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Directors: cunts and GBOLs

Started by Twit 2, April 02, 2019, 06:06:29 PM

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Lost Oliver

Fassbinder was a massive cunt. An MC if you will. Incredible flims though.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: Dusty Substance on April 03, 2019, 04:25:10 AM
David O Russell can't go unmentioned for going berzerk at Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SG43wa7Alo. Even if she is being a difficult actor that's surely no reason to completely over-react the way he did (Having just watched for the first time in years it never occurred to me how much he sounds like On Cinema Tim Heidecker going into a rage).



Bloody Hell. You've got to admire yer woman Tomlin's restraint, there. As other commenters on that vid have said the funniest bit of that video is Russel walking off and ranting, then walking back on set through the prop door.

Other Cunt directors: Sam Peckinpah and the pretentious Spanish bloke who made that Magic Mountain film for having real, live animals killed on set.

garbed_attic

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on April 03, 2019, 08:40:43 AM
and the pretentious Spanish bloke who made that Magic Mountain film for having real, live animals killed on set.

and claiming to have actually raped a schizophrenic woman himself in El Topo

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: gout_pony on April 02, 2019, 11:31:09 PM
And the animal abuse stretches much further than the rats in Nosferatu

I was going to post about that, his Nosferatu is one of my favourite horror movies but is heavily marred by the fact that hundreds of rats died in making it.

Jerzy Bondov

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on April 03, 2019, 08:40:43 AM
Bloody Hell. You've got to admire yer woman Tomlin's restraint, there. As other commenters on that vid have said the funniest bit of that video is Russel walking off and ranting, then walking back on set through the prop door.
I love this old clip of Michael Showalter and Paul Rudd reenacting it.

Terry Gilliam - cunt. Just seems like a bit of a cunt and I think he'd freely admit to it.
Terry Jones - GBOL. Don't actually know this for sure but come on.
Hayao Miyazaki - cunt. Look at the extras to From Up on Poppy Hill where his son Goro shows him the film and he basically says it's shite.
Rob Reiner - GBOL. Again I don't know if this is true but he seems nice.

Blumf

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on April 03, 2019, 08:40:43 AM
the pretentious Spanish bloke who made that Magic Mountain film for having real, live animals killed on set.

How's about John Waters? Pretty sure the chicken didn't consent.

Fritz Lang needs a mention. Chucking Peter Lorre down some stairs, being John Landis levels of not arsed with stunt work (e.g. setting fire to Brigitte Helm), leaving hundreds of kids stuck in freezing water for days of shooting. There's plenty more, but I can't remember most of it.

buzby

Quote from: Dusty Substance on April 03, 2019, 04:25:10 AM
David O Russell can't go unmentioned for going berzerk at Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SG43wa7Alo. Even if she is being a difficult actor that's surely no reason to completely over-react the way he did (Having just watched for the first time in years it never occurred to me how much he sounds like On Cinema Tim Heidecker going into a rage).
Russell has been a cunt to the actors and crew on virtually every film he's worked on. Clooney tried to strangle him in a fight while making Three Kings over his treatment of the extras and crew, Christian Bale of all people told him to stop being an asshole after repeatedly making Amy Adams cry on the American Hustle set, and he had viscious slanging matches with Jennifer Lawrence while shooting Joy.

Vincent Gallo - cunt. Coerced Chloe Sevigny into giving him an on-camera blowjob in The Brown Bunny (which subsequently damaged her career). wished cancer on Roger Ebert, ultra right wing conservative and anti-feminist.

Bryan Singer - need I say more?

Ant Farm Keyboard

#37
Quote from: Sin Agog on April 02, 2019, 08:23:16 PM
I know it's the current line to offload nothing but hate on John Landis for that Twilight Zone incident, but as a personality he's so effervescent and loveable.  I guess those kind of tragedies are what happens when you let a stunt man become a director, but he clearly was affected by the incident, and I just can't cunt-stamp someone with his level of ebullience.  Probably a bad habit anyway, as if the quirks of fate should be able to determine whether someone's the lowest of the low or a great bunch of lads.  People aren't really like that in reality.

John Landis was even more of a prick after the catastrophe.

