Director Jail

What is it? Am I in it? How do I get out of it?

I’m ill-equipped to speak of industries other than Hollywood. Even though I’ve made numerous ads for a few Fortune 500 companies, I’ve dedicated, for better or worse, my entire life to an industry named after a place I utterly and wholeheartedly despise at times.

Hollywood.

As everybody knows, Hollywood is a fear-driven business. Just like most businesses. But what’s surprising about Hollywood, in comparison to, say, the car industry, is that risk is historically what makes our customers show up.

A simple analogy: if you’re a carmaker, it is probably not a good idea to release a car with only one wheel and no brakes. Not many people would buy that car. It feels unsafe. But in Hollywood, that kind of thinking can sometimes become the moneymaker of the decade.

This year I decided to read all the good biographies of the great filmmakers. I’ve plowed through Lumet, Kubrick, and Nichols, and I’m currently halfway through the remarkable conversational biography about Robert Altman. I stumbled upon a great quote last night:

“In Hollywood, if you make a big movie and it flops, it’s not your fault. But if you make a small movie, take a big swing, and it flops, it’s your fault, and the phones suddenly stop ringing.”

What he means by “big swing,” and what Hollywood usually admires as a “big swing,” is stuff like his M.A.S.H or Nashville. Movies that weren’t set up to be a success, yet somehow were, to everybody’s surprise. However, these movies could just as easily have failed miserably. Just like most of Altman’s other movies.

And so many other movies…

“Director Jail,” or “Movie Jail,” is a term coined to describe what happens when a director, (because it’s always the director’s fault) doesn’t perform well critically, financially, or, god forbid - both.

(Altman was locked up behind bars in the ’80s and couldn’t get a movie off the ground for a long time. This was after Popeye)

The stroke of a “hit” is rarely attributed to master filmmakers, or good movies for that matter. A “hit” is more often attributed to the opposite, while a “flop” can often be a masterpiece, just without recognition, and is always the artist fault.

That sentence can be helpful to read a few times. Because no, it doesn’t make much sense.

(A “flop” can of course also just be a stinker, but that’s beside the point.)

As everybody knows, and as I’ve written about before, movies that were once considered trash but are now considered masterpieces are countless. Yet the sentence for a director who “flops,” masterpiece or not, can be catastrophic.

We all know about the “lucky” directors thrown into “director jail.” The directors who already come with a bag of great movies and money, and then make a flop and never get to direct again. I suppose Todd Phillips was recently admitted behind bars after Joker 2, and the Cats director, Tom Hooper, has not returned after he forced Judi Dench into a furry CGI suit, even though both of these guys made the studios mountains of cash and directed their actors to win Oscars and reach immense fame.

I’m not too worried about Tom Hooper or Todd Phillips to be frank with you.

Todd lives in a $33 million mansion.

This story is more about some of the directors who were thrown into the gulag unjustly. And there are a few.

I recognize that there are three departments in movie jail.

Let’s start with Tony Kaye.

(For the few who know - just sit down and relax. I have a point.)

I think we can all agree that American History X is one of the top films of the ’90s. I think everybody in the industry also knows that Tony Kaye is hard to work with. In fact, so much so that when Edward Norton took over the edit, Tony Kaye sued him, the studio, and the DGA. (He lost)

The difficult part of this story was that Norton, a mega-star, wanted more screen time. Tony Kaye’s director’s cut was 95 minutes sharp, delivered on time and on budget, and tested really well. But Norton insisted that he was not portrayed ‘likable’ enough (ehhh, bro you a Nazi tho..), and the studio gave in. Kaye disowned the film, describing the released version, which was 24 minutes longer than his own cut, as a “total abuse of creativity” and “crammed with shots of everyone crying in each other’s arms.”

Not the film he wanted to make. So Tony was thrown into jail. Too hard to work with.

Tony later apologized for his behavior and took full responsibility for his actions, but it didn’t help. Tony basically never got to direct another film, and that’s our loss, really.

Another version of jail is when a new filmmaker makes something critics and audiences like, but just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, for some reason, gets the blame.

Barry Jenkins is one of those guys. Or was.

Barry’s first film is not Moonlight. Eight years before it won Best Picture at the Oscars (what a night..) he made a film called Medicine for Melancholy. It was released 2008, and as we all know, 2008 was a pretty shitty year.

Unfortunately, that caused him to remain a “promise,” but too risky and too small. In other words, there was no real proof yet that he was a profitable director.

