directors - film makers
directors - film makers i like or wish to explore further
List activity
2 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
13 people
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Wesley Wales Anderson was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Texas Ann (Burroughs), is an archaeologist turned real estate agent, and his father, Melver Leonard Anderson, worked in advertising and PR. He has two brothers, Eric and Mel. Anderson's parents divorced when he was a young child, an event that he described as the most crucial event of his brothers and his growing up. During childhood, Anderson also began writing plays and making super-8 movies. He was educated at Westchester High School and then St. John's, a private prep school in Houston, Texas, which was later to prove an inspiration for the film Rushmore (1998).
Anderson attended the University of Texas in Austin, where he majored in philosophy. It was there that he met Owen Wilson. They became friends and began making short films, some of which aired on a local cable-access station. One of their shorts was Bottle Rocket (1993), which starred Owen and his brother Luke Wilson. The short was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was successfully received, so much so that they received funding to make a feature-length version. Bottle Rocket (1996) was not a commercial hit, but it gained a cult audience and high-profile fans, which included Martin Scorsese.
Success followed with films such as Rushmore (1998), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and an animated feature, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). The latter two films earned Anderson Oscar nominations.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle, Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.
Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.
In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and (The Seafarers (1953), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1952) in California.
Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.
Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying.
Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).
The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.
Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining (1997).)
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.
In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.
Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.
While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.
Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.
After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discreetly about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.
How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. He had a much-publicized affair with Isabella Rossellini in the late 1980s.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
The younger brother of Joel, Ethan Coen is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning writer, producer and director coming from small independent films to big profile Hollywood films. He was born on September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some films of the brothers- Ethan & Joel wrote, Joel directed and Ethan produced - with both editing under the name of Roderick Jaynes; but in 2004 they started to share the three main duties plus editing. Each film bring its own quality, creativity, art and with one project more daring the other.
His film debut was in 1984 dark humored thriller Blood Simple (1984) starring Frances McDormand (Joel's wife) and M. Emmet Walsh in a deep story revolving a couple of romantic lovers followed by an insisting private eye. The film received critical acclaim, some award nominations to Ethan (best writing at the Film Independent Spirit Awards) and became a cult following over the years. Their second work was the comedy Raising Arizona (1987) starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a unusual couple trying to create their family by kidnapping babies from a rich family.
Miller's Crossing (1990) was the third film of the brothers, a mob drama with heavy influences from several criminal dramas and with a stellar cast that included Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Albert Finney, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro and Jon Polito (the latter three would become regular actors in the Coen's films).
Their views on the Hollywood era of the 1930's was the central theme is the great Barton Fink (1991), created from a writers block both brothers suffered during the making of their previous film. John Turturro stars as a writer who suffers from a breakdown when he's commissioned to a big budget Hollywood project. The film was a breakthrough for the Coens marking their first win at the Cannes Film Festival (Joel got the Palme d'Or) and the first time a film of their received Oscar nominations. The underrated comedy The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) was what followed; but no one could predict their next big and boldest move that would definitely put Ethan and Joel on the spotlight once and for all.
The comedy of errors Fargo (1996) was a huge critical and commercial success. With its crazed story of a man who hires two loonies to kidnap his own wife and a pregnant policewoman tracking the leads to the crime, Ethan and Joel came at their greatest moment that couldn't be missed. The film received several awards during award season and the Coen's got their first Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category. What came next was the underrated yet hilariously good The Big Lebowski (1998) starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, John Turturro and Steve Buscemi. Those masterpieces made their career in the late 1990's cementing the duo as one of the greatest writers and directors of their generation, if not, from all time.
The Odyssey retold for the 1930's in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000); the intelligent noir The Man Who Wasn't There (2001); the comedy Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and a remake The Ladykillers (2004) marked their way into the early 2000's. Certaintly of period of minor hits and some downer moments.
The big return was with the highly acclaimed No Country for Old Men (2007), where the brothers swooped at the Oscars with three wins: Best Picture, Screenplay and Writing, an adaptation from the Cormac McCarthy's novel.
A Serious Man (2009), Burn After Reading (2008), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Hail, Caesar! (2016) and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) were the subsequent films, all well received by audiences or got awards recognition, mostly nominations.
A shift from tone and career move was writing with other writers and for another directors: for Angelina Jolie's Unbroken (2014), for Spielberg in Bridge of Spies (2015) and George Clooney in Suburbicon (2017).
As for personal life, Ethan has been married to Tricia Cooke since 1990. Tricia works as an assistant editor in several of the Coen brothers films.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel married actress Frances McDormand in 1984 and had an adopted son.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Gustaf Hammarsten was born on 2 September 1967 in Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden. He is an actor, known for Brüno (2009), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Together (2000).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Born and raised in the small riverbank town of Jenny Lind in Calaveras County, California, Edward Lucky McKee grew up mostly in poverty with little access to modern forms of entertainment. When McKee was age ten, he used an old video camera to videotape his sister's birthday party which put him on a path for an interest in film making. At age 12, he and a friend made their own version of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) which they first saw at the local cinema.