He showed up drunk and unannounced at Vic Morrow's funeral to claim that Morrow had told him that he regarded his performance in the segment as the highlight of his career.

http://www.jodavidsmeyer.com/combat/personnel/Peabodys_Place-4.html

He had a party to celebrate the anniversary of the acquittal and he invited the jurors to a private screening of "Coming to America."

Quote from: Glebe on April 02, 2019, 09:01:44 PM
Just watched the extended An Unexpected Journey again the other day, actually. Wasn't Spielberg apparently quite negligent in his use of life snakes on the set of Raiders, apparently?

One of Kubrick's daughters was on set and protested about the way they handled snakes. That was one incident, along with the situation during the shooting of Heaven's Gate, which resulted in monitors from American Humane being brought on sets to supervise scenes with animals.

Talking of pricks, Michael Cimino was quite the guy. He had a street set built on his precise blueprints for Heaven's Gate. When it was done, he realized that the street is too narrow for the camera and that it should be twice as large. So he had the two sides torn down. The crew told him that they could keep one side of the street, but he insisted on both sides to be torn down.
Christopher Lambert described him pretty well. Cimino was hugely talented, maybe the most talented of the entire Scorsese, Coppola, etc. generation. He was an architect, a painter, a writer and a director. On the set, he was better than everybody, on every area. So, he wanted to supervise everything, which can't work for a film, and it made him paranoid.

Quote from: Blumf on April 03, 2019, 10:23:01 AM
Fritz Lang needs a mention. Chucking Peter Lorre down some stairs, being John Landis levels of not arsed with stunt work (e.g. setting fire to Brigitte Helm), leaving hundreds of kids stuck in freezing water for days of shooting. There's plenty more, but I can't remember most of it.

Being a dick to Joan Bennett. Denying that he had an affair with German critic Lotte Eisner, because "there's only one thing you can do with a hunchback, it's rubbing her hunch for good luck". Or the shady story of his first marriage that reportedly resulted in an "accidental suicide" of his wife, after the studio bribed the cops.

Sebastian Cobb

Altman seems like a GBOL, I don't think he upset anyone other than the suits in the studios and maybe Warren Beatty.

Blinder Data

Quote from: buzby on April 03, 2019, 10:31:07 AM
Vincent Gallo - cunt. Coerced Chloe Sevigny into giving him an on-camera blowjob in The Brown Bunny (which subsequently damaged her career). wished cancer on Roger Ebert, ultra right wing conservative and anti-feminist.

I don't doubt his other distasteful actions, but Wiki suggests Sevigny is pretty sanguine about that scene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brown_Bunny#Sevigny's_response

Jerzy Bondov

#40
Finding GBOLs is harder than finding cunts. You can Google 'worst directors to work with' and get lists of cunts, but if you Google 'best directors to work with' or 'nicest directors' you get... the same lists of cunts.

Supposedly Woody Allen is easy to work with. Not the same as being a GBOL though is it? I found a list of nice directors which included John Ford, but John Ford punched Peter Fonda in the face.

Danny Boyle - GBOL. Turned down a knighthood, automatic GBOL.

Danny DeVito - absolute GBOL. Hasn't directed for a while mind.

Keanu Reeves - only directed one film but well known as a GBOL.

Bad Ambassador

David Cronenberg. Lovely fella, apparently. Mel Brooks speaks very highly of him.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on April 03, 2019, 11:36:48 AM

Danny Boyle - GBOL. Turned down a knighthood, automatic GBOL.

He got a bit of stick for not being particularly charitable towards the Indian lads in Slumdog Millionaire I think

buzby

Quote from: Blinder Data on April 03, 2019, 11:30:25 AM
I don't doubt his other distasteful actions, but Wiki suggests Sevigny is pretty sanguine about that scene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brown_Bunny#Sevigny's_response
She's been a little less sanguine about the experince of working with Gallo in more recent interviews than those linked to in the Wiki article
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/14/chloe-sevigny-now-total-disdain-directors
Her feelings about it seem to have vacillated a few times in the years since though. Gallo apparently also spent an entire day shooting takes of the scene where he snogs Cheryl Tiegs in the film too.

