Ash Ketchum

I was reading two articles by major film commentators about how movies are dying (by David Thomson) and how Hollywood is killing them (by David Denby) and it occurred to me that there are just as many creative filmmakers working in Hollywood today who get younger film buffs excited about movies as there were when I was a newbie film buff 40 years ago. The only real difference is that the directors I liked back then averaged a film a year (e.g. Altman), while the ones you guys like today are lucky if they get one out every few years (e.g. Nolan, PT Anderson, Peter Jackson).

So I’m trying to get a sense of which directors were the first ones to fill you with a sense of awareness of a director’s role and function in the making of a film and the ones who inspired you to follow their work. So I’ve come up with these questions.

1) Name the first film directors you liked enough to actively follow. This could be from your early moviegoing in adolescence, high school, or college, or even adulthood—whenever you first became aware of film directors and developed a liking for one or more. And name at least one film for each that brought them to your attention.

2) Name the currently active directors whose work you follow.

3) Name the classic directors whose work you’ve sought out and explored to some degree. “Classic” can mean anything you think it means.

Thank you.

I’ll get the ball rolling.

1) There were a number of directors I became aware of in adolescence (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford, et al), but the first ones I actively followed, all in my high school years, were Don Siegel (starting with COOGAN’S BLUFF), Sergio Leone (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST), Sam Peckinpah (THE WILD BUNCH) and Robert Altman (M*A*S*H).

2) Quentin Tarantino, Hayao Miyazaki and John Woo are the main ones I follow now.

3) Sam Fuller, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles were probably the first directors whose past works I began to seek out diligently on television and in revival theaters. (All were still alive back then. I watched three of them get their AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards on TV.)

Mabuse

1. I was born in 1978. I saw and loved Star Wars, Empire and Raiders before I ever knew who or what a director was. I probably gained a comprehension of who "made" these films sometime around 1985 or 1986 when I would have been about 7 or 8. Coming of age at that time meant that Lucas and Spielberg were definitely the first on my radar. They were household names. I also remember the press surrounding Who Framed Roger Rabbit pointing out the connection with another film I loved, Back to the Future and how this Zemeckis guy made them both. That was 1987 right? Also around 1987 I remember my dad sitting me down and telling me to watch 2001 and it instantly became my favorite film. I also saw the Shining that year but did not make the connection about it being from the same director. Kubrick is my favorite director but I probably didn't make the connection or even know the titles of all his films until high school. So Lucas is the simple answer, but in a very adolescent way. I was aware of him as the maker of the Star Wars films since before I can remember. As it pertains to a real auteur and me taking an active role in hunting down his films and finding books about him the answer is Kubrick.

2. In no particular order: PT Anderson, David Fincher, Darren Arronofsky, QT, Spielberg, Zemeckis, Scorsese, Woody Allen, David Mamet, Wes Anderson, David Lynch

3. Too many to list. Everybody you named. Kurosawa, Bergman, Antonioni, Vincent Minnelli, Billy Wilder, John Houston, Curtiz, Fritz Lang (big time), David Lean, Cocteau, Truffaut, and of course Kubrick.

Alan Smithee

3) Alan Smithee

Solid Snake

1.
Kurosawa
Tarantino
Godard
Scorsese
Spielberg

Watching Pulp Fiction got me to become a filmmaker. Saw the special features and I dropped wanting to be a geneticist when I was in High School. That was like 2002. The fact track on the DVD led me to seek out his influences.

I'd also like to add that Spielberg was the first director I ever knew. I may not have known what exactly a director was but I knew Spielberg made Jaws, E.T, and the Indiana Jones films by the time Jurassic Park came out. Jurassic Park blew me out of the goddamn water as a kid. I was seeing real dinosaurs on film. They were real to me. They moved and made sounds. They felt whatever "real" can be for a dinosaur. I've never been so astonished or emotionally overwhelmed with joy with a movie like JP. I remember crying in awe cuz I was seeing dinosaurs...and damn it if that music didn't make it even more awesome when they revealed the first one on screen.

2.
Tarantino
Scorsese
Spielberg
PTA
Wes Anderson
Ridley Scott
The Coen Bros.
Nolan
Fincher
Rian Johnson
Cameron
Duncan Jones
Cuaron
Del Toro
Inarritu
Rodriguez
Kevin Smith
Edgar Wright
Mann
Malick
Affleck
Miike
Jeunet
Refn
Park Chan-wook
Neil Marshall
John Woo...out of the US.
Yip
Joe Wright
Stallone
Snyder
Eastwood
Coppola
Miyazaki
Jackie Chan
Abrahms
Mangold
Aronofsky


I think that's it. I like to follow as many as I can.

