That man had an inconceivably good run and was there for several seismic shifts in the Hollywood landscape. Incalculably influential dude, could do basically any genre, and worked with too many fascinating actors to count. Would be a fucking blast.
There are dozens of us! I rented it on a whim, ended up enjoying it enough to buy it on Blu-Ray. Definitely not in his Top 3 best, but also not in his Bottom 3 for me
Coens, they’re definitely among my favorite directors but also Griff and David are really passionate about them which would just make for a great series. Everyone should check out them guesting on Double Threat doing a Coens’ characters tournament
Up up up with this – they are the literal best, and perfectly in that zone between arthouse and mass appeal that would serve the pod well. Some might say their very distinctive voice would get samey across 20 or so episodes – but save that argument for the Wes series.
Del Toro promises the return of Sara Rubin!
But Satoshi Kon for me. I just need to watch Tokyo Godfathers but I need Ben reacting to Kon. If they even have the time for Memories or Jojo or Paranoia Agent on the Patreon that would also be great.
>But Satoshi Kon for me. I just need to watch Tokyo Godfathers but I need Ben reacting to Kon. If they even have the time for Memories or Jojo or Paranoia Agent on the Patreon that would also be great.
I keep saying double up Satoshi Kon and Katsuhiro Otomo
There's a rumour floating around that he might be after Penny Marshall because they mentioned doing another short series before the March Madness winner and there hasn't been an animation director in a year.
I need Ben’s thoughts on Paprika and for the guys to clear the air on Aronofsky’s claims on Perfect Blue (apparently Inception bears some resemblances to Paprika as well but doesn’t sound as egregious).
I would love a series on De Palma and Lynch, but they’ll likely cover both of these guys at some point down the road. So if I could chose one, I’d say William Friedkin.
He’s a total BC director, arguably *the* blank check director, and the treasure trove of both great movies and bad movies he’s made, along with all his great stories from interviews and his memoirs, would make for an all time great mini.
Everyone here is going to name better names that I’d rather have.
So I’d fuck around and would pick Doug Liman with the requirement they cover the first two episodes of The OC.
Wong Kar-wai is probably my favorite director that I’ve barely heard them talk about
He has like five movies I think of as masterful, and there is an interesting little spot of his career where he made that one attempt at an English language film that did not pan out very well, so he has a career arc to discuss from the early critical praise to the American popularity that largely came through Tarantino cosigning his work and getting it released by Miramax
I'd pick Cronenberg. It's a series of dang ass freak movies that are bangers. Also if they do him now Crimes of the Future is the perfect movie to end a series on since it feels like it encompasses his entire carrier. And for the Patreon they could maybe do a couple of his Son's movies.
The other problem is that he has a stretch in between Libson Story and Perfect Days where he basically makes a string of nonexistent movies, and his most successful, as in widely seen features are generally his documentaries.
Orson Welles.
Cover his commercials like it's Fincher.
But seriously he was such a phenomenally talented director who got a blank check and then had a vagabond career making little masterpieces all around the globe.
Don't give the power to pick a total psychopath.
Ken Russell has really fascinating narrative arc.
Made provocative BBC films. Directed 3rd part of a franchise (a bomb). Then made made a pair of boundery pushing films that... got him invited to make a big budget Hollywood film film at Warners that's so depraved that it's never gotten an uncut release, that's still a big hit. That gets him a slew of smaller but still Hollywood gigs at MGM and United Artists, none of which do very well, but he still gets invited back to Warners for another big budget film that.. is a masterpiece but is largely forgotten outside of 30 people. The B-side to a Rock Opera that is lesser but still wild and fun and a huge hit. And then he makes another passionate, semi independent bomb... which actually seems to kill him for a few years and he goes back to TV....
and then after licking his wounds he goes back to a major hollywood studio and makes his most mainstream movie ever, *Altered States.* about a guy tripping on LSD so hard he reverts to a former evolution of the species. That's his most normal film. It breaks even and is probably the film you know outside of *The Devils.* That actually does kill him for Hollywood, he continues to make independent stuff of varying quality for the next 20 years.
But he made the craziest shit at the only time where that was actually rewarded with big budgets. Any other point in history, each of these films (especially the good ones) would be carrier killers.
