Greatest Directors--B
This is a ranked list of directors whose last names begin with "B."
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Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (1996) is the trilogy closed. Here, as in 'Den Goda Viljan' Pernilla August play his mother. Note that all three movies are not always full true biographical stories. He began his career early with a puppet theatre which he, his sister and their friends played with. But he was the manager. Strictly professional he begun writing in 1941. He had written a play called 'Kaspers död' (A.K.A. 'Kaspers Death') which was produced the same year. It became his entrance into the movie business as Stina Bergman (not a close relative), from the company S.F. (Swedish Filmindustry), had seen the play and thought that there must be some dramatic talent in young Ingmar. His first job was to save other more famous writers' poor scripts. Under one of that script-saving works he remembered that he had written a novel about his last year as a student. He took the novel, did the save-poor-script job first, then wrote a screenplay on his own novel. When he went back to S.F., he delivered two scripts rather than one. The script was Torment (1944) and was the fist Bergman screenplay that was put into film (by Alf Sjöberg). It was also in that movie Bergman did his first professional film-director job. Because Alf Sjöberg was busy, Bergman got the order to shoot the last sequence of the film. Ingmar Bergman is the father of Daniel Bergman, director, and Mats Bergman, actor at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater. Ingmar Bergman was also C.E.O. of the same theatre between 1963-1966, where he hired almost every professional actor in Sweden. In 1976 he had a famous tax problem. Bergman had trusted other people to advise him on his finances, but it turned out to be very bad advice. Bergman had to leave the country immediately, and so he went to Germany. A few years later he returned to Sweden and made his last theatrical film Fanny and Alexander (1982). In later life he retired from movie directing, but still wrote scripts for film and T.V. and directed plays at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre for many years. He died peacefully in his sleep on July 30, 2007.- Writer
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The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.
After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalou (1929), in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks.
The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L'Age d'Or (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros.
Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in The Young and the Damned (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country - and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour.
After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films- a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.
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Timothy Walter Burton was born in Burbank, California, to Jean Rae (Erickson), who owned a cat-themed gift shop, and William Reed Burton, who worked for the Burbank Park and Recreation Department. He spent most of his childhood as a recluse, drawing cartoons, and watching old movies (he was especially fond of films with Vincent Price). When he was in the ninth grade, his artistic talent was recognized by a local garbage company, when he won a prize for an anti-litter poster he designed. The company placed this poster on all of their garbage trucks for a year. After graduating from high school, he attended California Institute of the Arts. Like so many others who graduated from that school, Burton's first job was as an animator for Disney.
His early film career was fueled by almost unbelievable good luck, but it's his talent and originality that have kept him at the top of the Hollywood tree. He worked on such films as The Fox and the Hound (1981) and The Black Cauldron (1985), but had some creative differences with his colleagues. Nevertheless, Disney recognized his talent, and gave him the green light to make Vincent (1982), an animated short about a boy who wanted to be just like Vincent Price. Narrated by Price himself, the short was a critical success and won several awards. Burton made a few other short films, including his first live-action film, Frankenweenie (1984). A half-hour long twist on the tale of Frankenstein, it was deemed inappropriate for children and wasn't released. But actor Paul Reubens (aka Pee-Wee Herman) saw Frankenweenie (1984), and believed that Burton would be the right man to direct him in his first full-length feature film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985). The film was a surprise success, and Burton instantly became popular. However, many of the scripts that were offered to him after this were essentially just spin-offs of the film, and Burton wanted to do something new.
For three years, he made no more films, until he was presented with the script for Beetlejuice (1988). The script was wild and wasn't really about anything, but was filled with such artistic and quirky opportunities, Burton couldn't say no. Beetlejuice (1988) was another big hit, and Burton's name in Hollywood was solidified. It was also his first film with actor Michael Keaton. Warner Bros. then entrusted him with Batman (1989), a film based on the immensely popular comic book series of the same name. Starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, the film was the most financially successful film of the year and Burton's biggest box-office hit to date. Due to the fantastic success of his first three films, he was given the green light to make his next film, any kind of film he wanted. That film was Edward Scissorhands (1990), one of his most emotional, esteemed and artistic films to date. Edward Scissorhands (1990) was also Burton's first film with actor Johnny Depp. Burton's next film was Batman Returns (1992), and was darker and quirkier than the first one, and, while by no means a financial flop, many people felt somewhat disappointed by it. While working on Batman Returns (1992), he also produced the popular The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), directed by former fellow Disney Animator Henry Selick. Burton reunited with Johnny Depp on the film Ed Wood (1994), a film showered with critical acclaim, Martin Landau won an academy award for his performance in it, and it is very popular now, but flopped during its initial release. Burton's subsequent film, Mars Attacks! (1996), had much more vibrant colors than his other films. Despite being directed by Burton and featuring all-star actors including Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan and Michael J. Fox, it received mediocre reviews and wasn't immensely popular at the box office, either.
