True story, happened 1 year after the release of American History X :

In 1999, I was at a bar in the Lower East Side in Manhattan. The crowd was mostly made up of punks & skinheads.
The door opens and in comes Edward Norton. He looks around to sees who the patrons are. He starts to look upset, does a complete about face and leaves.

It was, back in the 70s. Those days of the auteur director are long past now, not that you'd know it from looking around here. These days the producer has as much if not more clout than the director. Meanwhile some actors are also very influential on the movies they take part in and often in a positive way. Movies are often enhanced I think from being more collaborative than dictatorial in the way they are organized.

Really? I assume that there are loads of indy directors nowadays isn't there? Low budget ? Or is it all on youtube. Can anyone still be a Sergio Leone in this era? What about in Europe how's it there?

Just out curiosity, where would you rank Norton on that list, acting wise?

Not even top 15 on that list.

That's a pretty damn great list. A few truly great actors and none less, IMO, than pretty damn good. And I wouldn't have Norton in the top dozen. Off that list I would have, in no particular order, a top 5 of Fiennes, Hoffman, Depp, Cassel and Mikkelson with Downey and Foxx just a rung below.

Sounds like a pretty normal response.

Lovely Bones fiasco? First I've heard of it. Granted...I wasn't going crazy for the film either at that time and still haven't seen it.

Who are the 15 you would put ahead of him?

If you include Cruise, Cusack, McConaughey, Sutherland or Pitt your opinion doesn't count.

Of that list I'd probably only put Robert Downey Jr and Don Cheadle above Ed Norton. But I'd also say that many of these actors work more frequently. I'm starting to feel like "what have you done for me lately Ed?"

Depp in the same circle as Mads?! Preposterous.

It is difficult for me to rank that list in sequential order of preference so instead I broke it up into 3 tiers
and within the tiers there is no particular order.

IMO :

Upper
Ralph Fiennes
Tony Leung Chiu Wai
Javier Bardem
Mads Mikkelsen
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Vincent Cassel
Robert Downey Jr.
Benicio Del Toro
Edward Norton

Middle
Ethan Hawke
Paul Giamatti
Nicolas Cage
Russell Crowe
Tom Cruise
Johnny Depp
Brad Pitt
Don Cheadle

Lower
Mark Ruffalo
Kiefer Sutherland
Ewan McGregor
Clive Owen
Jamie Foxx
Matt Damon
Hugh Jackman
John Cusack
Matthew McConaughey

This is the first I've heard of Ryan Gosling being difficult on set.

alright...just found this. Also wow to be in that diverse group of actors...I'd love sitting next to Duvall.

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Fiennes, Cassell, Seymour-Hoffman, Giamatti, Bardem, Cheadle, Del Toro, Downey Jr., Mikkelson, Leung, Bale, and yes, McConaughey.

Yeah Gosling showed up to the set about 40 pounds overweight and said thats how he wanted to play the character. Jackson told him he didn't want that, asked him to the lose the weight, and eventually fired Gosling.

I would have told Jackson that he needed to gain his weight back if he wanted me to work with him. So far Fat Jackson is the only one who has made a good film.

I haven't seen Brain Dead or Bad Taste. I've seen the rest of his work, and the only thing I like is the LOTR trilogy.

?

Explain.

It's a Fight Club joke.

hahaha, so true, I guess the weight loss collided with vanity and being surrounded with yes men. To be fair no one likes seeing fat people on screen, and at that point in his career Ryan Gosling should have known he was only hired for being a pretty boy.

More like a Fight Club spoiler.

It's interesting because I've seen FC three times and for some oddball reason the joke still went over my head. I guess it's because I haven't seen the film in about 5 or so years. Norton's
performance in Fight Club is brilliant by the way.

BTW, Brad Pitt isn't always the greatest person to work with. You guys should check out Living In Oblivion. James LeGros "plays" Brad Pitt in that, which was a take on his BS during the making of Johnny Suede, when he was a nobody.

I also know there was plenty of dramarama during the making of Troy, where he was up Wolf Petersen's ass for this and that. In fact, if you guys still have that jumbo director's cut boxed set on DVD, there's some sketches and extensive notes to WP from Brad about Achilles' costume and how it should have been designed. The boy basically had the costume designer whip up his vision of what the costume should be like.

It was more about him trying to look like a father. They thought he looked too young. He wasn't being difficult. Plenty of people leave projects over creative differences, and they arent labelled as difficult. And apparently Whalberg was always Peter Jackson's first choice for the role. In the end, better for Gosling. The movie wasn't great and he probably would've seemed miscast anyway.