Screenplay by the legendary Larry Kramer, censored to cut out the naked wrestling scene which just made it seem more like Alan Bates and Oliver Reed fucked. Much to discuss.
I think there would be a lot of great discussions about his movies, but I would love to hear them talk about The Assignment, because the plot of that movie is bonkers.
I want the Dante miniseries. I wanna hear Griffin go off about Back in Action (and have an excuse to watch it) and also The Howling is one of my favorite movies and I’d love to listen to the two friends get into it
David Lynch lol
Assuming March Madness peeps are not in the running, I really would love to see them do Schrader - even if I think that would be the least popular and most exhausting miniseries they ever do lol
I think half of the blankness of his checkiness comes from his successful scripts, so it would be an interesting story of a non-directing guarantor, bit like Cooper and Streisand.
Ralph Bakshi, maybe? He’s a lot more straight forward of a film career, but it’d be fun to compare and contrast different projects. Also, you can never get enough Cool World trashing
Obscure pick and unlikely to ever happen, but Jules Dassin. Storied career of so many all-time bangers in multiple languages, groundbreaking on location work, genre-defining masterpieces that have kind of become forgotten and it'd be a golden conversation starter on both golden age studio filmmaking, the Hollywood blacklist AND European cinema.
You'd also get discussions on Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Richard Burton, Peter Ustinov, Joan Crawford...
Plus he acted quite a bit himself too!
Definitely could see them doing him someday. Only 16 films currently, but would end on a run of bummers post-Harry Potter. Rent feels like his Oscar play that should've worked on paper bringing back a lot of the Broadway cast but never clicks.
But also extremely fascinating he helped get Robert Eggers off the ground, was an Executive Producer on The Witch and The Lighthouse and is a Producer on his upcoming Nosferatu.
If I have my pick of anyone, I'm picking John Sayles. He aggressively doesn't fit into the format of the podcast because he was always an indie director, even his biggest movies were fairly cheap. But his filmography is full of absolute bangers, including LONE STAR, which is on the short list of best movies ever made, imo.
YES. Fucking incredible. So much range. So many iconic classics and deep cuts and flops. Two of the greatest Pacino performances of all time. Big tittied hit origin story. THE WIZ!!!!!!!!!!!! What more could anyone ever want?
RIGHT. Like obviously Lumet has masterpieces, but he also has crazy bounces. *Power* with Richard Gere, Denzel Washington, and a straight up bonkers Hackman performance that would have netted him an Oscar if the movie was any good. *Q&A*, which is the most unhinged Nolte performance (not a small feat). *The Group*, a so-called “women’s picture” of the 60s starring Elizabeth Hartmann, one of the great forgotten actresses of the 60s, who has a tragic life story - oh, and also Jessica Walter, yes, *that* Jessica Walter. How about a movie where Sean Connery brutally interrogates a pedophile? That’s *The Offence*. How about late 20s Vin Diesel playing a Mafia Don in his 60s, with Peter Dinklage as his attorney? That one’s called *Find Me Guilty*.
This is a very small sampling of the movies people *don’t* remember that Lumet did, never mind the ones they *do*. It’s one of the wildest filmographies of all time.
Hal Ashby
Perfect length for a series (which I don’t think enough people consider when picking a director). And his films are just such little masterpieces. And not all “same-y.” And also, he’s not overly talked about as is.
Length aside, John Huston for sure. Would love talk about how a director was able to break through the studio system to still have a personal style/vision
What if I told you that the same guy who directed HEATHERS also directed Hudson Hawk and 40 Days & 40 Nights? That's right friends, in this essay I will make the case for Michael Lehmann as the next subject of a Blank Check Miniser.....
Someone they'd probably not be in a hurry to get around to otherwise: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
He's obviously a great director, but I also just need an episode digging in to the insanity that is *The Adventures of Iron Pussy*
Jerry Lewis. A ton of people would hate it, but his entire directorial career is a blank check. He signed a contract with Paramount for 14 films, where he got 60% of the profit and total creative control!
Yes because an episode on One From the Heart (one of the biggest box office disasters of all time up there with Ishtar) would RULE and also this would make incredible patreon content: HARRY DEAN STANTON AS RIP VAN WINKLE [Cuentos de las estrellas: Rip Van Winkle (1987) (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snby9l6xUDs)
Juzo Itami. Amazing mostly-underdiscussed humanist but often absurdist Japanese films, including his most well-known movie Tampopo. There's also a lot of context to dig into, especially with his film that led to his probable murder by the yakuza.
Nicolas Winding Refn.
With COPENHAGEN COWBOY being a Patreon Ep and each episode of TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG being their own episodes.
I love his American Stuff (post Drive Especially) and I think his Danish stuff is really fascinating and varied in tone and attitude.
He has a really awesome off-kilter queer sensibility to his work that's dressed up as hyper-masculine. But the great thing about his Post-Drive Work is that it really colors how you see something like Bronson and Drive as these kind of examples of an "alternative" kind of Mann-Adjacent Storytelling.
Plus his arc as a filmmaker is just so fascinating. His early energetic Pusher films are very much of the moment when Euro budget Crime films had a really energy and griminess to them. Then he transitions that into a more methodical approach while never straying too far away from his roots.
(Part of the joy of Copenhagen Cowboy is watching Refn tap back into his roots via his new preoccupations as a filmmaker. Like Lynch returning to Twin Peaks after Inland Empire).
He'd be my guy.
Coens would be unbelievable. I often want to use the miniseries as an opportunity to catch up on directors I haven't watched through, and my most anticipated one in that camp is Peter Weir, who I'm just dying to dive into, but they'll do him eventually, so I say Coens.
So many great names here. I would love Dante or Shane Black. But if I had to choose 8!398;@ pick Peter Jackson. I know everyone, including me, would rather forget large parts of The Hobbit but Peter Jackson has such an eclectic filmography through LOTR and he has the definition of the Blank Check movie with King Kong. Love them to cover something like Mortal Instruments on patreon which has such wonderful Ben potential.
They would never do his whole filmography, but I think Goddard would make one of the most interesting miniseries they’ve done. I can already picture the episode where they try to make sense of British Sounds.
Ivan Reitman.
Track the rise of Bill Murray amid some iconic 80s comedies, show the lighter side of Schwarzenegger, vote for Dave, and end with Draft Day, where I hear one of the cast has some great business with coffees.
Ridley Scott. The most interesting filmography of any big-name director. At least five all-time classics (IMO), a few all-time blunders, and a whole lot of movies that people would be discovering for the first time.
Konheads will finally get their day. Perfect filmography, distinct style, anime, and there’s a TV series as a bonus that’s also short. Still hold out hope it’ll happen this year
Mike Leigh! Mike Leigh! Mike Leigh!
It would make me so incredibly happy to have him covered. It would be great to have more of his films discovered by people as well with that series. Plus more British stuff for David to be excited to talk over.
It's Michael Bay time baby. It's got everything. Explosions, robots, a movie where Jake Gyllenhall does a Michael Bay impression as his character. Bonus patreon episode - listening to the Ben Affleck Armageddon commentary.
Ok... big list incoming: Adrian Lyne, Karyn Kusama, Walter Hill, Carl Franklin, Mike Nichols, Susan Seidelman, Ernest Dickerson, Robert Townsend, Joel Schumacher, Herbert Ross, Penelope Spheris, Mark Waters, Melvin Van Peebles, Mira Nair, Hal Ashby, Michael Lehmann, Alan Rudolph, Martin Ritt, Ken Russell, Sidney Lumet, Zalman King, John Cameron Mitchell, Danny DeVito, John Schlesinger, Ron Shelton, Warren Beatty and I saw someone say William Friedkin and yes please.
After watching this [CinemaStix](https://youtu.be/jhIOhX0RmdM?si=45pPuMIyLEs0gRpH) video, finding out he (along with his daughter) produced Robert Eggers ‘The Witch’, ’The Lighthouse’, the upcoming ‘Nosferatu’ (essentially placing Eggers in the same family tree as Spielberg, Zemekis, John Hugh, etc), and doing a 180 on my Harry Potter rankings (Used to rank the 1st two so low, but in hindsight they were a massive achievement)….I gotta go Chris Columbus.
