Anghus Houvouras thinks that creative freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be....
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I’m under the working theory that every filmmaker does their best work when they are given certain limitations. Every great filmmaker had a time when they were forced to be creative because of budget concerns or limited technologies. Rather than just throw money at the problem or manufacture something in post production, our greatest filmmakers were forced to come up with creative solutions to make their visions a reality. And I think the films are better for it. Friction and conflict are not always the start of a problem, but an opportunity to find a spark.
The first phase of being filmmaker involves dealing with constraints. How do you get around the limits? What creative solutions do you come up with to make things excellent? Maybe you're making a movie about a killer shark and your animatronic puppet blows up forcing you to limit the amount of screen time it gets. Or you're making a zombie movie and want central London to look empty. Instead of digitally removing every person from the shot, you simply block off a street and roll cameras.
For me, Phase One will always be the most interesting stage of filmmaking. The one where directors are forced to think their way out of problems. Where much of the film relies on a crew to find small ways to convey big ideas.
The second phase happens after a director has proven themselves in that limited creative environment and now are given more freedom. This is when the talent lines up and they have luxuries not offered to them before. The work is often good, sometimes even great, but lacks the kind of scrappy energy of their earlier work. There is still some creative friction as collaborators will still debate choices and challenge the filmmakers.
The third phase is when you ascend to a point where nobody says no. It’s a very small group. But once you’re here you have carte blanche. You do what you please. You get your budget, your two hour films bloat to two hours and twenty minutes. The editorial process stops and starts at the director's chair and ‘collaborators’ is a nice word for ‘the people I want to work with me on the project and not give me grief’. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan… There are not many names on this list. Very few filmmakers will ever get to Phase Three. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
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If you’re like me, you’ll always see a movie like Jaws, E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind as films of great imagination. And you’ll sit through something like War of the Worlds or Lincoln and see the glimmer of talent, but little of the drive or energy that made their Phase One films so great and their Phase Two films so good.
One of the interesting trends is seeing other filmmakers embrace the ideology of Phase Three filmmaking even though they haven't really passed Phase Two. Watch Cloud Atlas. That’s a movie made with a Phase Three mentality by guys who never achieved a hit in Phase Two. That is a huge, bloated mess made on their terms. Made by some directors who made exactly the movie they wanted even though it was a difficult to market, inaccessible, drifting mess. I suppose if you raise $100 million yourselves and do the damn thing yourself, you can skip to Phase Three. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the studios and the executives are an important counterbalance to the creative process and not the dream killers they are so often portrayed to be. Perhaps the resistance helps make directors more creative and forces them to consider their original impulses.
Hollywood studio executives and production companies catch a lot of flack. They are the easy fall guys when a production goes astray. But what kind of films would we be getting if every filmmaker existed in a vacuum without any system of checks and balances? What if every filmmaker was given the same kind of hands off approach of someone like Terrence Malick. Do you really want a summer full of movies like To the Wonder or The Tree of Life? I wouldn't make it to Memorial Day before I put a bullet in my brain pan.
James Cameron made some really awesome pictures in Phase One. And some spectacular ones in Phase Two. Avatar is a total Phase Three film, i.e. a bloated mess. And god bless the man, he has earned every success. But I’ll take Terminator any day of the week. Or Aliens. Or T2. Anything but Avatar. And in true 'Phase Three' fashion, Cameron is making two more.
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Peter Jackson was the King of Phase One. Dead Alive/Braindead. Meet the Feebles. Heavenly Creatures. Exceptionally good, unique films. Independent minded low budget excellence. The kind of guy who could make a compelling movie with limited resources. And then Phase Two he delivers the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Brilliant. Phase Three got us King Kong and three fucking Hobbit movies. No thank you.
These directors fight their entire careers to achieve a level of creative freedom. Once they have it, once the reigns are off, the films often become overly indulgent and in desperate need of some pruning. Phase Three gets you Hook and Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Phase Three gets you The Phantom Menace. Phase three gets you The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Lady in the Water, Dark Shadows, and The Dark Knight Rises.
The Dark Knight Rises is a film I enjoyed, but it would be difficult to call it a step forward after films like The Dark Knight and Inception. The Dark Knight Rises is a film with exposed seams. And I'm not even talking about story points or plot holes. I'm talking about scenes where villains fall to the ground when they aren't even punched. Sloppy little moments that wouldn't have made it into a movie like Memento. Because great filmmakers are obsessive in their early stages and they are challenged by the creative teams helping them bring the movie to life. After they are anointed as gifted filmmakers, people stop pointing out faults. It's hard to believe that a talented filmmaker with $250 million dollars would stage an action scene with sloppy fight choreography, but it happens. Why? Because they have become so successful that no one questions their judgement. I’m curious to see where Nolan ends up, but history is a pretty good prognosticator. Here’s hoping Interstellar bucks the trend.