Burton returned to his darker and more artistic form with the film Sleepy Hollow (1999), starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci and Casper Van Dien. The film was praised for its art direction and was financially successful, redeeming Burton of the disappointment many had felt by Mars Attacks! (1996). His next film was Planet of the Apes (2001), a remake of the classic of the same name. The film was panned by many critics but was still financially successful. While on the set of Planet of the Apes (2001), Burton met Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he has two children. Burton directed the film Big Fish (2003) - a much more conventional film than most of his others, it received a good deal of critical praise, although it disappointed some of his long-time fans who preferred the quirkiness of his other, earlier films. Despite the fluctuations in his career, Burton proved himself to be one of the most popular directors of the late 20th century. He directed Johnny Depp once again in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), a film as quirky anything he's ever done.- Writer
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Luc Besson spent the first years of his life following his parents, scuba diving instructors, around the world. His early life was entirely aquatic. He already showed amazing creativity as a youth, writing early drafts of The Big Blue (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997), as an adolescent bored in school. He planned on becoming a marine biologist specializing in dolphins until a diving accident at age 17 which rendered him unable to dive any longer. He moved back to Paris, where he was born, and only at age 18 did he first have an urban life or television. He realized that film was a medium which he could combine all his interests in various arts together, so he began taking odd jobs on various films. He moved to America for three years, then returned to France and formed Les Films de Loups - his own production company, which later changed its name to Les Films de Dauphins. He is now able to dive again.- Director
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Daniel Francis Boyle is a British filmmaker, producer and writer from Radcliffe, Greater Manchester. He is known for directing 28 Days Later, 127 Hours, Trainspotting, T2 Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, Millions, Shallow Grave, The Beach, Yesterday, and Steve Jobs. He won many awards for Slumdog Millionaire. He was in a relationship with Gail Stevens and had three children.- Actor
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Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to television.
He was a writer for, Your Show of Shows (1950) Caesar's Hour (1954) and wrote the Broadway show Shinbone Alley. He also worked in the creation of The 2000 Year Old Man (1975) and Get Smart (1965) before embarking on a highly successful film career in writing, acting, producing and directing.
Brooks is famous for the spoofs of different film genres that he made such as Blazing Saddles (1974), History of the World: Part I (1981), Silent Movie (1976), Young Frankenstein (1974), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), High Anxiety (1977), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), and Spaceballs (1987).- Director
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Clarence Leon Brown was the son of Larkin Harry and Catherine Ann (Gaw) Brown of Clinton, Massachusetts. His family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when he was 12 years old. He graduated from Knoxville High School in 1905 and from the University of Tennessee with a B.A. in mechanical and electrical engineering in 1912. After graduation Brown settled in Alabama, where he operated a Stevens Duryea dealership called the Brown Motor Car Co. He soon tired of the car business and, fascinated by the movies, moved to New Jersey to study with French director Maurice Tourneur at Peerless Productions in Fort Lee.
During his career Brown directed or produced more than 50 widely-acclaimed full-length films--many during his long association with prestigious MGM--and worked with many of the industry's most illustrious performers. He also maintained close ties with the University of Tennessee, donating the money necessary to construct the institution's Clarence Brown Theatre during the 1970s and an additional $12 million after his death.- Additional Crew
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Phillip Bradley "Brad" Bird is an American director, screenwriter, animator, producer and occasional voice actor, known for both animated and live-action films. Bird was born in Kalispell, Montana, the youngest of four children of Marjorie A. (née Cross) and Philip Cullen Bird. His father worked in the propane business, and his grandfather, Francis Wesley "Frank" Bird, who was born in County Sligo, Ireland, was a president and chief executive of the Montana Power Company. On a tour of the Walt Disney Studios at age 11, he announced that someday he would become part of its animation team, and soon afterward began work on his own 15-minute animated short. Within two years, Bird had completed his animation, which impressed the cartoon company. By age 14, barely in high school, Bird was mentored by the animator Milt Kahl, one of Disney's legendary Nine Old Men. Bird recalls Kahl's criticisms as ideal: Kahl would point out shortcomings by gently delivering thoughts on where Bird could improve. After graduating from Corvallis High School in Corvallis, Oregon in 1975, Bird took a three-year break. He was then awarded a scholarship by Disney to attend California Institute of the Arts, where he met and befriended another future animator, Pixar co-founder and director John Lasseter.- Director
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One of the workhorses in Warner Brothers' stable of directors in the 1930s, Lloyd Bacon didn't have a career as loaded with classic films as many of his more famous contemporaries. What few "classics" he had his hand in (42nd Street (1933), Footlight Parade (1933)) are so overshadowed by the dazzling surrealistic choreography of Busby Berkeley that casual film buffs today often forget they were actually directed by Bacon. While his resume lacks the drama of failed productions and tales of an unbridled ego, he consistently enriched the studio's coffers, directing a handful of its biggest hits of the late 1920s and 1930s. Bacon's career amounts to that of a competent--and at times brilliant--director who did the best with the material handed to him in assembly-line fashion.
Lloyd Bacon was born in San Jose, California, on January 16, 1890, into a theatrical family (his father was Frank Bacon, a playwright and stage actor). His parents enlisted all the Bacon children onto the stage. Despite having a strong interest in law as a student at Santa Clara College, Lloyd opted for an acting career after appearing in a student production of "The Passion Play." In 1911 he joined David Belasco's Los Angeles Stock Company (with Lewis Stone), touring the country and gaining good notices in a Broadway run of the hit "Cinderella Man", and gaining further experience during a season of vaudeville. He switched gears in 1915 and took a stab at silent Hollywood, playing the heavy in several of Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson's shorts and pulling double duty as a stunt man. With America's entry into World War I in 1917, Bacon enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to the Photo Department. This began a lifelong admiration for the service and might explain the Navy being a favorite recurring theme in many of his films.
After the war's end Bacon moved from Mutual (Charles Chaplin's studio at the time) to Triangle as a comedy actor. It was at this point that he got his first taste of directing-- he had let everyone at the studio know he had an interest in helming a picture, and when the director of a now forgotten Lloyd Hamilton comedy short fell ill, Bacon was given his chance. Constantly moving, he joined tightwad producer Mack Sennett as a gag writer. Sennett, sensing a bargain, happily accommodated Lloyd's desire to become a full-time director by early 1921. The Sennett studio was already in an irreversible decline during Bacon's tenure there but it allowed the novice director to gain a wealth of experience. He apprenticed for Sennett until joining Warner Brothers in 1925, an association that would last a remarkable 18 years and begin when the working-man's studio was building a strong stable of contract directors that included Michael Curtiz, Alan Crosland, John G. Adolfi and Mervyn LeRoy.
Although Lloyd never became known for a particular style other than a well-placed close up, his ability to bring in an entertaining film on time and within budget earned him such enormous respect from the five Warner Brothers that he was soon handed control over important projects, including The Singing Fool (1928), Al Jolson's follow-up to The Jazz Singer (1927), which grossed an unheard-of (for Warners, at least) $4,000,000 in domestic receipts alone-- the studio's #1 hit for 1928. Bacon was rewarded by becoming the highest paid director on the studio lot, earning over $200,000 a year throughout the Depression. He was called upon to direct the studio's big-budget production of Moby Dick (1930), which garnered good notices, but it's a version that's barely remembered today.
The 1930s saw Bacon assigned to the assembly line; aside from the Busby Berkeley-choreographed films, he directed many of James Cagney's crowd-pleasing two-week wonders, including Picture Snatcher (1933) (Cagney once remarked that the schedule on that picture was so tight that, one time after he and the cast had rehearsed a particular scene, Cagney said, "OK, Lloyd, are you ready to shoot?" Bacon grinned and said, "I just did!") and The Irish in Us (1935). As a reward, he was occasionally afforded more time and money on productions such as Here Comes the Navy (1934) and Devil Dogs of the Air (1935). He also directed Cagney's return effort after his ill-advised move to cheapjack Grand National Pictures after one of his periodic salary disputes with studio head Jack L. Warner-- the badly miscast if frenetic Boy Meets Girl (1938). This was one of Cagney's least critically acclaimed Warner Brothers films of the 1930s, but a smash hit for the studio.
During his years at Warners, Bacon gained a reputation as a clothes horse, the dapper director arriving on the set dressed to the nines, wearing expensive hats that he would hurl around the set when expressing his dissatisfaction (he ruined a lot of hats) at an actor's performance or missed cue. Bacon continued to turn out profitable films for the studio until moving to 20th Century-Fox in 1944 (a logical move, since the recently discharged Darryl F. Zanuck knew Bacon from his early days at Warners). He stayed at Fox until 1949, then bounced among Columbia, Fox, Universal and finally the chaotically-run RKO in 1954.
He worked virtually until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 65.- Writer
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Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943. His next film, The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945) would be the last time he would work with professional actors. From Journal d'un cure de campagne (1951) (aka "Diary of a Country Priest") onwards, he created a unique minimalist style in which all but the barest essentials are omitted from the film (often, crucial details are only given in the soundtrack), with the actors (he calls them "models") giving deliberately flat, expressionless performances. It's a demanding and difficult, intensely personal style, which means that his films never achieved great popularity (it was rare for him to make more than one film every five years), but he has a fanatical following among critics, who rate him as one of the greatest artists in the history of the cinema. He retired in the 1980s, after failing to raise the money for a long-planned adaptation of the Book of Genesis.- Writer
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Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (1962). His second film, Before the Revolution (1964), which was released in 1971, received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Bertolucci also received an Academy Award nomination as best director for Last Tango in Paris (1972), and the best director and best screenplay for the film The Last Emperor (1987), which walked away with nine Academy Awards.- Director
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Bruce Beresford was born in Australia and graduated from Sydney University in 1962. He served as Film Officer for the British Film Institute Production Board from 1966-1971 and as a Film Advisor to the Arts Council of Great Britain. Beresford has also directed several operas including Girl Of The Golden West (Puccini), staged for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston and Spoleto (Italy) and Elektra (Strauss), which was staged for the State Opera Company of South Australia and performed in Adelaide and Melbourne. It won the Award for Best Opera Production of 1991. Immediately prior to starting production on PARADISE ROAD, Beresford directed SWEENEY TODD for the Portland Opera in Oregon.- Actor
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Peter Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe but born in Kingston, New York. He is the son of immigrants fleeing the Nazis, Herma (Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His father was a Serbian Orthodox Christian, and his mother was from a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. Peter originally was an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with legendary acting teacher Stella Adler and appearing on television and in summer stock. In the early 1960s he achieved notoriety for programming movies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, sometimes seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich prominently showcased the work of American directors such as John Ford, about whom he subsequently wrote a book based on the notes he had produced for the MOMA retrospective of the director, and the then-underappreciated Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.
Bogdanovich was influenced by the French critics of the 1950s who wrote for Cahiers du Cinema, especially critic-turned-director François Truffaut. Before becoming a director himself, he built his reputation as a film writer with articles in Esquire Magazine. In 1968, following the example of Cahiers du Cinema critics Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer who had created the Nouvelle Vague ("New Wave") by making their own films, Bogdanovich became a director. Working for low-budget schlock-meister Roger Corman, Bogdanovich directed the critically praised Targets (1968) and the not-so-critically praised Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), a film best forgotten.
