The 10 Best Directors in Hollywood

(This is a guest post by Ben Shapiro, the esteemed author of, among other things, "The Top 5 Conservative Characters on the First Episode of The Wire.")

This is for all those people who read my list of the most overrated directors and demanded to know who my ten favorite directors were. Here they are:

8. David Zucker wrote and directed An American Carol, which made fun of Michael Moore.

7. The movie United 93, because the truth is that the story itself is conservative. Americans didn’t apologize for foreign entanglements or the American way of life on Flight 93—they just rolled. The movie is almost a documentary, so it might as well have directed itself.

6. Michael Bay is hated by snobs who hate fun, but The Island hated on stem cell research and that makes him a great director.

5. Ramón Menéndez, whose direction of Stand and Deliver proves the same thing the film does: not all Mexicans are worthless.

4. The guy who directed Taken, the film that proves that the French approach is never the correct approach because the French always suck.

3. Despite later directing a film about rap, which is crap, Curtis Hanson also directed L.A. Confidential, which teaches us not to worry about Miranda because the ends always justify the means.

2. George P. Cosmatos pretended to direct films like Tombstone and Rambo: First Blood Part II, both of which brilliantly depict morally unambiguous worlds in which the good guys always were white and the enemy is always appropriately caricatured.

1. John Milius, the genius behind Red Dawn, is a cinematic genius because his work appeals to my ideological preconceptions and is genius. Just look at that picture? How could he not be a genius?

Comments

[JPool]

I don't always "understand" your sarcasm and I couldn't find a picture of Ramón Menéndez either, but is there is reason why you have Luis Guzmán in his place?

Also, with the first two directors on Shapiro's list, he's ... he's not wrong.

[James T]

Well, you know what they say about a stopped clock.

[P.T. Smith]

Also, with the first two directors on Shapiro's list, he's ... he's not wrong.

But claiming that Mann is overrated because he is all style and no substance is absurd. Yes, he is all style and no substance, but that is what anyone who rates him high comments on. It's what he is. You have to claim not that he is overrated, but that the whole vein of film taste that highly values style above all else, or at least finds that pursuit interesting, is overrated.

In fact, that is what so much of this list consists of. "Scorcese makes me uncomfortable with his mean characters driving taxis on his streets while raging, like a bull." "That ending that is purposely not an ending is not an ending!"

[P.T. Smith]

I'm getting more upset by this kid as the day passes. You can be pretty sure that someone is foolish and an idiot and clueless when your reaction consists of, "Who is this kid!? He's a kid! He has no idea what he's talking about. Just give him a bit more experience and maybe he'll figure it out." Then you pause, breath, remember that you are only 23, look up his bio, find out that he is 25. Then you get sad.

Then you actually read his intro, which you had skimmed the first time, and wonder if how any date he's taken to a movie tolerates the constant drool that likely oozes from his lips onto the woman's shoulder as he tilts his head to the side and stares mindlessly at the screen.

I write. I want to write. I would love to write a film. I believe writers to be underrated when it comes to a film. Yet I know I am not capable of directing a film. I watch my favorite directors in wonder, amazed at what a brain and sense of art has to do to actually direct a film, to take it beyond a screenplay. BAH!

[marriotr]

I find myself more upset by how Ben Shapiro describes his reasoning and choices than the actual choices he makes. I'm not sure if that means something about me, or him.

[Martin Wisse]

Well, this is the kid who a couple of years ago was proud of having chosen to remain a virgin until marriage, when everything he wrote and any picture of him clearly showed he hadn't chosen virginity, it had chosen him.

Young master Ben is the ultimate product of wingnut homescholing, no better than a parrot that has learned to regurgitate his parents' cliches in different contexts.

[thusgone]

i tend to read all of this kind of stuff as a sort of performance art/"meta" exercise. to me it represents the logical extension of the argument (often made by my various uncles) that the only american movies worth valuing are those that star john wayne.

it's mystifying and nonsensical to read this until you realize that the point is not to name the ten best directors, but to apply the wingnut style to a treasured liberal arts-lover's trope: the pop culture ten best list. it also gives shapiro an opportunity to stick his thumb in the eyes of all those hated elites.

either that, or this guy has a really, really dull set of critical tools in his toolbox.