the voiceovers, the “weird for the sake of being weird” shots and touches… just dreck. The Elephant Man is about the only movie of his I’ve ever been able to sit through without fidgeting mercilessly, and then it was only because of the brilliant performances.
Another nomination for George Lucas. I didn’t realize just how bad he was until I saw Hayden Christensen in other movies and realized “Hey, the kid’s not a bad actor!”, then watched the extras on the DVD when George was telling him to “Emote more! Emote!” in a scene that would have been much better understated than "Ming the Merciless"ly hammed up like Lucas was going for.
I had exactly the same realization watching Natalie Portman in Garden State: “Hey, she’s really good! Man, Lucas SUCKS.”
Too easy - Steven Soderbergh. I will never understand what deal this lightweight made with the devil to get the kind of acclaim he does (let alone Best Director Oscar). None of his movies have risen above the level of a competent Law and Order episode (with a bigger budget), and some of them are downright awful - I dare you to enjoy *anything * about “The Limey”. The exception being “Gray’s Anatomy” which is only remarkable because Spalding Gray is so amazing (even still it’s the worst of the three monologue movies).
Are we talking absolute worst director, or most overrated?
'cause for worst, there are all these straight-to-vid thing, plus Conan the Waitress.
For overrated, there’s Alfred Hitchcock.
Vincent Gallo. I’ve not seen his “Brown Bunny,” but apparently it was so bad it gave Roger Ebert cancer.
Wow, just wow. I mean he’s not the second coming or anything but Ocean’s Eleven alone gets him a free pass in this thread.
I’ll second Joel Schumacher. There are lots of bad directors out there, but Schumacher is particularly offensive to me because he’s a terrible director who is consistently given interesting source material that he wastes no time in mucking up. “Flatliners” had an interesting premise, and could have been a great movie – until Schumacher got his hands on it. Ditto “Falling Down.” And “Batman and Robin.” And “8 MM.” And “A Time to Kill.” And even “Phantom of the Opera.” All interesting source material utterly ruined by this terrible man.
I know I shouldn’t laugh at this, but ROFLcopter. It was funny.
Hey, that 20-minute blowjob scene was art, man! It was a metaphor for life and disillusionment! You just don’t get it!
In other words, I second that asshole Gallo.
Not only funny but partially accurate as a description of the altercation between Gallo and Ebert after the movie was released. From the imdb:
In particular, Roger Ebert called the film “the worst in the history of Cannes” to which Vincent Gallo responded that Ebert was a “fat pig with the physique of a slave trader”. Ebert paraphrased a remark of Winston Churchill and responded that “although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of ‘Brown Bunny’”. Gallo then put a “hex” on Ebert’s colon, to which Ebert responded that “even my colonoscopy was more entertaining than his film”.
Verhoeven, right off the bat. Classic. 
Verhoeven is sort of hit or miss for me. His films are either brilliant (Soldier of Orange, Starship Troopers, Robocop), or really bad (indeed, Showgirls).
It’s hard to name a director who consistently makes bad movies, I think. I mean, yeah, Lucas is a lazy slob whose carreer rides on the initial succes of Star Wars - but SW was brilliant in its genre. So he’s got that going for him.
I’m struggling to find a mainstream director that has made no decent movie to speak of. Maybe you don’t get tot hat level if all you make is crap.