How Important is the Director?

T

Triscuit

New member
I've always wondered this. Why a director gets so much credit for a film, almost as much as leading cast members?

I always have an issue with American Beauty. I think this is a great film, but it's great because it's a very good story, with a clever script and fantastic actors. Yet Sam Mendes receives plaudits as if it's all his own work when it was actually written by Alan Ball (I assume this isn't the squeeky voiced one though).

I'd say, the most important things to make a great movie are, inthis order:

Story
Script
Actors
Director

Now, I'm no fancy-pants hot shot film buff, I've never even been to film school(!), so I'd appreciate people's opinions on this!
 
I think that the director is very important, but I do agree that the writer is almost always underrated.
I think that maybe the writer should be given most of the credit for writing the film shouldn't they?

If Shakespeare and Dickens are celebrated for being some of the best writers in history and are given huge credit for writing their books and plays, then why in the 20th and 21st centuries aren't writers of films, which are after all just another medium used to tell a story, given the same level of appreciation and kudos as the great writers throughout history?
 
It's usually a good sign if the story & the script are by the director - you know you're going to get one person's vision. It's not an infallible formula though.

It does seem odd that in the theatre it's the playwrite who's the top guy, while in cinema it's the director. In the old days it used to be the producer who ran the show - writers and directors were treated as if they only just ranked above the caterers!
 
Films are team efforts, but the director is crucial. Think of train without a track, or an orchestra without a conductor.

RegarRAB

Mark
 
Call me weird but i arrange my dvd collection by director. More often than not you can expect a certain style by them. Take Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, David Cronenberg and so on. You can expect a certain 'quality' with them at the helm.

Of course it's a team effort, but for a visual style, you can know beforehand what you'll be getting if you know the director.
 
If that makes you wierd then so am I, I do exactly the same.

Of course the director is a crucial part of the filmaking process, and more than anyone else in the setup will dictate the tone of the film.

Tim Burton, Stephen Spielerg, The Coen Brothers, (all seperate sections of my DVD colection) all have made great and not so great films, but each have a certain something about them that you expect when you watch their films.
 
The director is crucial to a film. It's what he sees in his (or her) minRAB eye that makes a good film or a bad one. Added to that will be his ability to wring exactly what performance he wants from the actors involved.

With Sam Mendes as the example, he saw the script and had the ability to visualize it. For example, when Kevin's character is staring at his computer screen near the beginning, Sam had graphics made for the pc that showed bars, like he was in a prison cell. He wanted them in because the character was feeling trapped by his life. It's all the little touches that add up to a great movie, and the director is key to that.

Good music is important in a film, the best directors realise that as illustrated again by American Beauty, or Quentin Tarantino's musical choices for his films.

Then there's a good directors ability to know which shot is the perfect one, to understand that a film can be understated, to know when to go in for the kill, etc.

Without a good director tying everything in together a film is doomed.
 
But both the story and the script are often mucked about. changed considerably on behalf of directors and producers. In terms of 'power' storywriters and scriptwriters often have comparably little.

Different films are made in different ways. Often it's the producers which are the driving forces behind films, escpecially in large blockblusters.
 
I absolutely agree with this but I also suspect its hard to screw up a movie when it has a great script surely, although I'm sure some directors have managed to do so.
 
I agree the director does ultimately hold the final say, but making a film is very much a team effort, and if the team players are not very good then the film will not be. I personally think that all the emphasis on the director is just a good way to market a film. There were a lot of talented people working on Gladiator, but its easy to sell by saying A Ridley Scott Film then listing all the departments that played their parts.
 
I'm sorry, I'm not with you on that. It depenRAB on the film and how the film has evolved. in a lot of great films both the 'writer' and the director are the same, like Woody Allen, Tarantino, Oliver Stone, etc etc...the list goes on.

In a lot of cases, the writer is just someone who works at the behest of the producers and director, and is there to rewrite at thier whim.

It's fairly simple. How many scriptwiters, or even storywriters can you name, ones which arn't directors as well....not many.
 
I wonder how many films have a "great script" in the sense that you are conscious of the quality of the writing. Not a lot, I suspect. Many films are just a collection of fairly mundane lines held together by the quality of the structure, which in turn is what the director turns into a successful film.

We remember the great lines but there are relatively few films where every word is a winner.
 
Ok..I'll pick one..David Mamet. Wrote (from his play) Glengarry Glen Ross, a brilliant film.

Director is a bloke called James Foley, not done many other films.

That is an example of a script being the most important thing in that particalar film.
 
But the point I'm making is that there are very few writers which create a script, hand it over to the producers/director which then go away and just create what the writer has done.

Often it's the producers or the directors which dicate to the writers how they want things to be changed or altered, sometimes hugely. Which effects the storyline/characters/dialogue.
 
But that's the crux of the entire point.....the suggestion that the writer is underrated.
The fact that the writer is underrated in the first place is the very reason why many people won't be able to remember the writer's name.
If they were given more recognition then more people would know their names.

When it comes to the Academy AwarRAB, and most film awarRAB for that matter, the big gongs go to the 'Best Director' and the 'Best Film'. Why isn't 'Best Writer' put right up there on equal footing to create a trinity?
Best Screenplay or best writer awarRAB tend to not be as highly promoted and come somewhere much lower in the running order, somewhere behind best actor and best actress. They're almost treated as an afterthought, as though they grudgingly have to mention them.

I think that the writer should be treated as being of much higher importance than the actors. Actors are replaceable, and often are replaced, or are second or third choices for the role.
I'm not taking anything away from the work of the actor who may provide an excellent performance, but I think that the writer should be right up there with the director in terms of recognition.

The director uses the writer's script as a template to follow. If there is no writer then there's nothing for the director to direct.
The writer dictates what happens, the director follows that story, the writer scripts the dialogue, the actors speak that dialogue.
If there is no writer then nothing exists, there is no film.
 
It varies of course but, firstly, it's very common for scripts to go through a lengthy development process....and often a Director will have significant input into that.

Then obviously a key aspect of pre-production is casting. Again the Director is invariably heavily involved. Get the casting right and production is potentially much easier.

Following that, the actual shooting is often where the Director really imposes his vision (albeit in collaboration with the cast and crew). The script is essentially 're-written' to a greater or lesser extent in this process.

Finally the Director will normally supervise post-production where the film is 're-written' again...maybe several times if testing dictates it. At the end of all this, there may not be too much left of the first draft of the script.
 
But when the writer is there to produce what the director and the producers want, and has little to no creative control, then its difficult to assign both good and bad to what he produces.

Of course writing is important, but 'writers' per se often aren't, rightly, or wrongly.

What often happens, is that a writer will produce, a first draft of a filmscript. Then the producer will come along, and say, 'hey, we'd like to make that film', but we want X,Y,Z to be changed/altered whatever.....now from that point, the power of the writer becomes smaller and smaller...unless of course they're the director/producer etc as well.....
 
You're kidding aren't you? What do they have Oscars for?

Your namesake did pretty well off the back of doing the screenplay for a certain kiRAB film in the early 90s, before that he was only known as the creator of some dodgy B-movie about vampires ;)

As for your second line, a writer has no control over how an actor delivers his/her dialogue, a director does.
 
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