The site Cracked.com recently wrote about 12 movie moments that were achieved through the tyranny of dictators – uh, DIRECTORS – who would do nearly anything to fulfill their moviemaking vision.
While some of it is surely exaggerated (or muted) there is something both romantic and frightening at the same time. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the majority happened over 30 years ago (aside from David O. Russel’s famous Huckabee’s tantrum). We started to wonder – why did it end? And these are the answers we came up with.
Lawyers
We live in a litigious society where we get up the nerve to sue nearly anyone who we think has wronged us in some way. Sometimes it’s about copyright, a patent, sometimes we have endured actual physical or mental strain or workplace harassment. Thanks to the lawyers of the world, we have become extra careful about the boundaries we can or cannot cross, and we’re sure that even the most successful directors get a stern talking to or attend a workshop to understand the limitation of their power these days.
Contracts have also become extremely bloated, and nothing moves forward unless an actor, director, producer, crewmember or even assistant has signed on a dotted line SOMEWHERE. Perhaps back in the day a film set was run like a carnival, but make no mistake it’s run exactly like the corporation you are working for right now.
Digital Technology
We may have to thank George Lucas for this one. He pioneered all of the digital technology that today does everything from color correct to add CGI to green screens and change actors’ expressions with a touch of a button. While the overall technology is a few years away from really being seamless, many directors are using digital to fix all the things that they used to have to kick, scream and manipulate for.
David Fincher, Steven Spielberg and many more use pre-visualization technology to map out their films – these are literally moving storyboards that create the movie shot by shot. Turns out actors, cinematographers etc. not only have to ‘recreate’ the pre-viz shots in order to complete the movie. And who said painting by numbers was dead?
Medication
Let’s face it – we’re all on some kind of prescription medication (ok, that’s a sweeping statement, but you probably know a few people who are). And boy, these meds do wonders for our personality, from mellowing us out to helping us focus and just being generally more friendly. Back in the old days, there was no pharmaceutical industry like the one we have today, and perhaps that’s reason we don’t as many revolutionary films as we used to.
There’s also ‘natural’ medications, but that’s for another article.
So…
Are there other reasons why we may have possibly seen the end of the abusive, crazy director? Let us know in the comments!
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