Shit Good Nose

Lynne Ramsay, Andrea Arnold and Joanna Hogg (all British - yay us) all have reps for being lovely GBOLs.  Despite driving people up the wall with his endless filming and tendency to drop actors' entire performances, Terrence Malick is also supposed to be a humble GBOL.  But that one's not so surprising given his quiet and mild mannered rep and apparent self deprecation.

But, I think generally, being a cunt comes with director territory - egotism and megalomania are part of the job description.

Ant Farm Keyboard

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 03, 2019, 11:25:24 AM
Altman seems like a GBOL, I don't think he upset anyone other than the suits in the studios and maybe Warren Beatty.

And Louise Fletcher. He based a character from Nashville on her, as she had deaf-mute parents, then gave the part to Lily Tomlin.

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on April 03, 2019, 11:36:48 AMSupposedly Woody Allen is easy to work with. Not the same as being a GBOL though is it? I found a list of nice directors which included John Ford, but John Ford punched Peter Fonda in the face.

Woody Allen tends to get the best out of his actors, which is why many people were happy to work with him, as it could have got them an easy nomination for a few trophies.
During the heydays of McCarthyism, Cecil B. DeMille and a few other conservatives tried to depose Joseph L. Mankiewicz as the head of the DGA because they claimed he didn't do enough to protect films from communist ideas. At one point in the meeting they had summoned, DeMille even read the list of a few "leftists" in the SDG (now the DGA), like Billy Wilder or William Wyler, in a mock German accent to emphasize the fact that they were all Jewish (ironically, DeMille was half-Jewish, which he tried his best to hide). At this moment, John Ford, who was always silent in the meetings and was the most revered guy there, asked to speak:

"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns. I don't think there's anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille — and he certainly knows how to give it to them.... But I don't like you, C.B. I don't like what you stand for and I don't like what you've been saying here tonight."

It killed the attempted coup. But Ford, on the next day, wrote DeMille a letter praising him for being "a very great gentleman", and phoned him to say that his opponents were a "goddamn pack of rats."

greenman

I suspect a pleasant atmosphere on set is part of why Allen's been able to carry on getting big names involved down the years. I do wonder though whether that hasn't been a negative for a lot of his films with nobody really pushing each other that hard, arguably Blue Jasmine standing out was the result of Blanchet and Allen being more in conflict pushing in different directions.

As well as his sister being sold into Geishadom at a young age by his father Mizoguchi is sposed to have spent a lot of time in brothels in his younth and indeed his wife ended up in an asylum so again perhaps the feminist bent of his films could be viewed as based rather on guilt?

Ignatius_S

From an old thread:

Quote from: Ignatius_S on July 25, 2014, 12:34:31 PM....This is a bit of an extreme example, but before Tora! Tora! Tora! went into production, 20th Century Fox should have known that there was going to be problems working with Akira Kurosawa – his vision was very different to theirs and he was a perfectionist, which wasn't going to be happy combination, but his behaviour (such as point blank refusing to attend studio meetings because he hated the script and wanting expensive sets built but continually declining to explain how they would be used) suggested that there were going to be problems and that his actions would likely be erratic on set... plus, the studio have screwed him over in terms of his contract.  And problems during production, there were.  On the first day, he stormed off set because wallpaper had wrinkles, refused to shoot any footage and things got worse from there Amongst other things, he insisted that his crew stand to attention and give him military salutes; fired his assistant directors; took them back and then stormed off-set when the main assistant director refused to beat the other ADs because they had supposedly done something wrong; ordered sets destroyed and then rebuilt.
https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=39269.660

Quote from: Twit 2 on April 02, 2019, 06:06:29 PM
More evidence of Kubrick cuntery:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/02/how-we-made-a-clockwork-orange-malcolm-mcdowell-stanley-kubrick

Can be added to the long list of stories of him being a cunt on set....

Although I think just about everything McDowell related in that article was previously in the public domain – in fact, I feel McDowell may be downplayed what happened in an article.

