By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
The Male Director Challenge: 2003
2003 is the thinnest year for new directors with movies that hit the Top 50 at the domestic box office in this year-by-year survey so far. Only five newcomers to this level.
#18 Grosser – S.W.A.T. – Clark Johnson – Actor-turned-director came to this film with a strong TV resume and earned his way to a movie shot.
#28 – The Cat In The Hat – Bo Welch – One of the greatest production designers in the history of the business gets a shot behind the camera on a very stylish family movie.
#31 Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde – Charles Herman-Wurmfeld – A hot indie director coming off of Kissing Jessica Stein got the shot with this sequel… the sequel shot back.
#37 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Marcus Nispel – This reboot from Michael Bay’s production company was handled by a friend with a massive history of big commercials.
#50 – Gothika – Mathieu Kassovitz – Very experienced French director coming off of the massive international hit The Crimson Rivers, who also happened to have some U.S. heat as an actor at the time off of Amélie. Joel Silver rolled the dice with him.
Studio experienced directors making films in the Top 50 in 2003 were: Jackson, Verbinski, Wachowskis, Shadyac, Singer, Favreau, Mostow, Wachowskis, Shankman, Bay, Levy, Segal, Lee, Singleton, Meyers, Ross, Rodriguez, Zwick, Waters, Wayans, Gray, Steers, Dylan, Carr, Johnson, McG, Minghella, Weir, Eastwood, Ronnie Yu, Linklater, Minkoff, Phillips, Tarantino, Davis, McNally, Burton, Norrington, deBont, Newell, Dobkin, Zwigoff, Curtis.
while it’s true that i probably should have read all the segments of this thing before i smoked a bowl, it appears you’re basically listing all these dudes and then doing your darndest to rationalise why they got hired… how is this a thing, i mean as it pertains to the reason for lexi’s tweet, the methodology seems lacking (unless there’s a whole nother part of the ‘study’ yet to come, i’m not sure i understand the point of this exactly)