August 14, 2020
Waaaaaayyyyy back when in February, when all of our lives were much simpler, I wrote a piece about musicians who take risks. My Uncle Larry commented that he would like to see a piece on filmmakers who take risks, which got me thinking. Then I got distracted. Then I revisited the topic here in a post about the challenges Francis Ford Coppola faced in making Apocalypse Now. Since then, I’ve put some more thought (and more importantly, research) into this topic and decided to tackle it once again. Speaking of getting distracted, this post was originally going to run last week, but we had a little tropical storm come ripping up the east coast, we were without power for a few days and having no internet and power derailed and delayed this post. The good news is that I learned that not sleeping for a few days completely ruins my ability to write coherently. Good to know going forward! I thought of a lot of examples so we’re going to split this into two parts.
What Defines “Taking a Risk”?
To me, taking a risk is all about doing something different that stretches you in a new direction. So, if you are a long-time director, it means you have to branch out of your comfort zone. When everyone expects you to zig, you zag. Maybe you spent a long time building up a career as an actor and want to expand into directing with a small movie, or maybe you go for it with a challenging epic film. Maybe you take on a huge budgetary challenge which spirals out of control, and maybe the studio fights you tooth and nail to bring it under control, but you stay true to your vision for your film. Then there are the consequences if you fail. If your film flops early in your career, people think you can never succeed. If you finance the bulk of the film and it is a failure, you could be facing personal financial ruin. If it’s been awhile since you’ve had success? Maybe you’ve lost your touch. It’s rare for a filmmaker to NOT experience failure – it’s all about what you do to follow it up. Hollywood loves a comeback story, so it’s nice to see someone achieve success after challenges in their life, whether personal or professional.
Considering all of the great filmmakers we have seen over the years, there are countless examples I could write about. The ones in this two part series are the stories that resonated with me the most. These aren’t necessarily my favorite filmmakers – just great stories about films being made. Let’s jump in.
The Shift from Actor to Director – Kevin Costner
There are a number of actors who have tried directing after success as an actor, but this is the example I usually think of first. Coming off a very successful run as a leading man in the 1980s (including Silverado, The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams), Costner tackled directing, producing, and starring in the epic Western Dances with Wolves. The film tells the story of a Civil War veteran who travels west to set up a new Army post, but instead develops a relationship with a tribe of Sioux Native Americans. Costner came to the story through a colleague he made a small film with in the early 1980s and instantly wanted to direct it, but he struggled to find a studio that would back the film and give him full directorial control (referred to as “final cut”) over the film. Eventually, they found the financing and studio and he began filming in Wyoming and South Dakota. The amazing thing to me about this film is not just the challenge of filming a three hour epic Western (and all that it entails – weather, lighting, managing animals and hundreds of extras, costumes, and filming complicated scenes that encompasses all of these factors), but the fact that Costner did this in his first directorial effort. The story is fantastic, the acting is excellent (including much of the dialogue in Lakota, the Native American language of the tribe), but the beautiful landscape makes this film special. And thirty years later, it still holds up.
The film was successful both commercially and critically, culminating in Oscar glory where it won seven awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Costner. Interesting Oscar tidbit here – when Costner won, it was the second time that Martin Scorsese lost to an actor turned first-time director. In 1980, it was Robert Redford’s Ordinary People beating Scorsese’s Raging Bull. While I like Ordinary People, it’s a small family drama – not exactly a big risk for Redford in his directorial debut. Ten years later, Scorsese’s gangster classic Goodfellas lost to Dances with Wolves. Next week, we’ll get to what I liked about the risks that Scorsese took in his career.
Despite the success he achieved with Dances with Wolves, Costner never again saw directing glory, unlike our next example. His next directing gig, The Postman, was a disaster, and this was a few years after Waterworld, a commercial flop that Costner produced and starred in. But that was a long time ago, and Costner has had a lot of film success since then, and while he hasn’t directed in almost twenty years, he is the executive producer and star of the excellent television series Yellowstone, about a family ranch in Montana. If you aren’t watching this one, I highly recommend it.
Pursuing Passion Projects – Mel Gibson
Five years after Costner won Oscar gold with an epic period piece, it was Mel Gibson’s turn with Braveheart. This was Gibson’s second directorial effort (after the forgettable The Man Without A Face two years earlier). Like Costner, he faced enormous stakes in telling the story of William Wallace, the leader of Scotland’s independence movement in the 13th century. First of all, how does this movie even get made without Gibson’s star power and leverage? With complicated and bloody battle scenes featuring hundreds of extras (and horses!), no big-name actors in the film besides Gibson, and a storyline that doesn’t exactly scream “box office success.” But, what Braveheart had going for it was what typically does well with Oscar voters – a compelling period piece. It reminded me a little bit of Warren Beatty using his leverage as a successful actor to pursue his passion project, the Russian Revolution epic Reds, which Beatty produced, directed and starred in, winning Best Director in 1981. And like Beatty, Gibson was rewarded, winning Best Picture and Best Director for Braveheart.