I saw one interview – think it was in a Kubrick documentary that was one or two years after his death – and when he talked about the eye clamps, mentioned that if eye drops weren't administered within a certain timeframe, it would cause permanent eye damage. The person doing it in the film wasn't an actor but, IIRC, a doctor – however, they had a line to say, which they were trouble remembering and give the eye drops as well, causing McDowell understandable concern.

Also, when it occurred, they thought that the cornea scratch might have caused permanent damage (to the point of blindness). When McDowell returned to filming with his eye bandaged, Kubrick looked shocked and said how awful it was... but then moved to McDowell's side and visibly brightened, commented that if they shot from that angle, they should be able to film the shots okay. 

Not that it changes what happened, but McDowell has commented (possibly in that documentary) that his feelings towards Kubrick after the film were influenced what he had hoped their relationship, rather than his treatment on the film.

Quote from: Glebe on April 02, 2019, 09:01:44 PM
Cheers for the Grauniad article Twit 2, interesting... I recall a some doco from a few years back in which McDowell opined that Kubrick's lack of humanity held him back from genius status, or words to that effect....

That was certainly in the documentary, I mentioned above. At the end when people were calling Kubrick a genius, McDowell demurred and said something like although Kubrick was a brilliant filmmaker, there's a coldness and lack of humanity that prevents him being a true creative genius.

However, it's worth mentioning that one of the people McDowell cited in comparison to Kubrick John Ford... a director notorious for his abusive and bullying behaviour and at least one actor described him as evil.

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on April 03, 2019, 08:40:43 AM...Other Cunt directors: Sam Peckinpah and the pretentious Spanish bloke who made that Magic Mountain film for having real, live animals killed on set.

You can add Monte Hellman onto that list with Cockfighter.

Quote from: Blumf on April 03, 2019, 10:23:01 AM...Fritz Lang needs a mention. Chucking Peter Lorre down some stairs...

I think that can be overstated – certainly, in Stephen Youngkin's brilliant The Lost One, I didn't get the impression that Lang was unusually cruel in what he put Lorre through.

Although I did find it funny, reading that one of the  Mr Moto films when Lorre was being shot at and when he questioned why wood splinters were flying in the air, he was told live ammo was being used as this was cheaper than blanks, was more shocking for me.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Ignatius_S on April 03, 2019, 01:47:00 PM
Although I did find it funny, reading that one of the  Mr Moto films when Lorre was being shot at and when he questioned why wood splinters were flying in the air, he was told live ammo was being used as this was cheaper than blanks, was more shocking for me.

Fairly common practice in the early days of film (Lang used live ammo in a lot of his films), and continued right up to the 70s - most of the Italian poliziotteschi films of the 60s and 70s at least partially used live ammo.  It's still used on occasion now (Act of Valour famously had real active duty navy seals using live ammo in several scenes, which prompted one of them to say in an interview that they didn't even use live ammo in training) albeit rarely.

Jerzy Bondov

Good shout on Kurosawa, Ignatius_S, he supposedly had real arrows fired at Toshiro Mifune because he didn't look scared enough. Could have gone a bit wrong.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on April 03, 2019, 01:57:32 PM
Fairly common practice in the early days of film (Lang used live ammo in a lot of his films)...

Lorre was very used to filming gunplay and had done so in different companies – but having live ammunition fired in his general direction was a newer experience. When Lorre and another actor make off in a boat, bullets were fired into the water around the boat (but as splinters flew in the air, it's reasonable to infer that the boat they were in was hit to some extent).

The Moto films were immensely profitable – although tight budget helped, they were incredibly popular with the public largely because of Lorre's performance.

For a good proportion of the action scenes in those films, a stuntman was used in Lorre's place, so they wanted to protect the golden goose to an extent. Yet, during an action scene with Lorre, they were happy to put him at genuine risk.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on April 03, 2019, 02:40:13 PM
Good shout on Kurosawa, Ignatius_S, he supposedly had real arrows fired at Toshiro Mifune because he didn't look scared enough. Could have gone a bit wrong.

Never knew that - as you say, it could have gone wrong... he could have looked too scared.

rasta-spouse

Quote from: grassbath on April 02, 2019, 11:40:26 PM
Cunt - Lars Von Trier. You can tell he's a cunt just by the kind of films he makes, let alone all the other stuff.