3.
Kubrick
Leone
Kurosawa
Truffaut
Godard
Chaplin
Lean
Peckinpah
Ford

GoldenJCJ

1. Spielberg was the first director I actively sought out when I was younger. I was born in 1980 so it wasn't until the early 90's that I started seeking out certain directors. Some directors I noticed at a young age:
- Steven Spielberg: starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Wolfgang Peterson: First notice him in the 90s with In the Line of Fire and Outbreak then noticed he'd been behind some of my favorites from childhood including Enemy Mine and The Neverending Story
- Quentin Tarantino: I was 14 in 1994 so Pulp Fiction was the talk of boys my age. It made me seek out Reservoir Dogs and I've been following him ever since.
- James Cameron: Terminator 2 was the film that brought him to my attention and I've loved almost everything of his he's created.
- Robert Zemeckis: Back to the Future and on...


2. Current directors I follow:
- Quentin Tarantino
- David Fincher: Never really cared for him until A Curious Case of Benjamin Button opened my eyes to his wonderful films (Fight Club is still overrated though ).
- Ben Affleck (who da thunk?!)
- J.J. Abrams
- Ridley Scott
- The Coen Bros.
- Christopher Nolan


3. I'll define "Classic" directors as those who produced the majority (or reached their peak) before I was born pre-1980.

- Martin Scorsese
- Francis Ford Coppolla
- Alfred Hitchcock
- David Lean
- Akira Kurosawa
- Stanley Kubrick
To name a few.

Mondo Kane

1) Oliver Stone was the first guy I really got into. Platoon,Born on the Fourth of July,The Doors,Natural Born Killers were all unforgettable big-screen experiences for me.
Tarantino re-awakened my love for movies with Pulp Fiction.
And I'd be a hypocrite to not include Speilberg when it came to memorable moments from my youth.
And since I was a horror fan in the 80's, I followed guys like Carpenter, Craven, Henenlotter & Cronenberg (Amazingly, I didn't find out about Romero til the 90's...Yes, I had long known about NOTLD, but I never heard nothing about the trilogy--Even DAWN--Untill the 90's)

2) Tarantino
Aronofsky
Miike
Herzog
Carnahan
Noe
Wright
Joseph Guzman

3) (Good. Because there certainly are classic exploitation films)

Since I'm (Now) into older movies, I've got a bigger list here:
Leone
Murnau
Kurosawa
Fellini
Anthony Mann
Scorsese
Russ Meyer
Hitchcock
Agnès Varda
Kubrick
Kenji Fukusaku
Michael Powell
Richard Brooks
Jean Rollin
Fuller
Jack Hill
Enzo Castellari
Hawks
Chang Cheh
Peckinpah
Fulci
William Wellman
Lumet
John Sturges
Corman
Norifumi Suzuki
Siegel
Todd Browning

Why So Blu?

I tend to follow directors consistently unless they're George Lucas. T2 is what got me into films, so James Cameron is my favorite director of all time - everyone else is listed below:

Quentin Tarantino
John Carpenter
Robert Rodriguez
Terry Gilliam
Tarsem
Stanley Kubrick
Francis Ford Coppola
Steven Spielberg
Alfred Hitchcock
Guillermo del Toro
Christopher Nolan
Alfonso Cuaron
Alejandro Gonzalez-Iñaritu
Martin Scorsese
Wes Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson
Werner Herzog
Ridley Scott
Tony Scott
Park Chan-wook
David Fincher
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Jee-woon Kim
Joon-ho Bong
Coen Bros.
Todd Haynes
David Lynch
Michael Mann
Terence Malick
Takashi Miike


and more that I probably can't remember.

PopcornTreeCt

1) Coen Brothers, Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Crowe, Kubrick -- it was easiest to start with American directors and then branch out to foreign and classic directors.

2) Scorsese, Coen Brothers, Tarantino, Fincher, Wes/P. T. Anderson, Malick, Almodovar, Kar-Wai

3) G.W. Pabst, John Ford, Samuel Fuller, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio DeSica

Autotelik

My film interests started late, when I was a junior in college taking a film and literature class.

1). The first who impressed me enough to follow was actually Anthony Minghella, after seeing The English Patient and Talented Mr. Ripley. Too bad he isn't with us anymore.