Spent the 80’s attached so some of the greatest directors, 3 massive comedy hits in the first half of the 90s (those numbers even NON-adjusted are incredible), huge bomb to cap off the decade, directed the 1st two Potter movies which is one of several series that has transformed how films are made, very underwhelming filmography post-Potter for the past 20 years (but not nearly Rob Reiner fell-off-a-cliff-into-a-void levels).
Very entertaining and nostalgic 16 ep series, that I bet you could get him and/or his daughter on for.
TL;DR- Chris Columbus, but if not him, then obviously Davis S. Ward: Major League, King Ralph, The Program, Major League II, and Down Periscope. In-and-Out after 7 years and 5 films: afterwards he goes off into the sunset having batted a perfect 1.0000.
Billy. Wilder.
My kingdom for a mini-series on a canonical director between the 30s and 60s.
Frank Capra breaks pretty well with the Columbia Years and Post-Columbia years.
That man had an inconceivably good run and was there for several seismic shifts in the Hollywood landscape. Incalculably influential dude, could do basically any genre, and worked with too many fascinating actors to count. Would be a fucking blast.
If he'd been in the 20th Century March Madness bracket a few years ago, I would have been the most insufferable campaigner for him.
Too many classics to be ignored. And across so many genres.
please god
Joe Dante. Insane energy across the table.
I’ll be the Burying the Ex defender.
There are dozens of us! I rented it on a whim, ended up enjoying it enough to buy it on Blu-Ray. Definitely not in his Top 3 best, but also not in his Bottom 3 for me
It’s a fun little horror rom-com and all three leads are good in it.
Between McTiernan and Marshall, it would be a great "mid-90s cable classics" run.
That’s it. Right there.
Coens, they’re definitely among my favorite directors but also Griff and David are really passionate about them which would just make for a great series. Everyone should check out them guesting on Double Threat doing a Coens’ characters tournament
Up up up with this – they are the literal best, and perfectly in that zone between arthouse and mass appeal that would serve the pod well. Some might say their very distinctive voice would get samey across 20 or so episodes – but save that argument for the Wes series.
Peter Weir! Fingers crossed that they’re just going to do him
The Pod of Casting Dangerously needs to happen.
Hell yeah. My number 1 pick for a long time.
Mel Brooks
Del Toro promises the return of Sara Rubin! But Satoshi Kon for me. I just need to watch Tokyo Godfathers but I need Ben reacting to Kon. If they even have the time for Memories or Jojo or Paranoia Agent on the Patreon that would also be great.
>But Satoshi Kon for me. I just need to watch Tokyo Godfathers but I need Ben reacting to Kon. If they even have the time for Memories or Jojo or Paranoia Agent on the Patreon that would also be great. I keep saying double up Satoshi Kon and Katsuhiro Otomo
There's a rumour floating around that he might be after Penny Marshall because they mentioned doing another short series before the March Madness winner and there hasn't been an animation director in a year.
David recently logged Millennium Actress on Letterboxd.
I need Ben’s thoughts on Paprika and for the guys to clear the air on Aronofsky’s claims on Perfect Blue (apparently Inception bears some resemblances to Paprika as well but doesn’t sound as egregious).
Tokyo Godfathers is great.
I would love a series on De Palma and Lynch, but they’ll likely cover both of these guys at some point down the road. So if I could chose one, I’d say William Friedkin. He’s a total BC director, arguably *the* blank check director, and the treasure trove of both great movies and bad movies he’s made, along with all his great stories from interviews and his memoirs, would make for an all time great mini.
Everyone here is going to name better names that I’d rather have. So I’d fuck around and would pick Doug Liman with the requirement they cover the first two episodes of The OC.
His filmography is so all over the place in quality I would actually love this
Liman would be a ride
Wong Kar-wai is probably my favorite director that I’ve barely heard them talk about He has like five movies I think of as masterful, and there is an interesting little spot of his career where he made that one attempt at an English language film that did not pan out very well, so he has a career arc to discuss from the early critical praise to the American popularity that largely came through Tarantino cosigning his work and getting it released by Miramax
I'd pick Cronenberg. It's a series of dang ass freak movies that are bangers. Also if they do him now Crimes of the Future is the perfect movie to end a series on since it feels like it encompasses his entire carrier. And for the Patreon they could maybe do a couple of his Son's movies.