Turning back to journalism, Bogdanovich struck up a lifelong friendship with the legendary Orson Welles while interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichols' film adaptation of Catch-22 (1970) from the novel by Joseph Heller. Subsequently, Bogdanovich has played a major role in elucidating Welles and his career with his writings on the great actor-director, most notably his book "This is Orson Welles" (1992). He has steadily produced invaluable books about the cinema, especially "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors," an indispensable tome that establishes Bogdanovich, along with Kevin Brownlow, as one of the premier English-language chroniclers of cinema.
The 32-year-old Bogdanovich was hailed by a critics as a Wellesian wunderkind when his most famous film, The Last Picture Show (1971) was released. The film received eight Academy Award nominations, including Bogdanovich as Best Director, and won two of them, for Cloris Leachman and "John Ford Stock Company" veteran Ben Johnson in the supporting acting categories. Bogdanovich, who had cast 19-year-old model Cybill Shepherd in a major role in the film, fell in love with the young beauty, an affair that eventually led to his divorce from the film's set designer Polly Platt, his longtime artistic collaborator and the mother of his two children.
Bogdanovich followed up The Last Picture Show (1971) with a major hit, What's Up, Doc? (1972), a screwball comedy heavily indebted to Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), starring Barbra Streisand and 'Ryan O'Neal'. Despite his reliance on homage to bygone cinema, Bogdanovich had solidified his status as one of a new breed of A-list directors that included Academy Award winners Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, with whom he formed The Directors Company. The Directors Company was a generous production deal with Paramount Pictures that essentially gave the directors carte blanche if they kept within strict budget limitations. It was through this entity that Bogdanovich's next big hit, the critically praised Paper Moon (1973), was produced.
Paper Moon (1973), a Depression-era comedy starring Ryan O'Neal that won his ten-year-old daughter Tatum O'Neal an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, proved to be the highwater mark of Bogdanovich's career. Forced to share the profits with his fellow directors, Bogdanovich became dissatisfied with the arrangement. The Directors Company subsequently produced only two more films, Francis Ford Coppola's critically acclaimed The Conversation (1974) which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1974 and garnered Coppola an Oscar nod for Best Director, and Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller (1974), a film that had a quite different critical reception.
An adaptation of the Henry James novella, Daisy Miller (1974) spelled the beginning of the end of Bogdanovich's career as a popular, critically acclaimed director. The film, which starred Bogdanovich's lover Cybill Shepherd as the title character, was savaged by critics and was a flop at the box office. Bogdanovich's follow-up, At Long Last Love (1975), a filming of the Cole Porter musical starring Cybill Shepherd, was derided by some critics as one of the worst films ever made, noted as such in Harry Medved and Michael Medved's book "The Golden Turkey Awards: Nominees and Winners, the Worst Achievements in Hollywood History" (1980). The film also was a box office bomb despite featuring Burt Reynolds, a hotly burning star who would achieve super-nova status at the end of the 1970s.
Bogdanovich insisted on filming the musical numbers for At Long Last Love (1975) live, a process not used since the early days of the talkies, when sound engineer Douglas Shearer developed lip-synching at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The decision was widely ridiculed, as none of the leading actors were known for their singing abilities (Bogdanovich himself had produced a critically panned album of Cybill Shepherd singing Cole Porter songs in 1974). The public perception of Bogdanovich became that of an arrogant director hamstrung by his own hubris.
Trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was his early success, Bogdanovich once again turned to the past, his own and that of cinema, with Nickelodeon (1976). The film, a comedy recounting the earliest days of the motion picture industry, reunited Ryan O'Neal and 'Tatum O'Neal' from his last hit, Paper Moon (1973) with Burt Reynolds. Counseled not to use the unpopular (with both audiences and critics) Cybill Shepherd in the film, Bogdanovich instead used newcomer Jane Hitchcock as the film's ingénue. Unfortunately, the magic of Paper Moon (1973) was not be repeated and the film died at the box office. Jane Hitchcock, Bogdanovich's discovery, would make only one more film before calling it quits.
After a three-year hiatus, Bogdanovich returned with the critically and financially underwhelming Saint Jack (1979) for Hugh Hefner's Playboy Productions Inc. Bogdanovich's long affair with Cybill Shepherd had ended in 1978, but the production deal making Hugh Hefner the film's producer was part of the settlement of a lawsuit Shepherd had filed against Hefner for publishing nude photos of her pirated from a print of The Last Picture Show (1971) in Playboy Magazine. Bogdanovich then launched the film that would be his career Waterloo, They All Laughed (1981), a low-budget ensemble comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1980 Playboy Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten. During the filming of the picture, Bogdanovich fell in love with Stratten, who was married to an emotionally unstable hustler, Paul Snider, who relied on her financially. Stratten moved in with Bogdanovich, and when she told Snider she was leaving him, he shot and killed her, then committed suicide.
They All Laughed (1981) could not attract a distributor due to the negative publicity surrounding the Stratten murder, despite it being one of the few films made by the legendary Audrey Hepburn after her provisional retirement in 1967 (the film would prove to be Hepburn's last starring role in a theatrically released motion picture). The heartbroken Bogdanovich bought the rights to the negative so that it would be seen by the public, but the film had a limited release, garnered weak reviews and cost Bogdanovich millions of dollars, driving the emotionally devastated director into bankruptcy.
