Are we all B-Movie Directors trying to be Real Directors? [B-Movie vs Real Movie]

F

filmmakerguy

Member
I was looking up B-Movie directors to see what all can be done low budget and I saw a lot of incredibly bad/funny movies. And for years I've seen these and sort of shrugged them off and laughed at some of them and always thought of myself as more of a real director trying to come up. But now I'm starting to think, that's exactly what all those B-Movie directors probably thought when they were all making their schlock.

So I started to think, what makes someone a B-Movie director versus whatever the opposite of that is, I guess a Real Director? What makes something a B-Movie, versus I guess an A-Movie/Real Movie?


Are we all just a bunch of B-Movie directors who don't realize it yet until we do enough movies to look back at our body of work and go, yeah I guess we are B-Movie directors. :undecided

I don't think anyone sets out to make a B-Movie, they want it to do things but a lot of the time I guess that is what it becomes 9 times out of 10.

I saw this interesting list...
http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/...he-bad-the-15-greatest-b-movie-directors.html
 
If I were to put a "letter" to define my work as a director, I think it would be more like "L". Not even close to being "B" rated. The good news, i'm fine with it. I make a living in the industry and have more work than I can manage. For me that's good enough. There comes a time when you have to self reflect, and come to terms with the way it is. Very few people make it as an "A list" director. Not because their body of work is sub-par, but it's next to impossible to get a studio to notice the "new guy" and actually give the new guy a chance to prove themselves. It's all about turning a profit, why would a major studio go with a no name and take a chance when they have other proven names they can go with. I'm not saying it never happens, yes, there are a few that break in the majors, but it's usually because their good and have connections. You've heard, who you know, not what you know? That saying came from Hollywood. With that said, if you have a dream to be an A list director, I would encourage you pursue your dream as long as you can afford to do so. Hopefully you get noticed and get hired before you end up on skid row like the thousands before you have.
 
making a movie essentially requires only effort and the means to make it. making a great movie also requires talent.
 
maranfilms said:
If I were to put a "letter" to define my work as a director, I think it would be more like "L".
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Haha, yes. And yet, in a sense, no.

First, let's clarify what A and B mean. Traditionally they weren't exactly letter grades like what you would get on a school project. There were no C, D, and F movies. It harkens back to Hollyood, during its Golden Age, doing a lot of double features. The first movie was A, the second movie B.

Since the A movie was the first shown, it made sense to throw your best actors and crew at it. Then, once you had them in there, audiential inertia lets you use a little less-talented actors and actresses and lower budgets overall.

So like maranfilms said, even the B-movie budget was likely much higher than any of our budgets.

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But in another sense, your movie could be better than a B movie, at least what B movie later came to mean, a movie made with a certain amount of cyncism for the whole process and all about money. If you're making a $500 independent film but trying your best to make something that honestly communicates an experience to your audience, then I would say in that sense that your movie is better than a B movie, and possibly better than many A movies.

Movies like that have been around for a while, having their heyday in the 90s. And they weren't called B movies, they were called indies.
 
What is a B movie - let's start there. For example one could call Tarantino a B-movie director, in that he loves B-movies, and tries to achieve the same effect as B-movies have, though obviously bringing in a lot more talent and A-list elements (mostly personnel, both actors and below the line); although he sometimes did use stars whose career was spent in B-movies (Jackson, Greer etc.). B-movie doesn't mean lack of technical excellence. Hitchcock famously had the idea to bring A-list skills to B-movie slasher type movie, and the result was Psycho. Whole genres are seen as inherently B-movie, no matter how skillful - heck whole film industries can be seen as B-movie industries, like the Hong-Kong film industry, Hong-Kong movies, kung-fu, gangster, studios like Shaw Brothers. Film Noir was mostly B-movies, including whole studios like RKO. Whole categories, like Exploitation, including Blaxploitation - B-movies. Plenty of skillful and artistic B-movies.

That's my problem with the article in the link: that list of directors is not B-movies - they're more like Z-grade trash, where he defines "B-movies" as badly and completely incompetently done films. That's not the same thing as B-movies.

It would be easier to define B-movies as lower budget, 100% commercially oriented - making money being the goal, even more than traditional A-list Hollywood films where questions of artistic effect are often an important consideration, whereas in B-movies, the return at the box office is pretty much the only consideration. But for all that, B-movies doesn't mean lack of skill or incompetence - which is what the article clearly bases its definition on.

I think many here could only dream of being the kind of B-movie directors who directed so many awesomely accomplished B-movies. However, equally true - it would be unfair to lump people on dvxuser into the same group of mentally-ill-level-of-incompetence as some of the article's picks, the likes of Neil Breen, Amir Shervan, Albert Pyun etc. I think pretty much anyone who has directed anything here on dvxuser is better than those guys I mentioned.

But the real thing B-movies? We should only be so lucky to be considered such B-movie directors - that's Oscar level aspirations compared to the reality around here.
 
I don't think the category of b movie director exists anymore. Studios used to make b movies, but they don't anymore. There are A movies that wind up in the multiplex, and everything else.
 