2). Too many to list: Fincher, Nolan, Tarantino, Scorsese, Wong Kar-Wai, Aronofsky, PT Anderson to start

3) Godard, Truffaut, Kieslowski, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Powell & Pressburger, Kubrick

joe_b

Of course, my list is longer -- but I'll name a few of my favorites I haven't seen mentioned yet.

1. Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein), Joe Dante (Gremlins), Richard Donner (The Goonies), John Hughes (Home Alone)

2. Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Zack Snyder (I know, geez), Todd Solondz, Matthew Vaughn

3. Dario Argento, Ralph Bakshi, William Castle, Bob Clark, Brian De Palma, Louis Malle, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roman Polanski, Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, John Waters

davidh777

I was going to only answer the question in the thread title, but damn, I got sucked in.

1. First director I really noticed as a director was Kurosawa after seeing Seven Samurai and Ran, both in theaters. First director I actively sought out was Hitchcock after seeing NxNW then getting hit by the whole Rear Window-Vertigo-Rope-Trouble with Harry rerelease/rediscovery phenomenon.

2. Nolan, Fincher, Miyazaki, Tarantino, PJackson, Spielberg, Allen

3. Ford, Wilder, Peckinpah, Cukor, Chaplin, Lean, Leone, Welles

KaBluie

1. Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, George Roy Hill
2. Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez
3. Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, James Whale

BambooLounge

1. I started falling in love with movies senior year of hs and started by gravitating toward Italian-american actors (mistakenly believing Brando was Italian-American), so eventually that got me to Scorsese, who remains my favorite director and the first director I ever sought out and then followed.

2. Scorsese, Allen, Tarantino, PTA, Arronofsky

3. John Ford, Alfred Hitchock, Fellini (as an extension of my fascination with Italian Neorealism), Kubrick, and a lot more...but Fellini, Ford, and Hitchcock are the first 3 I really decided to delve into once I got serious about film and moved out of my Italian-american themed introduction

bunkaroo

I didn't really start keeping track of directors until the late 90's when I was in my mid 20's.

Tim Burton was probably the first. I was a big fan of everything he had done to that point (including Mars Attacks!), so I was actually excited to see when Sleepy Hollow came out.

The Coens are right there too. Fargo made a huge impression on me, so whenever I saw a movie of theirs advertised I'd make sure to go.

I became Fincher aware after Fight Club. I was already a fan of The Game and Se7en so I pieced it together I liked the guy LOL.

Spielberg is right in there too. I became of fan of Kubrick after he died though I always liked FMJ and the Shining. I didn't see 2001 or Clockwork Orange until after his death along with EWS and Barry Lyndon.

lewisb73

1.Tarantino, Scorsese, Spielberg (since all his films were events growing up)

I follow many more directors now, but as a teen, and young adult, those were the three

2. Todays directors I follow... Tarantino, Fincher, Nolan, PTA, Wes Anderson, Scorsese are the my must see directors today

3. Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Capra, Kubrick, Chaplin, Welles, many others

Dr. DVD

1) Spielberg- think this was the case for a lot in my generation
Quentin Tarantino
David Fincher
James Cameron
Martin Scorsese
Wes Craven

2) Christopher Nolan
David Fincher
Quentin Tarantino
Ridley Scott
Joss Whedon-mostly the stuff with which he associates himself

3) John Huston
Stanley Kubrick- only movie I got to track in my adult lifetime was Eyes Wide Shut, pretty much all there was to follow. Everything was retrospective
Alfred Hitchcock
David Lean
Roman Polanski
Robert Altman

Mattflix

Growing up, I always loved movies but tended to watch crappier action flicks rather than much of the serious & classic stuff that I'm into as an adult. Not many directors were on my radar until I got older.

1. Spielberg, James Cameron. Maybe Tim Burton for his first few movies.

2. Paul Thomas Anderson, Coen Bros, David Cronenberg, Hiyao Miyazaki, Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Darren Aranofsky, Zack Snyder, Matthew Vaughn, Wong Kar Wai, Terry Gillaim, Dario Argento, Guillermo Del Toro.

3. Akira Kurosawa, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, John Carpenter.


Now much of my viewing is exploring the works of directors I'm into. I only recently watched all of Kurosawa's films, most for the first time.

Supermallet

1. Woody Allen, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick. I was aware of other directors like Lucas and Spielberg and such, but the aforementioned were the first directors where I said, "This movie is so good, I have to see what else they've done." The movies in question for each were: Mighty Aphrodite, Blue Velvet, Videodrome, and A Clockwork Orange.

