The First-Timer's Cut is the Cheapest

A good director needs rigorous training. It should be remembered that Orson Welles, who was only 25 when he made Citizen Kane, already had years of experience directing highly imaginative productions for radio and theater. And he had tested himself by mounting Shakespeare and H.G. Wells, not 30-second spots for Levi's or Budweiser. If impressive first-timers are more likely to emerge from England, that is because British directors cut their teeth on ambitious plays or documentaries for the BBC, whereas American directors orchestrate the canned laughter on "The Golden Girls" or "Murphy Brown." Music videos may have been a good training ground for the director of Madonna's Truth or Dare, 26-year-old Alek Keshishian, but they are not likely to be of much help to anyone charged with telling an intricate story. Even an unassuming film like Cool As Ice, designed as a vehicle for singer Vanilla Ice, proved to be beyond the capabilities of David Kellogg, age 39, a graduate of USC's School of Cinema/Television whose professional experience was limited to directing videos and commercials.

Where is one likely to find the best new directors? Traditionally a lot of great directors began as screenwriters. There's a certain logic to allowing writers to direct, since they have a storytelling instinct that is at the heart of all good moviemaking. But in the past, writers-turned-directors like Preston Sturges, John Huston, Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Nunnally Johnson and Robert Rossen had worked as screenwriters for several years on as many as nine pictures before they actually donned a director's cap. They were extremely knowledgeable about the entire moviemaking process by the time they directed. Now a writer may be given a chance to direct after writing one hit movie, and it's not surprising that the results are fairly primitive. After writing the sappy but successful Beaches, Mary Agnes Donoghue was hired to direct Paradise, which had the visual style of a Hallmark card.

Film editors--David Lean and Hal Ashby, for example-- have often made good directors, because editing, like writing, is a form of storytelling, and editors understand the rhythm of film. Cinematographers have not generally fared as well, though Nicolas Roeg is a spectacular exception, and Barry Sonnenfeld's success on The Addams Family will certainly encourage others to try. But many other fine cameramen, including Jack Cardiff, Freddie Francis, William Fraker and John Alonzo, haven't been able to sustain a directing career, perhaps because their pictorial skills are really only incidental to effective cinematic storytelling.

There's another group that has lately turned to directing-- the producers. This is a bizarre development. David O. Selznick, Sam Goldwyn and Hal Wallis never dreamt of directing, no doubt because they had all the power they wanted as iron-fisted producers. The diminishing role of the producer has led people like Irwin Winkler, Aaron Russo and Lili Zanuck to try their hand at directing, so far without much success. If they were given more respect as producers, they probably wouldn't feel the urge to branch out. Ideally, producers can play a valuable role in checking the wilder fantasies of the director. But the growing power of directors during the last 20 years has reduced many producers to the role of lackey. They might do better to spend their energies strengthening their own position in the filmmaking process rather than trying to move into a profession for which they have no special aptitude.

Most of the first-time directors to have emerged in the last couple of years probably won't survive any longer than the young directors who stormed Hollywood after the success of Easy Rider. Some of those who do luck into a hit may quickly turn just as temperamental as the prima donna directors whom the studios have been trying to escape. That prospect is frightening, but not as depressing as the specter of a new wave of films authored by Katzenberg or Tartikoff. The wholesale hiring of first-time directors grows in part from a healthy desire to make filmmaking more collaborative and responsible. But the outcome is more likely to be moviemaking by executive fiat and a proliferation of potboilers eviscerated by front office interference.

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Stephen Farber, our regular film critic, is the author of Hollywood Dynasties, and wrote "Female Trouble" for our July '91 issue.

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