The death of the all-powerful director | Hacker News Reader

The death of the all-powerful director

theringer.com

28 pointsapollinaire25 comments

Steven Soderbergh made his own cut of Heaven's Gate and posted it on his blog. He says he was obsessed with the film and felt compelled to re-edit it. In my opinion, it's quite a good film in the re-cut form.

As his note says at the beginning, "I acknowledge that what I have done with this film is both immoral and illegal." But you know, he's Soderbergh.

https://extension765.com/blogs/soderblog/heavens-gate-the-bu...

I'd love to see more examples of this, both with Heaven's Gate and other films. Some films have the right idea and filmed material, but were edited suboptimally. It's also informative to see how a director like Soderbergh approaches this; it seems commonly accepted in music, so why not film?

But is it immoral? From the artistic perspective obviously not. Artist (painters, sculptors, architects, composers) can sell and recreate their work ad infinity. Even scientist in many fields nowadays rehash the same idea in many papers. And for film, with the massive economics involved, this suddenly is immoral?

Certainly the appropriation of someone's creative output can be immoral.

>From the artistic perspective obviously not

I am not sure how you see that art production is exempt from the simple principle that authorship = ownership. Sure there are grey areas. One of the hardest jobs I have had as an art teacher in a university is defining (and explaining to students) a visual plagiarism policy.

Ah that's a good point. In my example I thought of the original authors expanding on a theme. Wouldn't that be the same for Soderbergh, except that by economics he is not the sole author = owner? So how should morality come into play when ownership is divested and possibly limiting of artistic freedoms of the principal artist(s). And who might the principal artists be in film. I'm mainly saying the morality argument is a lot more diverse in film and immoral is too strict in my perspective.

Correcting myself: Soderbergh was not involved in Heavens gate so the argument is less applicable. Still, say I paint a set of artistic variations on Mona Lisa (or a more current work) - am I stealing or interpreting. Isn't interpretation a strong theme in arts?

I think the limits for appropriation in art production are defined by intentions. We fairly assume that Soderburgs intentions were good. The contemporary British artist Glen Brown makes exact copies of paintings that he admires, yet they sell as original Glen Brown artworks.

In honor of this movie, Kevin Costner's "Waterworld" was dubbed "Kevin's Gate" by press at the time.

In all seriousness, Cimino's magnum opus was just one of many high profile disasters that resulted from directors being given complete creative freedom throughout the 70s.

It turned out that having the suits breathing down the necks of filmmakers was, perhaps, not such a bad thing afterall.

In moderation, maybe. I can make a good case that the greatest movies of all time were made in the 70s because of that freedom. Jaws, space odyssey, clockwork orange, alien etc

Apocalypse Now

The Conversation, Badlands, The Godfather, &c

If anyone hasen't seen Badlands, you should.

I used to think it was the charisma of Martin Sheen that made the movie, but have changed my mind over the years.

It's beautifully filmed.

It's hard watching Kit do some of the bad things he did though.

Watching it I felt like I lived in that midwestern town. I could almost feel the heat, and such. I belive it was Texas?

Martin Sheen also did a movie with Linda Blair called "Sweet Hostage". It not the masterpiece of Badlands, but a good movie. I haven't seen on tv for years though. I thought it was good?

2001 was made in 1968 - definitely a precursor to the New Hollywood era though very much stylistically apart

The New Hollywood era is generally considered to begin with 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, following the accidental but hugely successful US mainstream release of the 1966 British film Blow Up. Kubrick’s career straddles the eras, so he doesn’t belong to the young crop of new directors, e.g. Scorsese, Mallick, Coppola, Spielberg, that defined the movement, but I think it’s fair to say Kubrick’s output from the late 60s onward, to include 2001, absolutely leveraged the creative freedom studios were relinquishing to directors and writers.

60's and 70's. I don't know why that period was so magical. Not just movies, but all arts.

All art works better when it's pushing against constraints. But I would take the film of the '70s, as flabby and weird and bloated as it ended up, over any other decade.

> It turned out that having the suits breathing down the necks of filmmakers was, perhaps, not such a bad thing afterall.

Art often benefits from editing — as this Soderbergh anecdote illustrates.

That doesn't mean you want a "suit" as an editor.

> It turned out that having the suits breathing down the necks of filmmakers was, perhaps, not such a bad thing afterall.

Motion pictures are massive collaborations. When one person gets obsessed with their "artistic vision" and thinking they are the key to the process, and reject all suggestions from others as how to make it better, the results are always poor. Whether this particular prima donna is the director, script writer, starring actor, etc., makes little difference.

Cimino was a painter before being a film maker. I think that this is the reason he had so much trouble closing on shots. He expected to have the same amount of control over the camera as he had over canvas. Having used both mediums I empathize. When moving from one medium to another You really have to recognize and accept the difference between them. Harder to do than it sounds.

I wonder if technology is going to have an increasingly transformative role in cinema, as the cost of production goes so low that budding auteurs can make watchable movies on a budget similar to what you pay for an engagement ring.

The obvious comparison is with music. But even there, while music was expensive to produce decades ago,it was never in a league with film.

The through-line in this story and all similar stories about movie budgets going out of control is that you can't Corral tens of millions of dollars without strings attached.

Collections like YouTube's dust and omeleto really showcase what can be done with a microscopic budget. Even special effects, which dominate the budget of big action pics, are getting way cheaper with tools like blender.

Finally, there's the tension between feature-length films and episodic storytelling, what we used to call television series.

All in all, we might be living through a golden age of visual Artistry. You never know when you're in the middle of a wave like that until decades later when the dust settles.

The technology is mostly not the limiting factor for movies any more. You can make a competent film using a $5-10k camera and lenses, some lights, microphones, and a computer program. There are youtubers that make a game of doing good movies with crappy cameras.

What's missing from that picture is expertise and skill on the part of the camera operators, the director, the actors, the writers, and other participants. And the marketing. Those are the bits that are expensive, not the tech.

I think the biggest difference is that film is a collaborative medium to an extent that music isn't, or at least doesn't have to be. I'm not sure there's an equivalent of the "bedroom techno producer" for film, unless the film they put out has a cast of 1 (who is also the director, editor, cinematographer, producer, etc.).

That said, directors such as Quentin Tarantino and cinematographers such as Roger Deakins have essentially made the same point[1] that technology (for example, shooting digital as opposed to shooting on 35mm film) will allow many more people to become filmmakers. Whether their output will be watchable or not is another story, and is a function of the artist's ability to piece together the shots they capture into an engaging narrative structure.

1. https://www.4kshooters.net/2021/05/01/quentin-tarantino-and-...

Collaboration is necessary for Live Action. But what about animated characters?

There were intimations of excesses and poor judgement in "Deer Hunter". The final parts are excessive imho.

Random factoid - Montana's then Governor had a one-line cameo, though I'm not sure which of the various edits of the film the scene survives

Movie soundtrack has some really nice tracks though

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