First Films from Famous Directors

Gohanto said:
Spielberg - Duel
James Cameron - Terminator
(first that he had control over)
George Lucas - THX 1138
Harold Ramis - Caddyshack
Guy Ritchie - Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

And I really disagree that Nolan's gone down after Following. Memento, Prestige, and his Batman movies are all great. To me he's a rival to Spielberg with lesser visuals but more interesting narrative structures.
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Uhh, yeah, no kidding. Memento is amazing, Prestige is great, and the two Batman films are just ridiculously awesome work especially The Dark Knight. I haven't even seen his first film but I don't think I would like it even close to as much as those films. If it is his best movie then it may be the greatest film of all time, lol.

Looking at this list, jeez, it's ridiculous just how good these first efforts were. That's kind of intimidating! I'm about to make my debut feature and while I think it's a really solid film, and loads of fun, even good social satire, it has no ambitions of being anything like a lot of these films. That's more like my second script. Ah well can we start listing great directors who took a few films to warm up? ;) lol, j/k

BTW really glad someone mentioned Andrew Niccol, who I love. Another fantastic debut from a great writer and a great director. This from IMDb makes me jealous: "The plot of his films often revolve around artificial reality, such as gene manipulation in Gattaca, the life of Truman in The Truman Show and the computer generated actress in S1m0ne." That's basically the type of movie I'm a sucker for, so those are some of my favorite films, add in eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Matrix, etc. and those are my favorite types of movies, the reality-bending type. Then again I majored in philosophy so that's right up my ally :)
 
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Michael Bay-Bad Boys
Very cool for it's time. Unfortunately everything after was pretty much the same movie.

The Hughes Brothers-Menace to society
A hood classic. I find it hilarious now. We constantly quote it to this day. They were 20 when they directed it.

Spike Lee-She's gotta have it
Never liked it. Still don't.

John Singleton-Boyz in the hood
youngest person ever nominated for Best Director and the first African–American to be nominated for the award.
 
Everyone should read the book "My First Movie". It's a collection of extensive interviews with 20 directors about the making of their first films. There's interviews with The Coen Brothers, Steve Buscemi, Pedro Almodovar, Gary Oldman, Ang Lee, Kevin Smith, Mike Leigh, Barry Levinson, among others. There's also a follow-up book with interviews with ten more directors, including Richard Linklater.

As for favorite first films, a lot of mine have been listed already, so I'll add:

Shadows by John Cassavetes
George Washington by David Gordon Green
Badlands by Terrence Malick
Kicking and Screaming by Noah Baumbaach
Monty Python and the Holy Grail by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones
Trees Lounge by Steve Buscemi
Buffalo '66 by Vincent Gallo
Gummo by Harmony Korine
Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman
Thumbsucker by Mike Mills
Junebug by Phil Morrison
Amores Perros by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero
 
JonathanLB said:
Uhh, yeah, no kidding. Memento is amazing, Prestige is great, and the two Batman films are just ridiculously awesome work especially The Dark Knight. I haven't even seen his first film but I don't think I would like it even close to as much as those films. If it is his best movie then it may be the greatest film of all time, lol.
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I dont think there is a more consistent, powerful, intelligent, visionary director working today than Christopher Nolan. Memento is one of the best narrative films ever made, and he has yet to make a bad film. Inception looks to be one of his best yet (hard to fathom) and is his original work.. the guy is just a beast and a phenomenon.
 
I agree Nolan is pretty awesome. This thread makes me want to delve more into film history, though.

I ran a decently successful film review site for years, and have written about 700 movie reviews, including for instance a 19-page long review / analysis of Citizen Kane, etc. But I gave up the site a while back and haven't been really as focused on the critical element since I got into actual filmmaking, haha. But what I really wanted to do at one point was go director-by-director and see all of their work. Like start at someone I haven't seen much of anything, then work my way through everything, and keep doing that director by director until I've seen all of the big ones I should have.

I have certainly studied film history and classics of the past a good deal, but there are just so many movies and so much to learn, at age 27, it's basically impossible to have gone through it all. I've seen films from 1894 through present in numerous countries around the world, though, so at least I have a good understanding of what came before. As the years pass, I would like to continue to add to that knowledge.
 
If you're interested if focusing on great directors and want to focus your efforts you could do worse that start with Andrew Sarris's "Pantheon" in the book American Cinema that lists what he considered the 13 greatest directors to date (which was 1968). It turned me on to my two favorite directors, Joseph Von Sternberg and Max Ophuls, both of whose every movie are well worth the time. Unfortunately much of Ophuls work is not available in US region 1 DVD's. Griffith, Chaplain, Ford are also on the list, but the one with the most extraordinarily varied body of great work was Howard Hawks.
 
"But what I really wanted to do at one point was go director-by-director and see all of their work. Like start at someone I haven't seen much of anything, then work my way through everything, and keep doing that director by director until I've seen all of the big ones I should have."
The Austin Film Society gave me a great education on film in the 90's. At that time you could see upwards of 200 films a year in Austin basically for free between free campus screenings and the AFS screenings (I believe about half of the screenings didn't have a charge). Still a great organization, it just has become really popular .
"As the years pass, I would like to continue to add to that knowledge."
Absolutely JonathanLB obviously you've already figured it out. It always stuns me how many would be screenwriters/filmakers have never watched a black and white film with an audience or a film with subtitles (even on dvd), and insist it isn't necessary because its to hard to follow the story.
Sorry for getting off the topic.
Michael Cimino-Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
 
Absolutely, I was very surprised by that myself. When I started film school the first time I was at Loyola Marymount, and I had been running a critical review site for only about two years (I was 18, after all). I hadn't seen a ton of classics but I had gotten a little start at least. Mostly just modern stuff. But I was surprised I had classmates who hadn't even seen Pulp Fiction, I mean, RECENT stuff, let alone Citizen Kane or anything else. For them, an "old movie" was from the 70s. I still know a lot of people who think even 80s movies are "old," when that's New American Cinema, lol.

I left LMU and went to another university, not majoring in film, but I vowed that I would take as many film criticism classes as I could and study film on my own, trying to soak up as much knowledge of the history of the art as possible. I always found it really enjoyable to look through the great classics of the past. I just have not had the chance to do that lately and I miss it.

I think you find yourself trying to have some sort of a balance, and I know for me I spent a solid 6-7 years doing nothing but criticism and film viewing, lots of writing, etc. No filmmaking at all. Then when I got to Los Angeles, it has been the opposite, very little criticism or history, because I've been trying to figure out everything that goes into filmmaking so I can be proficient at it. Now I'm directing my first feature, which is a huge step forward and I feel I am prepared for it, but I want to continue to learn in a variety of ways going forward, sort of re-focus myself on studying classics of the past and refining my craft as a filmmaker in the process. It's just tough sometimes to strike that balance.
 
I would be more interested in first scripts by famous writers
or first films by filmmakers, and not just directors.
 
I say Tim Burton's "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" is still his best film. The script is unpretentious, uncluttered and focused. Every scene is funny as hell.
 
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