Dumbass Rides Again

Perhaps you didn't realize it from my recent "column", but Ben Shapiro is an idiot. A week after infecting our brains with his list of Top 10 Overrated Directors, which reads the like the drivelings of a mentally-challenged IMDBer, Shapiro gives us a new piece, listing the Ten Greatest Directors. I'm not going to take too much issue with his list, although it's a pretty basic group of directors, but it's worth noting for his combination of apologia and defensiveness over his last column.

Last week, I stirred some folks up with my Top Ten Most Overrated Directors of All Time... And by “stirred some folks up,” I mean faced down a virtual lynch mob.

Poor you! You get paid for stirring folks up with asinine film lists, and then mean Internet peoples call you names! You have the hardest job in the world, I tell you what.

Okay, some of these comments are pretty mean, but still, if you don't want mean Internet people to flog you, you'd better show more taste and talent than the average denizen of IMDB. Or else forfeit your salary to charity or something.

Who knew that Aronofsky supporters were fans of the film Fury?

Gratuitous esoteric cultural reference? Check.

If you think about it, though, this doesn't even make sense, given that Fury is very much an anti-lynching movie. But as we've seen before, the degree to which Mr. Shapiro's brain repells logic is truly astounding.

A few quick items in response to that piece. First, it was not about “bad directors”...but about overrated directors.

Yeah, we get the distinction, although if you're going to do nothing but bad-mouth them, I'd say that's as good as calling them bad.

Alfred Hitchcock is nowhere near the worst director ever (I was probably too harsh to label him “slightly better than mediocre”), but it is a travesty to label him the greatest director of all time, as so many have.

Yes, an opinion contrary to yours, O Learned One, is clearly a "travesty".

Before you accuse me of hypocrisy, let me be clear that I'm mocking this guy not for his opinions, but his utter inability to argue a point, grasp logic, or write. When your criticism of Raging Bull amounts to "it's gross", you've forfeited my respect.

The same holds true for David Lean (I appreciate Great Expectations, Brief Encounter, and swaths of Bridge Over the River Kwai, I just think he doesn’t deserve to make the top 20 list)

Do you still think Brief Encounter is "half-an-hour too long"? Granted, I wouldn't mind overmuch if you cut out the stuff with Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carrey.

Second, I neglected three directors who clearly should have made the list: Roman Polanski (somebody stop the Chinatown cult!), Spike Lee (how can he make race relations this dull?), and Tim Burton (damn you for ruining Sweeney Todd).

So your apologia amounts to trying to piss off more people.

I'm glad you didn't bring up Polanski though, because you'd probably make some self-satisfied rant about his pedophilia.

Rebecca and Suspicion are the same film, not Notorious and Rebecca;

Well, that's less of a reach than what you were previously claiming, but that's still no more than case than Notorious and Topaz being the same film.

the Orlando Bloom reference was to Black Hawk Down, not G.I. Jane

You mean Orlando Bloom isn't a woman? Could have fooled me.

Now, to the real question:

"How do I have a job?"

the top-ten greatest directors of all time

Oh.

Wait a minute, isn't this the guy who said in his last article that the auteur theory was "idiotic"? What is this article if not a celebration of auteurism?

Ben, maybe you want to familiarize yourself with the concepts of "logic" and "consistency". If you have a moment.

This is truly a rough decision – there are at least two score great directors who could make this list.

If you want to be really technical there are probably hundreds of directors worthy of consideration for such a list. But okay.

Here is my one basic criteria: directors who provide me the most viewing pleasure over the course of their career.

Damn, and my list of favorite directors was based on the "one basic criteria" of whom caused me the most pain!

That means telling a great story in the best possible way

So nothing about cinematography, camera work, acting, art direction, any of that? Gotcha.

Subjective? Sure. Deal with it.

This from the guy who says that it's a "travesty" that someone could think Alfred Hitchcock is a great director. What were saying about logic and consistency?

It's all subjective, though, and I'm sure there's someone in the Universe besides your daddy who thinks you're a good writer.

I’ll admit that this list skews toward older directors, not because older movies are generally better than newer movies (though I think they are), but because directors in the period 1920-1960 generally made more movies, which means more opportunities for directors to shine.

I would strongly disagree with the concept that quantity equals quality, but okay.

I’ll start by explaining why certain directors are not in the top ten.

So a pre-emptive apologia this time around. Nice. This must mean your list is really bad.

Francis Ford Coppola: He had a period of unbelievable creative magic. Within a ten year period, he made Finian’s Rainbow (1968), a charming musical; The Godfather (1972), which requires no commentary; The Conversation (1974), perhaps the creepiest movie ever made; The Godfather: Part II (1974), which matches its predecessor in quality; and Apocalypse Now (1979), a mad journey into the heart of darkness. Then he was done. How this talented filmmaker went from The Godfather to the atrocity that was Jack (1996) is utterly bewildering. It was tough to keep him off the top ten list. It was even harder to boot someone from that list to make room for him.

I only take issue with this because that the Godfather films alone are so friggin' awesome as to qualify Coppola for the list. Coppola has a much smaller number of films than, say, Hitchcock, and I'd say his batting percentage is about the same.

Peter Jackson: I believe Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to be the finest directorial effort of all time, surpassing even Citizen Kane.

I'll let this speak for itself. Still, I might argue that "the finest directorial effort of all time" would earn one a place on the list of greatest directors.

King Kong was overlong and CGI-obsessed

Compared to what, the modest, tightly-paced character drama that was Return of the King?

Orson Welles: Citizen Kane requires no explication – it is justifiably seen by many as the greatest directorial job ever. His Othello is similarly creative and inspired. The Magnificent Ambersons follows the pattern. But Welles destroyed himself and his career, and the fates should never forgive him for wasting his unparalleled talent.

Nothing on Touch of Evil or Chimes at Midnight or The Trial or F for Fake? Welles' life after Kane was extremely rough, but that doesn't in any way diminish the work he did put out.

Stanley Kubrick: Overrated

That was your last list, numbnuts. Keep focused on the topic at hand.

Fritz Lang: M is the best foreign language film ever made. Period.

No.

Perhaps if I’d seen more Lang, I’d put him up in the top ten (the only other films I’ve seen of his are Fury and The Big Heat), so I’ll claim ignorance here.

Just here? Don't be modest!

Fred Zinneman: Perhaps the best conventional director of all time – a man who simply puts on camera what needs to be there. He’s not the artist that any of the top ten are, but he did create The Day of the Jackal, A Man for All Seasons, Oklahoma!, From Here to Eternity, and High Noon, a list to be reckoned with.

Good on ya, mate, you got one right!

Victor Fleming: How hard was it to come up with this list?

It completely destroyed your faculties of reason and coherence, apparently.

John Huston: The best adventure director of all time, responsible for The Man Who Would Be King, Moby Dick, The African Queen, and The Maltese Falcon. Again, not enough versatility to put him over the top.

What. What? WHAT!?!

Okay, let's take a look at what he just said.

The first three films would qualify under the general rubric of "adventure" films, despite the difference in time and setting. But The Maltese Falcon is a friggin' film noir! What "adventure" does anyone go on there?

This isn't even to mention Huston's Westerns (Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), social dramas (The Asphalt Jungle), musicals (Moulin Rouge, Annie), romantic character dramas (The Dead), etc. Not all of them are all-time masterpieces, but surely you'd agree that Huston's resume spans a large number of genres.

No versatility. You need a dictionary, boy.

I'm thinking of starting a petition to get this guy fired and out on the street. In these hard economic times, lots of people need work, and when there are people starving, Ben Shapiro should not have a job writing for Big Hollywood.

That is all.