Quentin Tarantino is one of the few filmmakers I can think of whose work has remained ridiculously consistent from Phase One to Phase Three. If to go from Django Unchained and trace a line back to Reservoir Dogs, you will find the most consistent voice in cinema today. Sure, Kill Bill was two movies when it could have been one and Django Unchained was twenty painful minutes too long. He’s still a guy who delivers movies with the audacity and fervor of a guy with no money and nothing to lose. He's still creatively solving problems. I think that demands a little respect.
The truth is creative types work better with limits. Writers need deadlines. Filmmakers need a good a creative team who will challenge them. Everybody thinks the goal of an artist is to tear off the restraints and be free of conflict and challenge. But the best movies are often products of creative friction. Where there’s none there, it’s hard to find that spark.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon.
The first phase of being filmmaker involves dealing with constraints. How do you get around the limits? What creative solutions do you come up with to make things excellent? Maybe you're making a movie about a killer shark and your animatronic puppet blows up forcing you to limit the amount of screen time it gets. Or you're making a zombie movie and want central London to look empty. Instead of digitally removing every person from the shot, you simply block off a street and roll cameras.
For me, Phase One will always be the most interesting stage of filmmaking. The one where directors are forced to think their way out of problems. Where much of the film relies on a crew to find small ways to convey big ideas.
The second phase happens after a director has proven themselves in that limited creative environment and now are given more freedom. This is when the talent lines up and they have luxuries not offered to them before. The work is often good, sometimes even great, but lacks the kind of scrappy energy of their earlier work. There is still some creative friction as collaborators will still debate choices and challenge the filmmakers.
The third phase is when you ascend to a point where nobody says no. It’s a very small group. But once you’re here you have carte blanche. You do what you please. You get your budget, your two hour films bloat to two hours and twenty minutes. The editorial process stops and starts at the director's chair and ‘collaborators’ is a nice word for ‘the people I want to work with me on the project and not give me grief’. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan… There are not many names on this list. Very few filmmakers will ever get to Phase Three. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
One of the interesting trends is seeing other filmmakers embrace the ideology of Phase Three filmmaking even though they haven't really passed Phase Two. Watch Cloud Atlas. That’s a movie made with a Phase Three mentality by guys who never achieved a hit in Phase Two. That is a huge, bloated mess made on their terms. Made by some directors who made exactly the movie they wanted even though it was a difficult to market, inaccessible, drifting mess. I suppose if you raise $100 million yourselves and do the damn thing yourself, you can skip to Phase Three. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the studios and the executives are an important counterbalance to the creative process and not the dream killers they are so often portrayed to be. Perhaps the resistance helps make directors more creative and forces them to consider their original impulses.
Hollywood studio executives and production companies catch a lot of flack. They are the easy fall guys when a production goes astray. But what kind of films would we be getting if every filmmaker existed in a vacuum without any system of checks and balances? What if every filmmaker was given the same kind of hands off approach of someone like Terrence Malick. Do you really want a summer full of movies like To the Wonder or The Tree of Life? I wouldn't make it to Memorial Day before I put a bullet in my brain pan.
James Cameron made some really awesome pictures in Phase One. And some spectacular ones in Phase Two. Avatar is a total Phase Three film, i.e. a bloated mess. And god bless the man, he has earned every success. But I’ll take Terminator any day of the week. Or Aliens. Or T2. Anything but Avatar. And in true 'Phase Three' fashion, Cameron is making two more.
These directors fight their entire careers to achieve a level of creative freedom. Once they have it, once the reigns are off, the films often become overly indulgent and in desperate need of some pruning. Phase Three gets you Hook and Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Phase Three gets you The Phantom Menace. Phase three gets you The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Lady in the Water, Dark Shadows, and The Dark Knight Rises.
The Dark Knight Rises is a film I enjoyed, but it would be difficult to call it a step forward after films like The Dark Knight and Inception. The Dark Knight Rises is a film with exposed seams. And I'm not even talking about story points or plot holes. I'm talking about scenes where villains fall to the ground when they aren't even punched. Sloppy little moments that wouldn't have made it into a movie like Memento. Because great filmmakers are obsessive in their early stages and they are challenged by the creative teams helping them bring the movie to life. After they are anointed as gifted filmmakers, people stop pointing out faults. It's hard to believe that a talented filmmaker with $250 million dollars would stage an action scene with sloppy fight choreography, but it happens. Why? Because they have become so successful that no one questions their judgement. I’m curious to see where Nolan ends up, but history is a pretty good prognosticator. Here’s hoping Interstellar bucks the trend.
Quentin Tarantino is one of the few filmmakers I can think of whose work has remained ridiculously consistent from Phase One to Phase Three. If to go from Django Unchained and trace a line back to Reservoir Dogs, you will find the most consistent voice in cinema today. Sure, Kill Bill was two movies when it could have been one and Django Unchained was twenty painful minutes too long. He’s still a guy who delivers movies with the audacity and fervor of a guy with no money and nothing to lose. He's still creatively solving problems. I think that demands a little respect.
The truth is creative types work better with limits. Writers need deadlines. Filmmakers need a good a creative team who will challenge them. Everybody thinks the goal of an artist is to tear off the restraints and be free of conflict and challenge. But the best movies are often products of creative friction. Where there’s none there, it’s hard to find that spark.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon.