Directors who are great communicators of their medium

[Dark Sexy Dangerous]

I've just finished watching A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995). It's a warm and accessible (3 hr 45 min) introduction to classic American cinema, a lot of which I've passed over completely until now. His brilliance as a teacher is that he not only reminds you of why you feel in love with film but helps you to fall in love with it. Looks straight into your eyes, as if you and he were life-long pals. I'm willing to give anything a shot if Marty says it's worth watching.

At one point he compares the classic Western and gangster genres to jazz, allowing for "endless, increasingly complex, sometimes perverse variations", which I think is a rather marvellous way of looking at those old studio productions, and he seems chock-full of these insights. He's also probably unusual among directors in that he's always generous about sharing the technical aspects of filmmaking. Most seem largely ignorant of (or tight-lipped about) them, or are just less able to articulate them as well as he does. But perhaps this is an outdated perspective now.

I wish we had more of this kind of thing. Which directors do you think compare with Scorsese when it comes to talking about filmmaking or giving a history of their field?

[madhair60]

Kevin Smith obviously

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's a few making-of videos on Youtube about Network and Dog Day Afternoon which feature some archive footage of Sydney Lumet talking about his processes, I could listen to him for hours and am very tempted to try and get my hands on his 1995 book Making Movies.