See also: Michael Haneke, Gaspar Noe.

There's definite evidence on Trier being a bellend. But none as far as I know on Haneke and Noe, it's unfair to put them in the c-box because they make distasteful, trangressive cinema.

St_Eddie

#53
Quote from: Dusty Substance on April 03, 2019, 04:25:10 AM
It seems that the more blood and gore filled the film, the nicer the director (Peter Jackson, as mentioned, and Wes Craven always seemed like a very nice man).

This hold true, psychologically speaking.  It's generally the nicest artists who use their respective medium as a means to unleash all of their personal demons and anger in a no holds barred fury, as opposed to taking it out on people in real-life.

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard actors or actresses talking about working with a well known horror director and saying "it was so surprising.  I was expecting to meet an incredibly scary person but he was absolutely lovely, really sweet and kind".  Anyone in the horror community is likely to already know this, so it can become a bit irksome to hear someone expressing shock at the concept that horrific art does not equate to being the work of a horrific personality.

Sebastian Cobb

That's a point, I once got really stoned and went to see Candyman without realising it had a Q&A with Bernard Rose and he seemed alright in that, still caught me right off guard and I was well relieved when the lights dimmed. He could've been an arsehole on set for all I know though.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: rasta-spouse on April 03, 2019, 03:27:40 PM
it's unfair to put them in the c-box because they make distasteful, trangressive cinema.

Indeed - Jorg Buttgereit seems to be a decent sort and, aside from the subjects themselves he deals with, I haven't heard anything about him being a cunt.  I've also read an awful lot from people (both audients and those that have worked with him) saying what a thoroughly nice bloke Fred Vogel is and are surprised that he makes the films he makes, as there's nothing about him or in his childhood that would logically result in the sickness he puts on screen.

(EDIT addendum - kind of repeats the above)


Haneke's another humble mild-mannered intellectual type isn't he?


greenman

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 03, 2019, 03:34:27 PM
This hold true, psychologically speaking.  It's generally the nicest people who use their respective medium of art as a means to unleash all of their personal demons and anger in a no holds barred fury, as opposed to taking it out on people in real-life.

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard actors or actresses talking about working with a well known horror director and saying "it was so surprising.  I was expecting to meet an incredibly scary person but he was absolutely lovely, really sweet and kind".  Anyone in the horror community is likely to already know this, so it can become a bit irksome to hear someone expressing shock at the concept that horrific art does not equate to being the work of a horrific personality.

Again I suspect in a lot of genre cinema you have directors with more of a sense of fun who don't believe their work justifies harsh treatment of others, as ambition increases the potential for cuntish behaviour probably does as well as people view it as justified give their view of their works importance.

St_Eddie

Quote from: greenman on April 03, 2019, 03:45:40 PM
Again I suspect in a lot of genre cinema you have directors with more of a sense of fun who don't believe their work justifies harsh treatment of others, as ambition increases the potential for cuntish behaviour probably does as well as people view it as justified give their view of their works importance.

I don't really agree with this.  It implies that horror directors don't view their work as being important; that they consider horror to be rather frivolous.  I don't think that's the case at all.

rasta-spouse

Quote from: Ant Farm Keyboard on April 03, 2019, 12:42:54 PM
Woody Allen tends to get the best out of his actors, which is why many people were happy to work with him,

From all the anecdotes about Allen on set I've heard I get the feeling he doesn't push or give direction. Perhaps one of the reasons his last 20 or so years of work have been quite nondescript.

The funniest Allen-directing anecdote was from one of the League of Gentleman guys on Herring's Podcast.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 03, 2019, 03:50:31 PM
I don't think that's the case at all.

Agreed.  Though I'm not really into horror, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Mario Bava, Dario Argento etc are clearly all working on higher plains than on the surface of their films.  I mean if you listen to Craven's commentary for Last House On the Left (which, let's face it, is objectively a pretty piss-poor film) he goes over his influences and the imagery he uses in great detail.  The fact that it's a loose interpretation of Bergman's Virgin Spring says a lot.