At what point are you considered a bad director?

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FilmBoy77

Veteran
i was looking at Antoine Fuqua (directed Training Day) because i liked the movie Training Day, but i couldnt help but notice almost everything else he has directed has flopped commercially...yet he has two or three more films in production with big stars attached (Mel Gibson and another film with Mark Walberg)....

so i was wondering does the fact that if a majority of your movies dont do good in the box office make you a bad director? how does a director whose movie flops able to get steady work with big names attached? i always thought to an extent you were only as good as your last hit (or at least your last few hits)?
 
It would make you a commercially unsuccessful director. But it only takes one to turn that around.

I'm not familiar with his other pieces, so this is speculation... but his movies may not have been "flops" per se. They still may have had a profit. Either because of their low budget, or a niche market that they are successful in. Success in video, but not theatre. I don't know.

Did all of his other movies fail to make a profit? That is a flop to me. The other version of a flop is if you have a 200 million dollar budget and barely make a profit. But if you spent 5 million and turned around 35 million, that is quite a good turnaround.

Jason
 
If you have one great movie, you will always have work. For the rest of your life. It may not always be great work, but you will get work. If any of your actors have ever received an academy award (or even a nomination), big time actors will want to work with you cause they'll believe that you can coax an academy-winning performance out of them.
 
Ramjet1979 said:
Did all of his other movies fail to make a profit? That is a flop to me.
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nope they flopped. he did these movies:

Replacement Killers - production budget was $30million and grossed $18million
Bait (Jaime Foxx)- production budget was $35million and grossed $15million
Tears of the Sun (Bruce Willis)- $70million and grossed $43million
King Arthur (Clive Owen)- $90million and grossed $51million

Training Day did about $30million in profits, but his losses are roughly about $102million if you combined all of those movies.

it just seemed crazy that he still has steady work though. if a movie doesnt do good commercially does it not impact the director really? or does it just affect him if he was the one who wrote it and directed it?
 
But you still have to factor in overseas grosses, and video rentals and sales. One of those places may be where the money is being made.

Granted, that isn't a very good track record at the box office. Maybe he's related to somebody :)

Jason
 
Check out some movie sites like chud.com and do a search on the term "director jail." It refers to the punishment the industry doles out on directors who helm a flop. Antoine Fuqua did some time in director jail after 'Tears of the Sun" and "King Arthur." On the show 'Dinner for Five' with Jon Favreau they did a segment on 'director jail' and how it is a real thing. You direct a flop and you get punished..new projects drop you as the director, no one wants you attached to a project in development, etc. It's the industry giving you a 'time out' for bad behavior..
 
so many factors contribute to a film's commercial success. I have always believed that the biggest factors of hollywood movies box office figures are: distribution, marketing and starpower. of which the director is only responsible one of them (at best). how can they put the full blame on the director?
 
Jason Ramsey said:
It would make you a commercially unsuccessful director. But it only takes one to turn that around.



Jason
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What has Spike Lee ever directed that was commercially viable? The guy keeps getting kudos and money and hasn't ever really done anything worth watching.
 
maverickstunts said:
What has Spike Lee ever directed that was commercially viable? The guy keeps getting kudos and money and hasn't ever really done anything worth watching.
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Inside Man had a budget of $45 million and made $88 million domestic and $183 million overseas. She's Gotta Have It was made with $175,000 and made $7 million. Sounds pretty sucessful to me. Not a particular fan of Spike Lee but I did enjoyed Bamboozled as a complex and interesting parody.
 
maverickstunts said:
What has Spike Lee ever directed that was commercially viable? The guy keeps getting kudos and money and hasn't ever really done anything worth watching.
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this was true up until The Inside Man (which I thought was his best movie). But I agree, before that, he'd done nothing since his first three films. I thought Crooklyn was a disaster. That's when I wrote him off.
 
c.g._eads said:
this was true up until The Inside Man (which I thought was his best movie). But I agree, before that, he'd done nothing since his first three films. I thought Crooklyn was a disaster. That's when I wrote him off.
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I gotta agree. I really liked The Inside Man. It didn't feel like a Spike Lee movie.
 
The box office (i.e. Theatre) is really about marketing for the most part. Most of the "flop" movies will make way more money in the other "windows", such as Video Rental, Pay-TV, Broadcast TV, Foreign Distribution, etc. Some people don't like him cause he shouts alot but Dov S-S Simens 2-day film school fills in a lot of holes IMO. I've been to one of the 2-day classes and have watched the 8 disk DVD set. So while a film may not do great in the box office, that is not what makes or breaks. The movie may make tons more in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th windows etc. As long as the end result is profit, not much else matters.
 
I think you become a bad director when you take three of your movies that made you who you are, remaster them and rerelease them to no end, and then create 3 more movies that are sub-par and do not measure up to the first series at all. You ruined the series George, you ruined it.

Seriously though, I'm not sure you can classify being a director as bad or good. There's a certain style that each person has that whether or not they are successful different people will find they are good or bad. You can look at it in terms of money, but that's not what it's really about, is it?
 
yeah i have no clue how some directors keep making movies. maybe they have good connections, or they're really good at pitching ideas, or they're always on time and on budget, or the actors love them, or they're competent but never had a great script. but yeah i think there's a big difference between a bad director and a director who doesn't make profitable movies.
 
yeah i think you're right but i notice when the average person watches a movie - and say it was directed by steven spielberg - and it flops or is not really good, people are quick to say "damn that last steven spielberg movie sucked...i wonder what he was thinking when he came up with it" or "damn that spielberg movie had a dumb ending" and he may not have even wrote it.

it just seems like the director takes a majority of the blame. this guy antoine fuqua may be a good director in terms of how he works and budget, etc but i guess the first thing that comes to mind if i were a producer looking to hire him, is how much the projects he's directed has made in terms of ROI.
 
if you're talking to me then i am also referring to people's perception outside of the filmmaking business that have no idea a director is not always the writer, etc. believe it or not most people outside film dont have a clue of what a good/bad director is. half of them think the director is the guy that holds the camera, lol.
 
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