You make the picture

[karmattack]

So, I don't know who else reads Hollywood Elsewhere, but Jeffrey Wells posed an interesting thought in this week's column (or rather broadcast it because the question was sent to him in an email).
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
[imagine] if we lived in an old-fashioned studio system in which the bosses (not the old-fashioned Jewish rug-merchant variety, but enlightened X-factor types like..... well, you choose) could cherry-pick any director working today and assign him or her to direct a film, whether he or she really wants to or not.

No independence, no free agenting....all the competent producers and directors working for the movie factory like blue-collar guys, and if they don't do the movies they're told to do, they're fired.

It's an inflated fantasy, of course (even the big-studio bosses of the 1930s didn't have this much control) but really....wouldn't it be great to call up von Trier on the set of the currently-shooting MANDERLAY in Sweden and tell him, "Okay, you're off this. I know it's late in the game and you're already shooting, but Peter Jackson is taking over. He needs to do something smaller and more character driven. If he stays on the CG big-budget track he'll be burnt out in five years.

"You're on KONG. It starts in August, and none of the DOGVILLE crap with the chalk marks on the floor and the invisible dog."


[/ QUOTE ] So, if given the choice, what would be first on your agenda and why?

[Efexeye]

I would order Paul Verhoeven to direct the film version of Punisher: Born. I would tell him it should be very bloody, and he would say "no shit, dumbass, everything I do is bloody". Then I would say "Good- we understand each other".

I would also command the Coen brothers to start making funny, quirky movies again, and get away from the mainstream crap they've put out with their last 2 efforts.

I hate mainstream crap from talented directors.

EDIT: I would also make it a point to bitch-slap whoever greenlit (greenlighted?) "White Chicks". How the HELL does garbage like that get made, and who the FUCK goes to see it?

*shakes head*

I hate one-joke movies, too.

[Matt1]

I'd fire Stephen Sommers, Michael Bay and McG, for reasons self evident.

[karmattack]

Both good calls -- with Umph on the Coen Brothers remarks. They have another Lebowski in them somewhere and they need to put that shit on celluloid and cut out with the riff-raff. No funny schtuff, Joel and Ethan.

I think my first order of business would be to put Jason Lee and Kevin together on Fletch and just be done with all that business. Check and check. The fact that this is up in the air at all just boggles the mind. Harvey, get into my office. Why? Cuz you're fuckin FIRED!

I would also make Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Ghost in the Shell, Blood: The Last Vampire) re-direct Heavy Metal 2000. We would lose the Julie Strain influence in the female lead and go for a more artful feel like the original Heavy Metal tried to do. There would, of course, be more nudity. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif

Dare I say....Lucas booted from Star Wars. Spielberg redirects Episodes I, II, and III.

Christopher Nolan would break Tim Burton's fingers and remake Batman. OK, I'll settle for one out of two.

Flawless, originally written and directed by Joel Schumacher, would have slight rewrites done by Paul Thomas Anderson who would also reshoot it. The cast, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Deniro, would stay the same.

Ah, so much to change, so little time. This will have to be multiple postings.