{"id":336,"date":"2015-02-13T16:16:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T00:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=336"},"modified":"2015-02-13T16:16:50","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T00:16:50","slug":"but-what-i-really-want-to-do-is-direct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=336","title":{"rendered":"“BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"images\"<\/a>\u00a0Scratch anyone who works in Hollywood, and what will you find inside?<\/p>\n

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Nothing, you answer.<\/p>\n

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Well, that\u2019s not really fair.<\/p>\n

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In many cases, you\u2019ll find ruthless ambition. \u00a0In others, unbridled arrogance. \u00a0In still others, an ego of monumental proportions.<\/p>\n

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It varies from individual to individual.<\/p>\n

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But the one thing you\u2019ll almost always find is a desire to direct.<\/p>\n

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Interview a star, a big-time producer, a hot screenwriter, or even the craft services person who serves coffee on the set, and at some point you\u2019ll hear that familiar refrain: \u201cBut what I really want to do is direct.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I myself have been guilty of a single-minded pursuit of that ever elusive goal\u2014foiled in one instance, by food poisoning; in another, by an earthquake; in yet another, by the sudden rise of reality tv.<\/p>\n

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What, you ask, is the appeal?<\/p>\n

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Why does everyone is Hollywood want to direct?<\/p>\n

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The best answer is to be found in an overlooked masterpiece of filmmaking known as The Stuntman.<\/em><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the story of a Vietnam vet on the run from the law, who takes refuge with a film company shooting a World War I melodrama. Forced to replace a stuntman whose death he inadvertently caused, he risks his life again and again in a series of impossible stunts for director Eli Cross.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s an existential comedy which portrays man as utterly alienated, life as a chase with death nipping at your heels, and the world as a trap where nothing is what it seems, no one is what he appears to be, and free will is an illusion\u2014a world presided over by a jokester god who takes great pleasure in manipulating his creations.<\/p>\n

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That god, of course, is the director\u2014Eli Cross played by Peter O\u2019Toole in a performance that equals his Lawrence of Arabia, a performance he claimed he modeled upon David Lean.<\/p>\n

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Eli is omnipresent.<\/p>\n

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He lurks in darkened hallways, descends and ascends in his helicopter, swoops down out of nowhere in the bucket of his camera crane.<\/p>\n

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He is also omniscient.<\/p>\n

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Nothing escapes him. Whatever his actors think or say or plan or do, he knows.<\/p>\n

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And he is omnipotent.<\/p>\n

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When, at the end, the stuntman decides to defy Eli and take charge of his own life, Eli manipulates him into doing precisely what Eli wants.<\/p>\n

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No one, not even a studio executive, can challenge him. If the suits try to cut his picture, \u201cI\u2019ll kill them. I\u2019ll kill them and eat them. I hate to waste anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Eli is God.<\/p>\n

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No, he\u2019s bigger than God.<\/p>\n

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As he himself so eloquently puts it, \u201cIf God could do the tricks we can do, he\u2019d be a happy man.\u201d<\/p>\n

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So there you have it.<\/p>\n

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The director as God.<\/p>\n

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Is it any wonder that most Hollywood types want to direct?<\/p>\n

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But, you insist, Eli Cross isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n

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He\u2019s a fictional character.<\/p>\n

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All right, you want real, I\u2019ll give you real.<\/p>\n

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A friend of mine is a writer for a major Hollywood journal. He recently did a profile of one the biggest, most successful, most acclaimed directors in town.<\/p>\n

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The day after the profile was published, he received a six-page, single-spaced typewritten letter from the director listing the changes he wanted the writer to make\u2026in this article that had already been published!<\/p>\n

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Directors are control freaks, and they try to exercise the same control in their daily lives that they do on the set.<\/p>\n

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It often doesn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n

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I wonder.<\/p>\n

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Do you suppose that this urge to control had anything to do with the fact that David Lean, who was\u2014you\u2019ll remember\u2014the model for Eli Cross, was married six times?<\/p>\n

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I just picked up Lean\u2019s monumental biography.<\/p>\n

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Well, actually, I couldn\u2019t pick it up.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s too heavy.<\/p>\n

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Requires a forklift to move it around and a steel easel to hold it.<\/p>\n

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When (if?) I finish it, I\u2019ll let you know the answer to the question I raised.<\/p>\n

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In the meantime, trust me, directors are people who want to be in control, and if you\u2019re not one of those people\u2026<\/p>\n

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FUHGEDDABOUDIT!<\/p>\n

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