After shifting back to acting for the next decade, in 2004 Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ, about the last days of Jesus. Gibson filmed the movie in Italy and chose to have the actors speak in the characters’ native languages, primarily Latin and Hebrew. The film included English subtitles, although initially Gibson didn’t want them, feeling that the audience knew enough about the story that they could follow the film without them, but he was overruled by the studio. Despite the controversy over the amount of violence in the film, it remains one of the most successful R-rated movies of all time. Two years later, Gibson directed Apocalypto, an adventure film in Mexico, featuring Native American and Mexican actors, speaking their native languages. The film was a modest success, although not as great as The Passion of the Christ. Of these three films, I’ve only seen Braveheart, so I can’t offer an opinion on the other two films, but what impresses me about this run of movies is the way Gibson took an uncompromising approach to his filmmaking, believing in his vision. He took another decade off before directing Hacksaw Ridge in 2016, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Director. While I can’t defend Gibson’s very complicated (to say the least) personal behavior these last several years, it’s hard to argue with his talent as a filmmaker. It brings up an interesting topic about revisiting films with actors or directors who (we now know) did some pretty terrible things in their personal lives. I’ll be covering this topic in my next installment of my favorite comfort movies.
The Big Bet No One Believed In – James Cameron
If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that I am a film junkie, including the business of making movies. For years, I was an avid reader of Premiere magazine, a monthly publication about the movie industry. I remember back in 1997 reading about the troubled production for James Cameron’s new movie that shifted the release date back several months. There were tales of budget overruns, exhausted cast and crew, relentless demands from the director, and battles with the studio about the length and cost of the movie. The article predicted it could be a major disaster and perhaps ruin Cameron’s career. The film was, of course, Titanic.
It’s easy now to see how everyone was wrong to doubt Cameron, but in the moment, there was talk that he could be the next Michael Cimino, who won Oscars for 1978’s The Deer Hunter, but suffered a major setback two years later when his western Heaven’s Gate became one of Hollywood’s biggest bombs. Cimino never recovered. Interesting side note: one of the reasons Costner had difficulty getting financing for Dances with Wolves was because studios didn’t want another Heaven’s Gate on their hands.
Cameron’s vision for Titanic was very ambitious, including having a replica ship and an enormous water tank built for filming. He meticulously researched details about the ship’s interior, working to ensure as much accuracy as possible was included for filming. He had developed a reputation as a very demanding director and a perfectionist on set with his actors and crew. As difficulties with the challenging filming wore on, the budget ballooned to over $200 million, panicking the studios who financed it, but Cameron stuck to his guns and never relented on this vision for the film. I think it’s safe to say that even Cameron couldn’t envision the success that Titanic would become. It was a MASSIVE hit commercially, when it was released in December 1997, propelling lead actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet into superstardom. It became the highest-grossing film of all time, a record it held for 12 years until Cameron’s Avatar broke that record. Despite a running time of over three hours, the film’s box office also benefited from many people seeing the film multiple times. Titanic would go on to win eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cameron, tying the record for most wins for any film.
Cameron was fortunate to have already been a successful director (following Aliens, The Abyss, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day) when he made Titanic. While the studios were nervous about the rising budget, they knew he could deliver, as he had in his previous films, always pushing the boundaries, especially when it came to ground-breaking special effects. While he took risks in making Titanic, that adventure is dwarfed by what he is doing with Avatar, released in 2009 to more box office success. Disclaimer: I’ve never seen it and have no intention to – it’s just not my thing. After the success of Avatar, plans were quickly announced for two sequels. That was subsequently expanded to four sequels. He is still working on the sequels, with the first one planned to be released in late 2021. I’m really curious if this will work. It will be over a decade since the first film – will there be an audience that is passionate enough to go see Avatar 2? I guess stranger things have happened – heck, I’m excited for the Top Gun sequel, which will be 35 years after the original when it is released next year, and we all know the long legacy of the Star Wars franchise. I guess we’ve been wrong to doubt James Cameron over the years – it probably wouldn’t be smart to start doubting him now.
That’s it for this week. I’ll be back for part two next week (unless we have another tropical storm!). Thanks again for reading and if you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.
Thanks Steve for your blog this week and I look forward to reading this each time you write one!