Does being a workaholic as a director diminishes your body of work.

[William Rosario]

There are currently two contemporary directors on the game who are always receive a lot of heat from moviegoers. Those directors are Spike Lee and Woody Allen. They are also the two directors that consistently direct a film every year.

I often ask myself why? Why are these two (considered by critics) great directors the recipients of criticism by fans of film?

Well, I came to the conclusion that maybe it is because they bring more oportunities, being that their body work is extensive, than let's say Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne or let's say PT Anderson.

All five of them considered great auteurs of cinema, their only diference is Woody and Spike have more than 15 films under their belt and QT, Payne and Anderson have an average of 4.

Four films doesn't give you a whole lot of room to miss.

So, the question (again) is this: Does being a workaholic as a director diminishes your body of work?

[Cronos]

yes i think it does, with directors that dont churn out films every year such as with Tarantino they wait for the stories that they feel will make great films while directors like Spike Lee and Woody Allen dont filter out the crap

the only other director i can think of that churns films out at light speed is Takashi Miike who can make between 2-8 films a year, i have yet to make a dent in his filmography but from what few films of his i have seen they have been great (it would be great to hear some other opinions about him)

[Shockwave]

Yes, it does without a doubt.

I still think they can turn out pretty damn fine results, but overall i beleive it hurts, and has hurt, many fine directors.

[The Postmaster General]

This reminds me of the old days like in Ed Wood, where they made pictures as fast as they could.

I think it can diminish your body of work, but also it can give you more room to experiment.

The thing that is different about Spike Lee?Woody Allen than Tarantino is the difference in their movies. Tarantino has made 4 GREAT... um.... Crime movies.

Whereas, Spike Lee and Allen take on different genres, themes and moods.

Those directors who make few films, I think make more of a niche for themselves. I know QT is doing a war epic, and when i see it, I'll know if it is drastically different, or not. But overall, I think it'll just be like Reservoir Dogs set in WW2 - a bunch of cool talking guys trying to run some scam, or set up some kind of thing to get out of jail -- I don't know. To me, it's kind of like Wes Anderson, and how The Life Aquatic is his action/adventure movie , but it's still a lot like his other movies.

I don't think Allen and Lee get into that territory as much. Yes! They do have very distinct styles that permiate through all their films, but they do attempt to take on different moods and themes.

Scorcese always seemed like a good medium for me -- between making movies with few breaks, and hitting different genres.

[Scarface98.9]

It certainly increases the chances of harming a reputation if they're putting movie after movie after movie out, and can saturate the cinema if they're that frequent. Spacing themselves out, perfecting movies, etc. can make the movies before, but there are good and bad to being infrequent and being really frequent

[Dorrito the Imp]

woah, the thought of Tarantino making a mediocre/ bad film bugs me. It almost seems - and here's the disturbing part - possible... if he were to churn out so many so fast. I definitely think directors should be choosey about their material, but honestly, I've never seen a Woody Allen film I didn't like (no one agrees w/ me on that one). So that's got to say something for directoxen like Allen and Lee

[silentasylum]

I, like I'm sure most movie fans do, prefer quality over quantity.

I can't name a movie by those three directors that i didnt like (Tarantino, Anderson, and Payne.)

[Tuukka]

Originally posted by BubbaStrangelove
Scorcese always seemed like a good medium for me -- between making movies with few breaks, and hitting different genres.

Steven Spielberg comes to mind. He is definitely a genre-hopper, but it's not uncommon for him to deliver even 2 movies a year. Jurassic Park and Schindler's List came out on the same year. So did Minority Report and Catch Me If You can. On average he seems to deliver one movie every year.

I think this year he will also deliver the Munich Olympics movie along with War Of The Worlds. If I'm not mistaken, that other movie is coming out in December.

[bob]

I pretty much agree with BubbaStrangelove; Lee and Allen, and Allen in particularly, try many different things with each successive film.

Allen has fans of just his early slapstick films, fans of his Bergmanesque films, and fans of his relationship movies. Something tells me that if Tarantino went in a vastly different direction with any one of his films A) He wouldn't do it as well, B) People would chastise him.

And, for the record, Allen has over 30 films, plus ones that he's just written or starred in without directing.

[Fisting Ackbar]

Originally posted by Cronos
the only other director i can think of that churns films out at light speed is Takashi Miike who can make between 2-8 films a year

Apparantly Miike directs everything that's offered to him, so his artistic merits behind every project are certainly questionable in that perspective.

[Adornado]

I'd say it's only logical that if a filmmaker is churning a movie or two out every year, the overall quality of their body of work will decline. Tarantino has made 5 movies of varying degrees of greatness in 13 years...I'd much rather that then if he made 10 movies and only a handful of them were great.

[wheresdonnie?]

The difference between Spike Lee and Woody Allen is that, although they both have large bodies of work, Lee is hit and miss whereas Allen has been consistently off for a while. Up until Melinda and Melinda, he made about two decent films in the past ten years (Bullets over Broadway, Sweet and Lowdown). He had a run of three extraordinarily unfunny films with Small Time Crooks, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Anything Else. Spike Lee makes the odd shit movie, but his recent output includes the superb Summer of Sam and 25th Hour.
Also, not having a large body of work doesn't mean that you don't make the odd shit film. James L. Brooks had a spotless resumé of about five films before the recent, and very crap, Spanglish.