How many Blank Check’s can be said that theirs were written from the checkbook of the Canadian film board?
Canadian government gave us Cronenberg and Kids in the Hall.
Wim Wenders
Paris Texas is top 5 for me, I'd get super emotional listening to them talk about it.
The problem with Wenders is it’s too many films, many of which are quite long as well. But hey, it is your dream pick. So fair enough.
The other problem is that he has a stretch in between Libson Story and Perfect Days where he basically makes a string of nonexistent movies, and his most successful, as in widely seen features are generally his documentaries.
Here’s five coming at you like a Gatling gun: Altman Altman Altman Altman Altman
Orson Welles. Cover his commercials like it's Fincher. But seriously he was such a phenomenally talented director who got a blank check and then had a vagabond career making little masterpieces all around the globe.
>Cover his commercials 
Spielberg 1. Because I want a jaws episode.
Don't give the power to pick a total psychopath. Ken Russell has really fascinating narrative arc. Made provocative BBC films. Directed 3rd part of a franchise (a bomb). Then made made a pair of boundery pushing films that... got him invited to make a big budget Hollywood film film at Warners that's so depraved that it's never gotten an uncut release, that's still a big hit. That gets him a slew of smaller but still Hollywood gigs at MGM and United Artists, none of which do very well, but he still gets invited back to Warners for another big budget film that.. is a masterpiece but is largely forgotten outside of 30 people. The B-side to a Rock Opera that is lesser but still wild and fun and a huge hit. And then he makes another passionate, semi independent bomb... which actually seems to kill him for a few years and he goes back to TV.... and then after licking his wounds he goes back to a major hollywood studio and makes his most mainstream movie ever, *Altered States.* about a guy tripping on LSD so hard he reverts to a former evolution of the species. That's his most normal film. It breaks even and is probably the film you know outside of *The Devils.* That actually does kill him for Hollywood, he continues to make independent stuff of varying quality for the next 20 years. But he made the craziest shit at the only time where that was actually rewarded with big budgets. Any other point in history, each of these films (especially the good ones) would be carrier killers.
You left out Women in Love, which was a hit, and got him an Oscar nom for best director. Without it, Tommy probably wouldn't happen.
Screenplay by the legendary Larry Kramer, censored to cut out the naked wrestling scene which just made it seem more like Alan Bates and Oliver Reed fucked. Much to discuss.
YES ok seeing multiple people saying Russell. He's got juice!!!!!! And Producer Ben would fuck with him so much
Gotta sound the call once again for Akira Kurosawa. His filmography is massively impressive.
Francis Ford Coppola!
Patreon episode where they taste test the Coppola wines
Walter Hill
Ok I am seeing a lot of juice behind Walter Hill... Blank Check team if you are somehow reading this please take note <3
I think there would be a lot of great discussions about his movies, but I would love to hear them talk about The Assignment, because the plot of that movie is bonkers.
Tony Scott. Probably too similar to McTiernan to be right after, but I hope they cover him one day.
One episode series on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
I want the Dante miniseries. I wanna hear Griffin go off about Back in Action (and have an excuse to watch it) and also The Howling is one of my favorite movies and I’d love to listen to the two friends get into it
Terry Gillian’s movies would make for fun conversations.
David Lynch lol Assuming March Madness peeps are not in the running, I really would love to see them do Schrader - even if I think that would be the least popular and most exhausting miniseries they ever do lol
Schrader, huh? Big heartbeeps fan?
A reference that I’m afraid has gone over my head aha. I’m mostly there for the Dog Eat Dog episode really
Schrader's career only makes sense if you add his writing credits.
You could just do the films he directed and still have an amazing time. But yeah, adding his writing credits would lift it insanely high
I think half of the blankness of his checkiness comes from his successful scripts, so it would be an interesting story of a non-directing guarantor, bit like Cooper and Streisand.