Following Medicine for Melancholy, Barry wrote numerous bigger scripts, but nothing stuck with the studios. He picked up a job as a carpenter (nothing wrong with that) and was considered more or less a one-shot filmmaker.

Until, well, Moonlight.

(Barry is a success story. Most of these directors never get to make another film and stay carpenters. And the reason I’m not mentioning those guys is that you wouldn’t know them.)

The third example is the big-swing director.

This is personally my favorite type of director, and the one I think is most unjustly thrown into jail. And there are plenty of them in there.

I think Damien Chazelle was unfairly locked up behind bars after Babylon. Let’s be honest: Babylon is a vastly better film than most films. Tomas Alfredson after The Snowman - we all know he’s a master, and that that cut isn’t his. Martin Brest after Gigli (just Google it) Terry Gilliam after The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - one heck of a save after Heath Ledger died…

But recently, the harshest punishment seems to have gone to David Robert Mitchell for some reason.

I consider It Follows a masterpiece. I think most cinephiles do. His follow-up, Under the Silver Lake, is not a perfect film, but it’s at least a film. It’s not made for a streamer, nor for the mass audience, but it’s not bad. Not at all. It’s complex and hard to understand, but not a stinker. But in classic A24 manner, they killed it after mixed reviews in Cannes, barely releasing it.

It grossed 50k at the box office.

Let’s never work with that shitty director again!

This kind of thinking I find frustrating and hard to wrap my head around, logically, becouse we all recognize that Mitchell is one of our finest young auteurs working today. He took a swing after a huge hit (It Follows), and it didn’t land. So what? It was a small film…

Why the harsh sentence?

I get that directors like Josh Trank (Chronicle) or Patty Jenkins (Monster) are considered risky to work with after they are given a few big studio shots following their first hit, but what’s wrong with following up a hit with a personal, small film?

A THR report examines “director’s jail” and how, in an industry obsessed with the bottom line, it has become far too easy for a filmmaker to land in it.

“Now, new talent must deliver multiple successful projects in a row, sans slip-ups, before being afforded the grace (albeit only so much) to fail at the studio level,” says a top manager.

This is not great. And it’s terrible for an industry that is historically built on big, risky creative swings.

And the numbers are telling.

65% of first-time directors never make a second one. In that same analysis, only 8.6% of directors made more than five features. And if you’re a woman, or not white, those numbers are even more depressing.

In other words, the first film is not what’s hard. Statistically, the second one is near impossible. And if any of those are considered flops, then you’re in anomaly territory.

So how can this change?

I think the big agencies and managers bear most of the responsibility. They need to be the ones not only selling the flavor of the month - they need to do a better job selling “flop directors” they know can deliver.

Unfortunately, I’ve experienced this firsthand.

My first film was definitely not considered a hit. By no means. Prior to Mother, Couch, I was returning calls from the biggest studios and producers in the industry. All of this was the work of my great new agents and managers.

Let’s just say this: they are having a considerably harder time getting those people to agree to meet me post-release. It’s of course not their fault, and they are doing the legwork necessary, but what few of the studios recognize is the circumstance in which my movie was released.

It’s easy to forget, but the reason none of my actors could do any press or attend a single premiere was because of the longest strike in SAG history. They weren’t even allowed to talk about my movie. Good luck selling tickets then…

This was very much like Barry Jenkins in 2008. Bad timing.

Out of 50 films for sale the year Mother, Couch premiered at TIFF, only 12 sold. We were one of them. The other 40… I don’t know what happened to those.

I’m not saying this to shade anybody working hard to make my second film. I’m simply stating the obvious: the hard part of gaining recognition as a director is the work you do after a miss. That’s where the real work begins. And that’s more true than ever as fewer films are made, and far fewer big swings are taken.

Hollywood advertises itself as respecting artists, but in reality it wants artists who never miss. And that’s never happened. The beautiful thing about artists is that they take swings based on their gut, not the bottom line. That’s why we all love them and are fascinated by them. That’s why sometimes we get Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Green Hornet from the same artist. And that’s great.

That’s a well-balanced and beautiful world I like to live in.

What Hollywood doesn’t realize is that if it eliminates support for big swings and risky creative endeavors, only boring and soulless stories will be recognized, and that’s the end of its own industry.

That’s what in folklore they call ouroboros: a snake that eats its own tail.

So to my fellow big-swingers: Keep fucking swinging.