Bogdanovich turned back to his first avocation, writing, to pen a memoir of his dead love, "The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten (1960-1980)" that was published in 1984. The book was a riposte to Teresa Carpenter's "Death of a Playmate" article written for The Village Voice that had won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. Carpenter had lambasted Bogdanovich and Hugh Hefner, claiming that Stratten was as much a victim of them as she was of Paul Snider. The article served as the basis of Bob Fosse's film Star 80 (1983), in which Bogdanovich was portrayed as the fictional director "Aram Nicholas".
Bogdanovich's career as a noted director was over, and though he achieved modest success with Mask (1985), his sequel to his greatest success The Last Picture Show (1971), Texasville (1990), was a critical and box office disappointment. He directed two more theatrical films in 1992 and 1993, but their failure kept him off the big screen until 2001's The Cat's Meow (2001). Returning once again to a reworking of the past, this time the alleged murder of director Thomas H. Ince by Welles' bete noir William Randolph Hearst, The Cat's Meow (2001) was a modest critical success but a flop at the box office. In addition to helming some television movies, Bogdanovich has returned to acting, with a recurring guest role on the cable television series The Sopranos (1999) as Dr. Jennifer Melfi's analyst.
Bogdanovich's personal reputation suffered from gossip about his 13-year marriage to Dorothy Stratten's 19-year-old-kid sister Louise Stratten, who was 29 years his junior. Some gossip held that Bogdanovich's behavior was akin to that of the James Stewart character in Alfred Hitchcock's necrophiliac masterpiece Vertigo (1958), with the director trying to remold Stratten into the image of her late sister. The marriage ended in divorce in 2001.
Now in his early eighties, Bogdanovich has arguably imitated his hero Orson Welles, but in an unintended fashion, as filmmaker who never regained the acclaim bestowed on their first major success. However, unlike the widely acclaimed master Welles, the orbit of Bogdanovich's reputation has never recovered from the apogee it reached briefly in the early 1970s.
There has been speculation that Peter Bogdanovich's ruin as a director was guaranteed when he ditched his wife and artistic collaborator Polly Platt for Cybill Shepherd. Platt had worked with Bogdanovich on all his early successes, and some critics believe that the controlling artistic consciousness on The Last Picture Show (1971) was Platt's. Parting company with Platt after Paper Moon (1973), Bogdanovich promptly slipped from the heights of a wunderkind to a has-been pursuing epic folly, as evidenced by Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975).
In 1998 the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress named The Last Picture Show (1971) to the National Film Registry, an honor awarded only to the most culturally significant films.- Producer
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John Boorman attended Catholic school (Salesian Order) although his family was not, in fact, Roman Catholic. His first job was for a dry-cleaner. Later, he worked as a critic for a women's journal and for a radio station until he entered the television business, working for the BBC in Bristol. There, he started as assistant but worked later as director on documentaries, such as The Newcomers (1964). His friendship with Lee Marvin allowed him to work in Hollywood (e.g. Point Blank (1967) and Hell in the Pacific (1968)) from where he returned to the UK (e.g. Leo the Last (1970), Zardoz (1974) or Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)). He became famous for Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest (1985) and his autobiographic story Hope and Glory (1987) where he tells his own experiences as a child after World War II and which brought him another Academy Award Nomination after Deliverance (1972).- Writer
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James L. Brooks was born on 9 May 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Broadcast News (1987), As Good as It Gets (1997) and Terms of Endearment (1983). He was previously married to Holly Holmberg Brooks and Marianne Catherine Morrissey.- Producer
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Celebrated American documentarian who gradually amassed a considerable reputation and a devoted audience with a series of reassuringly traditional meditations on Americana. Burns' works are treasure troves of archival materials; he skillfully utilizes period music and footage, photographs, periodicals and ordinary people's correspondence, the latter often movingly read by seasoned professional actors in a deliberate attempt to get away from a "Great Man" approach to history. Like most non-fiction filmmakers, Burns wears many hats on his projects, often serving as writer, cinematographer, editor and music director in addition to producing and directing. He achieved his apotheosis with The Civil War (1990), a phenomenally popular 11-hour documentary that won two Emmys and broke all previous ratings records for public TV. The series' companion coffee table book--priced at a hefty $50--sold more than 700,000 copies. The audio version, narrated by Burns, was also a major best-seller. In the final accounting, "The Civil War" became the first documentary to gross over $100 million. Not surprisingly, it has become perennial fund-raising programming for public TV stations around the country. Burns arrived upon the scene with the Oscar-nominated Brooklyn Bridge (1981), a nostalgic chronicle of the construction of the fabled edifice. The film was more widely seen when rebroadcast on PBS the following year. Though Burns has made other nonfiction films for theatrical release, notably an acclaimed and ambiguous portrait of Depression-era Louisiana governor Huey Long (1985), PBS would prove to be his true home. He cast a probing eye on such American subjects as The Statue of Liberty (1985), The Congress (1989) (PBS), painter Thomas Hart Benton (1989) (PBS) and early radio with Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991) (PBS). Burns returned to long-form documentary with his most ambitious project to date, an 18-hour history of Baseball (1994), which aired on PBS in the fall of 1994. He approached the national pastime as a template for understanding changes in modern American society. Ironically, this was the only baseball on the air at the time, as the players and owners were embroiled in a bitter strike.