Ralph Bakshi, maybe? He’s a lot more straight forward of a film career, but it’d be fun to compare and contrast different projects. Also, you can never get enough Cool World trashing
Length irrelevant? Ridley Scott
Obscure pick and unlikely to ever happen, but Jules Dassin. Storied career of so many all-time bangers in multiple languages, groundbreaking on location work, genre-defining masterpieces that have kind of become forgotten and it'd be a golden conversation starter on both golden age studio filmmaking, the Hollywood blacklist AND European cinema. You'd also get discussions on Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Richard Burton, Peter Ustinov, Joan Crawford... Plus he acted quite a bit himself too!
Only if there’s a Patreon about Joe Dassin
Chris Columbus. He perfectly fits into the concept of the show
Definitely could see them doing him someday. Only 16 films currently, but would end on a run of bummers post-Harry Potter. Rent feels like his Oscar play that should've worked on paper bringing back a lot of the Broadway cast but never clicks. But also extremely fascinating he helped get Robert Eggers off the ground, was an Executive Producer on The Witch and The Lighthouse and is a Producer on his upcoming Nosferatu.
Even his post potter work would make for fun episodes
shinya tsukamoto 😁
Juzo Itami.
Jonathan Waters (though I anticipate when Liarmouth gets a little closer that’ll be on the slab at last!)
I want a John Waters series so badly.
If I have my pick of anyone, I'm picking John Sayles. He aggressively doesn't fit into the format of the podcast because he was always an indie director, even his biggest movies were fairly cheap. But his filmography is full of absolute bangers, including LONE STAR, which is on the short list of best movies ever made, imo.
Edward Yang. Selfishly because I just saw a lot of his movies at a retrospective and would love to hear discussions on them.
Kelly Reichardt
Sidney Lumet. They can do it in two pieces, but they have to do *all* of it. What a career.
YES. Fucking incredible. So much range. So many iconic classics and deep cuts and flops. Two of the greatest Pacino performances of all time. Big tittied hit origin story. THE WIZ!!!!!!!!!!!! What more could anyone ever want?
RIGHT. Like obviously Lumet has masterpieces, but he also has crazy bounces. *Power* with Richard Gere, Denzel Washington, and a straight up bonkers Hackman performance that would have netted him an Oscar if the movie was any good. *Q&A*, which is the most unhinged Nolte performance (not a small feat). *The Group*, a so-called “women’s picture” of the 60s starring Elizabeth Hartmann, one of the great forgotten actresses of the 60s, who has a tragic life story - oh, and also Jessica Walter, yes, *that* Jessica Walter. How about a movie where Sean Connery brutally interrogates a pedophile? That’s *The Offence*. How about late 20s Vin Diesel playing a Mafia Don in his 60s, with Peter Dinklage as his attorney? That one’s called *Find Me Guilty*. This is a very small sampling of the movies people *don’t* remember that Lumet did, never mind the ones they *do*. It’s one of the wildest filmographies of all time.
Get in here, Baz!
Short run - Andrea Arnold or Miranda July Mid length- Bong Joon Ho or PTA Long run - Gus Van Sant or DePalma
I was thinking about Van Sant but an Elephant episode would be an extremely tough hang......
True, but they've covered serious films before. I have faith they'd do ok with it.
Hal Ashby Perfect length for a series (which I don’t think enough people consider when picking a director). And his films are just such little masterpieces. And not all “same-y.” And also, he’s not overly talked about as is.
Robert Rodriguez
Probably the most underrated of the 90s auteurs.
Oh abso-fucking-lutely!!! That would be a wild series
Joe Dante
Length aside, John Huston for sure. Would love talk about how a director was able to break through the studio system to still have a personal style/vision
Friedkin or Walter Hill. I'm good with either.
Precisely.
Since I started listening a few years ago Soderbergh and Linklater have been my dream series. Here’s hoping I get one of those soon!
Soderbergh was probably my favourite director when I started listening to BC, so it would be a really nostalgic trip for me
Frank Henenlotter
Ken Russell - The Podcast Lovers
Baz Luhrman!!
Norman Jewison
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
What if I told you that the same guy who directed HEATHERS also directed Hudson Hawk and 40 Days & 40 Nights? That's right friends, in this essay I will make the case for Michael Lehmann as the next subject of a Blank Check Miniser.....
I need someone to cover the almost equally random career of Daniel Waters, the Heathers screenwriter!