While attending the Calaveras High School, McKee and classmate 'Kevin Ford' qv) solicited a commission from the school board to videotape a documentary for their senior class. After graduation, McKee traveled to Los Angeles in 1993 and enrolled himself in a film writing program at the University of Southern California's School of Film-Television. McKee made several friends during his four years at USC, most of whom helped with the development of his directing films. After leaving USC in 1997, McKee returned to his hometown to look for work. In 1999, he collaborated with making his first feature movie, which was a very low budget horror film titled All Cheerleaders Die (2001) with the production help from former USC classmate Chris Sivertson. Shot on high definition videotape over a period of two four-day weekends, All Cheerleaders Die (2001) was a splatter comedy about the rivalry between a group of high school jocks and four cheerleaders who accidentally die and are brought back to life to seek revenge.
While attending USC as a sophomore, McKee wrote the screenplay for a short film titled 'Fraction', as well as the screenplay for the feature movie May (2002) which was inspired by 'Mary Shelley''s Frankenstein and the moodiness of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), as well as the lyrics to a song from Nirvana. May (2002) tells the story about a lonely and repressed young woman working as a veterinarian assistant who is slowly pushed into insanity and murder by her quest for companionship. Having recognized McKee's talent while attending USC, classmate Marius Vaysberg developed the script through his newly founded "2Loop Productions" and offered McKee a production deal to make it into a feature film. With the backing of "2Loop Productions" and a cast of independent film actors who included Texas-born Angela Bettis in the starring role, who was Kevin Ford's wife, as well as Jeremy Sisto and Anna Faris. Filming was made in late 2001 in Los Angeles, and finished just in time for the January 2002 Sundance Film Festival where it had a one-night showing where it was picked up by Lions Gate for a limited theatrical release the following year before making its mark on home video and DVD as a cult following ever since.
In 2005, McKee was offered by United Artists to direct the David Ross script The Woods (2006), another horror film shot in and around Montreal, Canada and starring some first-rate actors like Patricia Clarkson and Bruce Campbell about a haunted woods influencing the actions of a teenage girl attending an all-girls high school located in isolation within the woods. But the film ended up being shelved after United Artists was bought out by Metro Goldwyn Mayer with a release date still impending.
Also in 2005, McKee was brought on by Mick Garris as one of the many film directors to direct an episode for Masters of Horror (2005) with the episode "Sick Girl" which starred May (2002) star Angela Bettis and B-horror film star Erin Brown (aka: Erin Brown) which was written by Sean Hood. McKee describes the episode as a dark comedy-romantic version of The Fly (1986) featuring Angela and Erin as two young lovers whose romance is complicated by the arrival of a lethal insect.
McKee then stepped in front of the camera for his first acting role in the starring role of Roman (2006), a psychological drama-thriller which is based on his own script and directed by May (2002) star Angela Bettis. McKee describes Roman (2006) as a sort-of alternated version of May (2002) with him playing a lonely guy whose obsession with a woman he sees passing by his residence every day leads to things going horribly wrong.
Most recently, McKee has agreed to direct Red (2008) an adoption of a Jack Ketchum novel about a lonely war veteran who goes crazy after his pet dog is killed. McKee has also worked as a producer for Chris Sivertson for the 2006 feature film The Lost (2006) also based on a novel by Ketchum.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
E. Elias Merhige was born in 1964 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Begotten (1989) and Suspect Zero (2004).- Writer
- Director
Alexandre Bustillo was born on 10 August 1975 in France. He is a writer and director, known for Inside (2007), The Deep House (2021) and Among the Living (2014).- Director
- Cinematographer
- Editor
Marian Dora is known for Melancholie der Engel (2009), Blight of Humanity (2018) and Das Verlangen der Maria D. (2018).- Director
- Writer
- Production Designer
After studying at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s, Jan Svankmajer started working as a theatre director, chiefly in association with the Theatre of Masks and the Black Theatre. He first experimented with film-making after becoming involved with the multimedium productions of Prague's Lanterna Magika Theatre. He began making short films in 1964, and continued working in the same medium for over twenty years, when he finally achieved his long-held ambition to make a feature film based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Alice (1988)). He has also exhibited his drawings, collages and 'tactile sculptures', many of which were produced in the mid-1970s, when he was temporarily banned from film-making by the Czech authorities. He has been a card-carrying member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Caveh Zahedi was born on 29 April 1960 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He is a director and writer, known for I Am a Sex Addict (2005), Underground Zero (2002) and A Little Stiff (1991). He has been married to Amanda Field since 2003. He was previously married to Suzanne Smith.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Born in Lvov, Ukraine; then he moved with his father Miroslaw Zulawski to Czechoslovakia and later to Poland. In the late 1950s, he studied cinema in France. In the 1960s, he was an assistant of the famous Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. His feature debut The Third Part of the Night (1971) was an adaptation of his father's novel. His second feature The Devil (1972) was prohibited in Poland, and Zulawski went to France. After the success of his French debut That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) in 1975, he returned to Poland where he spent two years in making On the Silver Globe (1988). The work on this film was brutally interrupted by the authorities. After that, Zulawski moved to France where became known for his highly artistic, controversial, and very violent films. Zulawski is well known for his ability to discover and "rediscover" actresses. Romy Schneider, Isabelle Adjani and Sophie Marceau played their best parts in his films.