By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
The Male Director Challenge: 2001
This is the first year in the survey of 15 years in which there were fewer than 10 first-time studio directors (without animation or true indies) in the Top 50 domestic grossers of the year. Eight is the number of such opportunities in 2001. They were…
#13 Grosser – American Pie 2 – J.B. Rogers – A close associate of The Farrelly Bros and 1st AD on the first American Pie, J.B. actually had two films come out in 2001. He also directed the Farrelly-produced Say It Isn’t So. He has not directed a feature film that has been released theatrically since these two releases.
#21 Grosser – The Others – Alejandro Amenábar – Coming off of the big foreign language hit Open Your Eyes (which Cameron Crowe would remake and release in 2001 as well), Tom Cruise exec-produced this film with his then-wife starring.
#22 Grosser – Legally Blonde – Robert Luketic – I don’t know exactly how this Aussie ended up directing his first studio movie at 27, but it seems to have come from his short, Titsiana Booberini, showing at Sundance, leading to an agent, etc.
#24 Grosser – Cats & Dogs – Lawrence Guterman – A step up from DreamWorks’ then non-specifically named animation division, his Curious George feature fell apart before he got his directing shot with this talking animal comedy.
#31 Grosser – Bridget Jones’s Diary – Sharon Maguire – A lot of Brit TV directing led to this assignment from Working Title, which then turned out to be a big hit in America.
#39 Grosser – The Wedding Planner – Adam Shankman – Shankman had a small acting career going before getting his first feature, as well as working as a choreographer. Was it a relationship with J-Lo or something like that? Seems likely.
#40 Grosser – Behind Enemy Lines – John Moore – Irish director Moore got Fox’s attention with a big-scale SEGA Dreamcast ad.
#42 – The Animal – Luke Greenfield – USC film school short leads directly to Team Sandler and the helm of one of their lower budgeted films.
Studio veterans making movies in the Top 50 domestically in 2001: Columbus, Jackson, Ratner, Sommers, Bay, Soderbergh, Johnston, Burton, Howard, Scott, Cohen, West, Carr, Rodriguez, Scott, Marshall, Crowe, Roth, Carter, Spielberg, Fuqua, Tamahori, Wayans, Oz, Farrellys, Sena, Verbinski, Weisz, Scott, Mann, Luhrmann, Zucker, Helgeland, Fleder, Ted Demme, Anderson, Bartkowiak, Annaud.
Shankman was a dancer and choreographer during the 90s, same time as Lopez was. They definitely moved in the same circles. He also had a short that played at Sundance.