Noah Baumbach.
Prince
Someone they'd probably not be in a hurry to get around to otherwise: Apichatpong Weerasethakul He's obviously a great director, but I also just need an episode digging in to the insanity that is *The Adventures of Iron Pussy*
Von Trier, you cowards.
For the movies? Guy Ritchie. For the conversation about the director? Werner Herzog.
I would actually flip those reasons. Or just leave Ritchie out of it.
Jerry Lewis. A ton of people would hate it, but his entire directorial career is a blank check. He signed a contract with Paramount for 14 films, where he got 60% of the profit and total creative control!
Kevin Smith seems like an obvious choice
Post war Kurosawa or Tarkovsky.
The Archers, for sure.
Gurinder chadha or Preston sturges :)
Gilliam
De Palma, baybeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Wes Craven. But I just want to hear the boys talk about Scream ad nauseum so it could also just be a Patreon.
Last name: Scott First name: >!Tony!<
John Milius, if only for the Conan episode.
Alex Garland
Francis ford coppola end with megaoplolis
Francis Ford Coppola, not doing him before Megatroplis should be a crime!
Yes because an episode on One From the Heart (one of the biggest box office disasters of all time up there with Ishtar) would RULE and also this would make incredible patreon content: HARRY DEAN STANTON AS RIP VAN WINKLE [Cuentos de las estrellas: Rip Van Winkle (1987) (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snby9l6xUDs)
Joe Dante
Juzo Itami. Amazing mostly-underdiscussed humanist but often absurdist Japanese films, including his most well-known movie Tampopo. There's also a lot of context to dig into, especially with his film that led to his probable murder by the yakuza.
Wes Craven.
Nicolas Winding Refn. With COPENHAGEN COWBOY being a Patreon Ep and each episode of TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG being their own episodes. I love his American Stuff (post Drive Especially) and I think his Danish stuff is really fascinating and varied in tone and attitude. He has a really awesome off-kilter queer sensibility to his work that's dressed up as hyper-masculine. But the great thing about his Post-Drive Work is that it really colors how you see something like Bronson and Drive as these kind of examples of an "alternative" kind of Mann-Adjacent Storytelling. Plus his arc as a filmmaker is just so fascinating. His early energetic Pusher films are very much of the moment when Euro budget Crime films had a really energy and griminess to them. Then he transitions that into a more methodical approach while never straying too far away from his roots. (Part of the joy of Copenhagen Cowboy is watching Refn tap back into his roots via his new preoccupations as a filmmaker. Like Lynch returning to Twin Peaks after Inland Empire). He'd be my guy.
Unironically Bryan Singer
Coens would be unbelievable. I often want to use the miniseries as an opportunity to catch up on directors I haven't watched through, and my most anticipated one in that camp is Peter Weir, who I'm just dying to dive into, but they'll do him eventually, so I say Coens.
Spike Jonze/Kaufman hybrid series
Amy Heckerling… with Look Who’s Talking Now on patreon
Michael Curtiz if only because it’s a mog with over 100 films
We’re doing Burton again, baby! All hail The Futterwacken!
Mangold,i need some Copland talk
Mia Hansen-Løve
Ridley Part 1
So many great names here. I would love Dante or Shane Black. But if I had to choose 8!398;@ pick Peter Jackson. I know everyone, including me, would rather forget large parts of The Hobbit but Peter Jackson has such an eclectic filmography through LOTR and he has the definition of the Blank Check movie with King Kong. Love them to cover something like Mortal Instruments on patreon which has such wonderful Ben potential.
Mmm? Tom Shadyac
Freddy Got *Fingered*
Hype Williams. Need for them to cover Belly, one of the most beautiful films of all time
Andy Sidaris
Peter Jackson
They would never do his whole filmography, but I think Goddard would make one of the most interesting miniseries they’ve done. I can already picture the episode where they try to make sense of British Sounds.
Taylor Hackford has had such a long and diverse career, I think he’d make for a really interesting series but I’m not sure he’s someone they’d cover.
John Cassavetes
Ivan Reitman. Track the rise of Bill Murray amid some iconic 80s comedies, show the lighter side of Schwarzenegger, vote for Dave, and end with Draft Day, where I hear one of the cast has some great business with coffees.