I think the categorizing doesn't do anyone much good. This whole idea of "legit" movies for instance...that's almost relative isn't it? One will say if it's from a studio or has such and such an actor in it that it's "legit," but then what about really great movies that come out with no names in them or unknown up and comers? Is Primer a real movie? Is that legit? Is it only legit because the film became what it became...the legendary status it has? If it didn't receive that, would it be any less of a movie? Would it be any less...Primer? Not at all. I think the external validation that is largely organic and relative is what makes something feel or not feel legit. There's certainly a more agreed upon definition of what a B movie might be, but who cares really? You don't find a B movie genre category on Netflix. Was The Celebration a real movie? I say yes, but a lot of people at that time said no...and ripped it to shreds over it's capture medium.

My first feature starred friends and family, it had my mom trying to cry on camera...and it was in Redbox for about a year. Legit? Not legit? Who's to say it's not...or that it is? It felt like winning the lottery and getting a home movie into the kiosk, then other times it felt like it was real.

I think everyone that's trying to make movies is just trying to express themselves. Sometimes what falls out of that doesn't amount to much for a lot of people. There are no straight answers to these things. Go tell your stories, go explore, go try and make a human connection with whatever you want to. Who cares what someone might call it or what status it might get. It's art.
 
"B" movie is a term that originated meaning "lesser budget".
Movie studios had "A" and "B" budgeting categories.
It has nothing to do with Directing.
Many GREAT and even legendary directors directed "B" budget films.

And there's no such thing as a "real" director. It's not like real meat vs. Tofurkey here.

There are only directors with varying levels of skill.

Christopher Nolan directed films with far less than even a "B" budget, yet his direction was outstanding. Budget and skill are not connected.

The original question posed here is entirely the wrong way to think about the whole thing.
 
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Right! Would you rather have your name on a cool independent film or a big-budget flop?

Rereading the original post, however, I see I'm hardly answering his question. He describes a person earnestly trying to make a decent film and it turning out cheesy. I'm not sure if the portrayal was accurate, but in Ed Wood he really thought he was great. Are we all just varying articles of Ed Wood, seems to be the question.

It's a hard question, because quality is tied up into money. Take a mediocre director, but give him a brilliant screenplay, an Oscar-winning cinematographer, and a cast with three A-List stars, plus all the rest, and 9 times out of 10 it will be great. Or take the opposite example: Steven Spielberg, but give him a script by a 12-year-old, $100, and his friends, family, and neighbors for cast and crew. And make him shoot it on video. How will it turn out?

In fact, more than one highly regarded director has said that good directing is: (1) finding the right script, and (2) casting.
 
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DPStewart said:
Fincher directed films with far less than even a "B" budget, yet his direction was outstanding.
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Which movie? He started at a-list level budgets with Alien3 and had been there ever since. His lowest budgeted feature film is Seven, which was made for 33 million in 1994 dollars...Your point is a good one but not the best example.
 
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Batutta said:
Which movie? He started at a-list level budgets with Alien3 and had been there ever since. His lowest budgeted feature film is Seven, which was made for 33 million in 1994 dollars...Your point is a good one but not the best example.
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NOLAN!
Ugh...Not Fincher...NOLAN.

Dang...why da heck am I always getting these two mixed up. I've been doing it for like 4 years now, I'm not kidding you.
My brain needs a firmware update.

My apologies to Mr. Nolan.
 
DPStewart said:
NOLAN!
Ugh...Not Fincher...NOLAN.

Dang...why da heck am I always getting these two mixed up. I've been doing it for like 4 years now, I'm not kidding you.
My brain needs a firmware update.

My apologies to Mr. Nolan.
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I was actually going to cite him as an example. Yeah, Memento was made for 9 mil, and while I think anyone here would kill for that, it's the catering budget for any A-list feature these days. Never seen Following but that was clearly a micro-budget feature.
 
Batutta said:
I was actually going to cite him as an example. Yeah, Memento was made for 9 mil, and while I think anyone here would kill for that, it's the catering budget for any A-list feature these days. Never seen Following but that was clearly a micro-budget feature.
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"Memento" was sort of a re-working of "Following"... THAT was a prime example of talent and skill blasting far beyond budgetary constraints.
 
combatentropy said:
Maybe you've lost the ability to create memories ;)
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Ho! Dude...don't even go there...

After my cancer treatment 5 1/2 years ago the radiation and chemo, my memory was trashed. People were actually calling me LEONARD! (From Memento)
I could watch a movie or documentary I had watched just a few months before and have no recollection of it at all. Although that does have its upsides because you can watch a great movie twice and it's new each time!
Thank god that sh*t got better after a couple years.

Now...what were we talking about?
 
I worked on a couple of Albert Pyun films, learned a lot and had a good time. The ops question is pretty biased. Guys like Richard Link later will make films on budgets big and small throughout their careers. There's good film and bad film and budget doesn't factor in. Some great cinema has come out of Iran in the last few decades, many of those films made for thousands of dollars not millions.
 
I think the best thing to do is forget about the question completely. If you are in the entertainment business, the final irony is that you don't decide what you are, other people do. Put your head down and keep doing your best work.
 
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