2. Wes Anderson, Takashi Miike, Miyazaki, PT Anderson, Coen Brothers, Lynch, Cronenberg, Allen, Fincher, Nolan, Herzog, Aronofsky, Bird, Del Toro, Tarantino, etc.

3. Christ, where to start? Kurosawa, Leone, Wilder, Hawks, Ford, Sturges, Fellini, Jarman, Powell, Peckinpah, Hitchcock, Polanski, Welles, Roeg, Waters, Fulci, Argento, Carpenter, Bunuel, Bergman, Jodorowsky, and on and on and on.

hasslein

1.Lucas, Spielberg, Leone, Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone

2. Friedkin, Raimi, Todd Field, Tarantino

3. Richard Fleisher, Walter Hill, Michael Curtiz, Don Siegel, Peckinpah, Michael Mann

gp1086

I've always loved movies, but Christopher Nolan (and Heath Ledger) from The Dark Knight were what really got me into them.

I wouldn't say I'm proficient in any director's work at this point, really. There are few directors for whom I could say I've seen all their films. The ones that most interest me though are:

- Christoper Nolan
- Quentin Tarantino
- Coen Bros
- Jason Reitman
- Steven Spielberg
- James Cameron
- Robert Zemeckis
- Stephen Soderbergh
- David Fincher
- Martin Scorsese

And of course, to be more well-versed in movies, trying to see more older stuff from the likes of Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Ford Coppola.

Mabuse

I also want to add that something that was hugely influential to me was a documentary series that ran on PBS in 1995 when I was 16 years old and a junior in high school. I found this synopsis on TVGuide.com:

The bolded ones were the only episodes I actually watched. The last two were especially influential. I've subsequently seen the whole doc and truthfully its approach is rather simplistic and it covers so much history that its analysis is rather shallow. But at the time it was the perfect introduction for someone like me who had only seen contemporary mainstream films up to that time. It had tons of clips. It made connections in my head that I had never understood before. After seeing The Film School Generation episode I realized that a film I'd heard of but never seen before, Taxi Driver, was directed by the same guy who made Goodfellas which I really enjoyed. Suddenly I realized that the same guy who made the Godfather made Apocalypse now, no one had ever explained that to me.

I'll use a music analogy: Before I saw this doc it was as if I bought my albums based only on their title ("I sure like the Josheua Tree") but after the doc I realized it was the band I needed to be paying attention to not the title ("I sure like U2").


The Edge of Hollywood episode was about the then new independent filmmakers. It had clips of Blood Simple and I flew out to rent it.

Mattflix

Mabuse, that's something that needs to be explained to a lot of people. Most non-movie buffs don't care about the director and instead try to follow the work of actors, and can't name any director outside of a mainstream handful like Spielberg, Scorcese, Allen, etc.

Once I really began to understand that a director is the heart of a movie, I began branching out that way if I found a movie I truly loved.

Solid Snake

Very much so. As a kid...Arnold, Sly, and DeVito were actors I followed for their films. Spielberg was the only name director I knew of.

Among the modern movie goer...I'd still argue that Spielberg is the biggest name in movies. I mean..he's done a lot of big shit. And a good chunk of it was very memorable and were considered very good. You know which ones obviously.

Cameron,Tarantino, and Burton I'd also say have that name status recognition in the modern movie goer. It takes very memorable works that really hit the pop culture to happen. The only one to come up in my adult years (I'm 26) is probably Nolan. I mean...after TDK...his name was plastered everywhere on Inception...along w/ "the director The Dark Knight" though maybe he doesn't have it either. I'm not sure. It's too early to tell but he's there or getting there pretty damn quick. TDKR did pretty damn well as well.

Giles

agree with you there, Spielberg indirectly was fave director, just because CE3K was cathartic.

as a teenager, I liked Verhoeven, Pasolini, the Coen Brothers, Kurosawa, Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, Joe Dante, Hiyao Miyazaki, and Greenaway, just to name a few.

In my first year of college saw 'Stalker' and Tarkovskiy entered in my film lexicon.

I think as of recently, the one director I've become quite a fan of is Takashi Miike.

Ash Ketchum

Thank you all for your excellent responses. Film Culture IS alive and well, isn't it?

Just for the record, here are links to the two articles that prompted this inquiry:

American Movies Are Not Dead: They Are Dying

Has Hollywood Murdered the Movies?

And a generational response that I just came across:

Film Culture Isn't Dead; It's Just More Fun