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Born in Madrid, Iciar Bollain has worked as an actress in films such El Sur (1983), directed by Víctor Erice; Sublet (1991) directed by Chus Gutiérrez, Malaventura (1988) directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón; El Mejor de los Tiempos (1990) and Un Paraguas para Tres (1992) directed by Felipe Vega, Tierra y Libertad (1995) directed by Ken Loach, LEO (2000) directed by Jose Luis Borau, Nos Miran (2002) directed by Norberto Pérez, La Balsa de Piedra (2003) directed by Geogre Sluiezer and La Noche del Hermano (2005) directed by Santiago García de Leániz. As a director, Icíar has written and directed many renowned films. Flowers from Another World, her second film, was awarded at Cannes Film Festival in 1999 (Best Film in the International Critics' Week). Take my eyes (2003), her following film as writer and director, won 7 Goyas (Spanish Academy Awards), including Best Film, among many other international awards. She directed a script by Paul Laverty in 2009, Even the Rain. The film obtained national and international recognition: 13 nominations to the Goya Awards, Panorama Award at the Berlinale, Ariel Award to best Latin-American film and it was in the short list of the foreign films selected for the Academy Awards in 2010 representing Spain. In 2011 she directed and co-wrote Katmandú, un Espejo en el Cielo. The film was nominated to the Goya Awads in the categories of Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014 it was released En Tierra Extraña, a documentary that Iciar directed about the life of young Spanish immigrants in Edinburgh, Scotland, who had to leave Spain due to recession and unemployment Iciar Bollain is currently in pre-production of his next film, The Olive Tree, a new collaboration with the writer Paul Laverty and Morena Films. The film will start principal photography in May 2015.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Richard Brooks was an Academy Award-winning film writer who also earned six Oscar nominations and achieved success as a film director and producer.
He was born Reuben Sax on May 18, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. He graduated from West Philadelphia HS, attended Philadelphia's Temple University for two years, before dropping out and later working as a sports reporter and radio journalist in the 1930s. After a stint as a writer for the NBC network, he worked for one season as director of New York's Mill Pond Theatre, and then headed to Los Angeles. There he broke into films as a script writer of "B" movies, Maria Montez epics, serials, and did some radio writing. During the Second World War, he served with the US Marines for two years.
Richard Brooks made his directorial debut with MGM's Crisis (1950) starring Cary Grant. He scripted and directed The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and two years later won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Elmer Gantry (1960). He had six Oscar nominations and 25 other nominations during his film career. Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth, who mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion. His films enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual mainstream productions. Brooks was regarded as "independent" even before he officially broke away from the studio system in 1965. In the 1980s, he had his own production company.
Richard Brooks died of a heart failure on March 11, 1992, in Beverly Hills, California, and was laid to rest in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd., for his contribution to the art of motion picture.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Editor
Born in 1935 in Tampa, Florida, Les Blank attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he received a B.A. in English literature and an M.F.A. in theatre. In 1967, after two years in the Ph.D. film program at the University of Southern California, and five years of freelancing in Los Angeles, he began his first independent films, on Texas blues singer Lightnin Hopkins (The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (1970)) and the newly forming sub-culture, known as flower children, (God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance (1968)). To finance these and other of his own films, he continued to make industrial and promotional films for such organizations as Holly Farms Poultry, Archway Cookies and the National Wildlife Federation until 1972.
Blank's first independent films began a series of intimate glimpses into the lives and music of passionate people who live at the periphery of American society - a series that grew to include rural Louisiana French musicians and cooks.
Major retrospectives of Les Blank's films have been mounted in Los Angeles at FILMEX in 1977; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1978 and 1984; New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1979; the National Film Theatre, London in 1982; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City in 1984; the Cinematheque Francais, Paris in 1986; the Independent Film Week, Augsburg, Germany in 1990 and the Leipzig Film Festival in 1995 and the Sofia Music Film Festival, Bulgaria in 1998. Feature articles on Blank have appeared in American Film, Film Quarterly, Take One, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Image Magazine, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Premiere, Downbeat and Video Review. In 1984, Blank co-edited the "Burden of Dreams" book, which included journals written during the making of Burden of Dreams by him, sound recordist-editor Maureen Gosling and Werner Herzog, plus an article by legendary journalist Michael Goodwin. In 1986, National Public Radio aired a half-hour special on Les Blank's work and, in 1991, CNN aired a special on him, worldwide.