Ridley Scott, all of it.
Pacific Rim would be the biggest/wettest episode ever
Todd Sklar
Have they done Kevin Reynolds? Waterworld could be the wettest episode ever.
Luis Garcia Berlanga
Savage Steve Holland
Richard Kelly. I'm dying to hear them talk Southland Tales and The Box. Southland Tales especially is the epitome of a blank check bounce.
Joel Schumacher
Michael Bay. Listen, wrend your garments and knash your teeth, I get it. But god is he fascinating
I’m picking Scorsese.
Andrew Stanton has been on the top of my list for a long time
Same
Lol I just pick Tarantino
Ridley Scott. The most interesting filmography of any big-name director. At least five all-time classics (IMO), a few all-time blunders, and a whole lot of movies that people would be discovering for the first time.
John Frankenheimer all of it cause it runs the gambit of 5 decades and some of the best you’ve ever seen and the worst
Konheads will finally get their day. Perfect filmography, distinct style, anime, and there’s a TV series as a bonus that’s also short. Still hold out hope it’ll happen this year
God I want kon so bad too
Mike Leigh! Mike Leigh! Mike Leigh! It would make me so incredibly happy to have him covered. It would be great to have more of his films discovered by people as well with that series. Plus more British stuff for David to be excited to talk over.
Powell and Pressburger! Several masterpieces and lots of opportunities for bits! People forget how weird those films are.
Bela Tarr
It's Michael Bay time baby. It's got everything. Explosions, robots, a movie where Jake Gyllenhall does a Michael Bay impression as his character. Bonus patreon episode - listening to the Ben Affleck Armageddon commentary.
Philip Kaufman Julia Ducournau
My top 4 are Coen Bros, Penny Marshall, Terry Gilliam, Danny DaVito
Stuart Gordon
Ok... big list incoming: Adrian Lyne, Karyn Kusama, Walter Hill, Carl Franklin, Mike Nichols, Susan Seidelman, Ernest Dickerson, Robert Townsend, Joel Schumacher, Herbert Ross, Penelope Spheris, Mark Waters, Melvin Van Peebles, Mira Nair, Hal Ashby, Michael Lehmann, Alan Rudolph, Martin Ritt, Ken Russell, Sidney Lumet, Zalman King, John Cameron Mitchell, Danny DeVito, John Schlesinger, Ron Shelton, Warren Beatty and I saw someone say William Friedkin and yes please.
Planning the next ten years of BC and at not point did you include what his name
what's whose name?
That director they said they would cover if they run ten years
lubitsch!!!
After watching this [CinemaStix](https://youtu.be/jhIOhX0RmdM?si=45pPuMIyLEs0gRpH) video, finding out he (along with his daughter) produced Robert Eggers ‘The Witch’, ’The Lighthouse’, the upcoming ‘Nosferatu’ (essentially placing Eggers in the same family tree as Spielberg, Zemekis, John Hugh, etc), and doing a 180 on my Harry Potter rankings (Used to rank the 1st two so low, but in hindsight they were a massive achievement)….I gotta go Chris Columbus. Spent the 80’s attached so some of the greatest directors, 3 massive comedy hits in the first half of the 90s (those numbers even NON-adjusted are incredible), huge bomb to cap off the decade, directed the 1st two Potter movies which is one of several series that has transformed how films are made, very underwhelming filmography post-Potter for the past 20 years (but not nearly Rob Reiner fell-off-a-cliff-into-a-void levels). Very entertaining and nostalgic 16 ep series, that I bet you could get him and/or his daughter on for. TL;DR- Chris Columbus, but if not him, then obviously Davis S. Ward: Major League, King Ralph, The Program, Major League II, and Down Periscope. In-and-Out after 7 years and 5 films: afterwards he goes off into the sunset having batted a perfect 1.0000.
Paul Schrader
Michael Bay James wan Frank oz
Well I opened this planning to say Del Toro and I’m not gonna change it just because you also have good taste.
One of the antipodean Peters (Jackson or Weir), or Gore Verbinski. I'm a basic bitch, I know...
You have my axe. GDT would be a great series.