Among Blank's numerous awards are the British Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, 1982, (Burden of Dreams (1982)); the Golden Gate Award "Best of Festival", San Francisco Film Festival, 1982 ("Burden of Dreams"); Grand Prize, Melbourne Film Festival, 1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984)); Special Jury Award U.S. (Sundance) Film Festival, 1985 ("In Heaven There Is No Beer?"); Grand Award, Houston Film Festival, 1983 ("Burden of Dreams"); Golden Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, 1969 (The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (1970)). Blank also received a 10,000 Euro prize for "Yum, Yum, Yum" for best film in the International Ethnographic Film Festival, Nuoro, Sardinia, Italy, 2002
In 1990, Les Blank received the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement as an independent filmmaker. In 1989-1990, Blank was the distinguished filmmaker-in-residence at San Diego State University and, in 1991, adjunct assistant professor in film at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also the Louis B. Mayer filmmaker-in-residence at Dartmouth College and a directing fellow at the Sundance Institute in Utah (both in 1984). His work has been supported by The National Endowment For the Arts, The American Film Institute, The National Endowment For the Humanities, The Ford Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, PBS and the BBC. Between 1973 and 1994, Blank toured extensively with the sponsorship of the United States Information Agency, screening his films and discussing them with audiences throughout Latin America, China, England, Spain, Germany, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Egypt. Les Blank is a member of: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Blank currently has four documentaries in production: about David Lee Hoffman, importer of rare and fine teas rom China; Alabama folk artist Butch Anthony; seminal documentary filmmaker Richard Leacock; and a project on the diRosa preserve in Napa, a major collection of Northern California art.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Belonging to a well-situated family, Charles Browning fell in love at the age of 16 with a dancer of a circus. Following her began his itinerary of being clown, jockey and director of a variety theater which ended when he met D.W. Griffith and became an actor. He made his debut in Intolerance (1916). Working later on as a director, he had his first success with The Unholy Three (1925) (after about 25 unimportant pictures) which had his typical style of a mixture of fantasy, mystery and horror. His biggest hit was the classic Dracula (1931), in which he also appears as the voice of the harbor master.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Since starring in his first film, Splendor in the Grass (1961), Warren Beatty has been said to have demonstrated a greater longevity in movies than any actor of his generation. Few people have taken so many responsibilities for all phases of the production of films as producer, director, writer, and actor, and few have evidenced so high a level of integrity in a body of work.
In Rules Don't Apply (2016), he writes, produces, directs and stars in. Only Beatty and Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) have been nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an actor, a director, a writer, and a producer for the same film. Beatty is the only person ever to have done it twice, for Heaven Can Wait (1978) and again for Reds (1981). Beatty has been nominated 15 times by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and 8 films he has produced have earned 53 Academy nominations. In 1982 he won the Academy Award for Directing and in 2000 was given the Academy's highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award.
He was awarded Best Director from the Directors Guild of America and Best Writer three times from the Writers Guild of America. He has received the Milestone Award from the Producers Guild, the Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Directors Award from the Costume Designers Guild, the Life Achievement Award from the Publicists Guild, and the Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award from the Art Directors Guild. The National Association of Theater Owners has honored him as Director of the Year, as Producer of the Year and as Actor of the Year.
He has won 16 awards from the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics, the National Board of Review, and the Golden Globes. In 1992, he was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France; in Italy he received the David di Donatello award in 1968 and again in 1981 and its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998; in 2001, he received the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Sebastian International Film Festival; in 2002, he received the British Academy Fellowship from BAFTA; and in 2011, he was awarded the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film.
In December 2004, Beatty received The Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, D.C. In addition, he is the recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, the HFPA Cecile B. DeMille Award and many others. Politically active since the 1960's, Beatty campaigned with Robert F. Kennedy in his 1968 presidential campaign. That same year he traveled throughout the United States speaking in favor of gun control and against the war in Vietnam. In 1972 he took a year off from motion pictures to campaign with George McGovern.
In 1981, Beatty was a founding board member of the Center for National Policy. He is a founding member of The Progressive Majority, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has participated in the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.
Beatty serves on the Board of Directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation. He previously served on the Board of Trustees of The Scripps Research Institute for several years. He has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from the Americans for Democratic Action, the Brennan Legacy Award from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, and the Philip Burton Public Service Award from The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.
In multiple forums he has addressed campaign finance reform, the increasing disparity of wealth, universal health care and the need for the Democratic Party to return to its roots.
In March of 2013, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
Beatty was born in Richmond, Virginia. He and his wife, Annette Bening, live in Los Angeles and have four children.
His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. His sister is actress Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty). His ancestry is mostly English and Scottish.- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
Albert Brooks was born on 22 July 1947 in Beverly Hills, California, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Drive (2011), Broadcast News (1987) and Defending Your Life (1991). He has been married to Kimberly Shlain since 15 March 1997. They have two children.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Claude Berri was born on 1 July 1934 in Paris, France. He was a producer and actor, known for Jean de Florette (1986), Germinal (1993) and The Two of Us (1967). He was married to Sylvie Gautrelet and Anne-Marie Rassam. He died on 12 January 2009 in Paris, France.- Director
- Animation Department
- Writer
Ralph Bakshi worked his way up from Brooklyn and became an animation legend. He was born on October 29, 1938, in Haifa, Israel, the son of Mina (Zlotin) and Eliezar Bakshi, and is of Krymchak Jewish descent. He was raised in Brownsville, after his family came to New York to escape World War II. Bakshi attended the Thomas Jefferson High School and was later transferred to the High School of Industrial Arts and graduated with an award in cartooning in 1957.
At the Terrytoons studio, he started as a cel polisher then graduated to cel painting. Practicing nights and weekends, he quickly became an inker and then an animator. There, he worked on such shows as Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Deputy Dawg, Foofle and Lariat Sam. At 28 he created and directed a series of superhero spoof cartoons called The Mighty Heroes.
In 1967, Bakshi moved to Paramount Studios. Working with producer Steve Krantz, Bakshi worked on episodes of the Spider-Man TV series and several short films. In the 1970s, Bakshi set out to produce films using his innovative vision for how animated films should be. Krantz suggested Robert Crumb's "Fritz the Cat" comic book as Bakshi's first feature. The two set out to meet with Crumb and get the film rights. In 1972, the film premiered and was extremely successful, as the first feature-length animated film to receive an X rating by the American rating system (when it was distributed worldwide, it generally received lower ratings the equivalent of an R rating, and was released as being unrated on DVD).
The success of "Fritz the Cat" allowed Bakshi to produce films featuring his own characters and ideas, and so "Heavy Traffic" and "Coonskin" were produced, both of which were extremely controversial, but were praised by critics. During the same period, he shot and completed another feature titled "Hey Good Lookin'" for the Warner Brothers studio, who didn't think that a combination of live-action and animation would sell, and forced Bakshi to go back and animate the live action sequences.
During this period, Bakshi also produced two very successful fantasy films, "Wizards" and part one of an animated film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings." Although these films were financially successful, they were misunderstood by critics, and United Artists, the studio that produced "The Lord of the Rings" refused to fund the second part, or sequel to Bakshi's ambitious adaptation.
During the 1980s, animation went into a decline. "American Pop," done using the same style of realistic animation as "The Lord of the Rings" was not successful financially, and critics did not see the point of the film being animated. The finished version of "Hey Good Lookin'" was released during the same year as "American Pop," but was also unsuccessful financially. Bakshi's last film of the decade, "Fire & Ice," a collaboration with famed artist Frank Frazetta, was a flop.
Bakshi produced several television features with mixed results before returning to film with what would eventually become "Cool World" - the script was rewritten several times during production without Bakshi's knowledge until it came to the point where Bakshi did not recognize his own work. The film was critically scorned, and was a box office flop. Fans feel that the film is not a true Bakshi film.
Since then, the Internet and DVD releases of Bakshi's work have brought him a new generation of fans and increased interest, encouraging Bakshi to produce another film. "Last Days of Coney Island" is in production. Bakshi lives in New Mexico. A three-day retrospective was held at American Cinematheque at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, California and the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, California in April, 2005.- Additional Crew
- Director
- Music Department
Busby Berkeley was one of the greatest choreographers of the US movie musical. He started his career in the US Army in 1918, as a lieutenant in the artillery conducting and directing parades. After the World War I cease-fire he was ordered to stage camp shows for the soldiers. Back in the US he became a stage actor and assistant director in smaller acting troupes. After being forced to take over the direction of the musical "Holka-Polka" he discovered his talent for staging extravagant dance routines, and he quickly became one of Broadway's top dance directors. Producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. called him to direct the dance routines for his production of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". Eddie Cantor, who starred in the long-running Ziegfeld production "Whoopee!", suggested Berkley create the dance routines in the film version )Whoopee! (1930) and Ziegfeld agreed.
At first in Hollywood Berkeley wasn't satisfied with the possibilities of his job--at the time, dance directors trained the dancers and staged the dances. The director chose camera positions and the editor chose which of the takes were shown to the audience. Berkeley wanted to direct the dances himself and convinced producer Samuel Goldwyn to let him try. One of the first chances he took was that he used only one camera in his films. He also showed close-ups of the chorus girls. Asked about this, he explained, "Well, we've got all the beautiful girls in the picture, why not let the public see them?" With the decline of musicals in 1931 and 1932, he was thinking of returning to Broadway when Darryl F. Zanuck, chief producer at Warner Brothers, called him in to direct the musical numbers of Warners' newest project, the backstage drama 42nd Street (1933). Berkeley accepted and directed great numbers like "Shuffle Off To Buffalo", "Young and Healthy" and the grandiose story of urban life, the finale "42nd Street". The film was a smash hit, and Warner Brothers knew who made it such an extraordinary success--Berkeley, as well as composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin, got seven-year contracts. Berkeley created musical numbers for almost every great musical that Warner Brothers produced from 1933 to 1937. His overhead shots forced him to drill holes in the studio roofs, and he used more dancers with each succeeding picture. However, by the late 1930s the musical was in decline once again, and Berkeley had nothing to do as a choreographer. He directed two non-musical pictures for Warner Brothers then went to MGM, where he choreographed the final number from Broadway Serenade (1939) with Jeanette MacDonald. As a director and choreographer he worked on four pictures with teenage stars Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. He also choreographed the "Fascinatin' Rhythm" finale for MGM's reigning tapping star, Eleanor Powell in Lady Be Good (1941). He directed Gene Kelly in his first picture, For Me and My Gal (1942). Kelly, who choreographed his own numbers, learned a lot from Berkeley.
Berkeley worked for 20th Century-Fox in The Gang's All Here (1943) with its surrealistic number "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat". In 1949 he directed his last picture, Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), but this time the choreography was by Gene Kelly. Berkeley did a few numbers in the early 1950s but, by the end of the decade, he was all but forgotten. A revival of his films in the late 1960s brought him some popularity and he was asked to return to Broadway and supervise the dance direction in the revival of a Vincent Youmans musical comedy from 1925. One of the actresses in this production was Ruby Keeler, one of his leading ladies in Warner musicals. When the production went on tour in 1972, one of the road cast was Eleanor Powell. The production was a smash hit. When he walked on stage after one opening night, the house exploded with applause.
A strange fact is that Busby Berkeley never had a dancing lesson and, in his early days, was very afraid of people finding out. He often drove his producers crazy when he gave orders to build a set and then sat in front of it for a few days, thinking up the numbers.