A Filmmaker's Guide to: 75 Facts About Filmmakers

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Seventy-Five Facts About Filmmakers

Now we are only twenty-five articles away from one-hundred and I am so happy that you have stuck around this long. We are going to cover seventy-five facts about various filmmaker's and their lives and I hope you enjoy this article, which is just a bit of fun for me and you.

I

1. Martin Scorsese spent twenty years trying to get "Gangs of New York" made
2. Ridley Scott described "Blade Runner" as his most personal film
3. Christopher Nolan planned "Inception" for just over eight years
4. Sam Mendes also directs for stage as well as film and has directed works of Shakespeare and even West End musicals
5. David Fincher's movie "Seven" almost starred Al Pacino and Denzel Washington and not Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman
6. M. Night Shyamalan wrote "Stuart Little"
7. Ron Howard has an asteroid named after him
8. Francis Ford Coppola has a successful winery in Napa Valley, California
9. Clint Eastwood once escaped a plane crash
10. On the set of "Barry Lyndon" - Stanley Kubrick used a camera developed by NASA in order to create the natural lighting and candlelit scenes
11. Disney fired Tim Burton because his work was deemed too scary for children
12. Guillermo Del Toro spent about a decade as a special effects make-up designer before he directed his first feature film
13. Anne Hathaway was meant to be cast in Sam Raimi's Spiderman Four, but it is not entirely confirmed on which character - the film ended up being cancelled
14. Walt Disney once disallowed Sir Alfred Hitchcock's request to film a movie at Disneyland
15. Richard Linklater was once the quarterback of his High School Football Team

II

1. Denis Villeneuve used to compete in Youth Film Competitions before he made his feature films
2. Neill Blomkamp studied animation and visual effects in the Film School of Vancouver during his years of higher education
3. Luc Besson's parents were scuba instructors
4. Wes Anderson got expelled from school
5. John Carpenter wrote the screenplay to "They Live" under a pseudonym
6. Steven Spielberg has never drank coffee
7. When George W. Bush won the re-election in 2004, James Cameron revoked his U.S Citizenship and remained Canadian
8. Quentin Tarantino was supposed to direct "Men in Black", but turned it down
9. The place where Peter Jackson grew up only contained about eight-hundred people in its population
10. David Lean offered Marlon Brando "Lawrence of Arabia" in order for him to play the title role, but Brando turned it down
11. Paul Thomas Anderson used to enter pie-making contests as an adolescent
12. Danny Boyle used to be an altar boy as a child
13. Ingmar Bergman spent some years in military service
14. The Coen Brothers wanted Marlon Brando to play Jeffrey Lebowski
15. Akira Kurosawa was the first director to ever directly film the sun

III

1. Spike Lee has directed Jaguar Commercials as well as adverts for Ben and Jerry's
2. Brian de Palma used to build analog computers in high school
3. Sergio Leone once went to study law at university, but dropped out to work in the film industry
4. Steven Soderbergh used to have a job holding cue cards for gameshows
5. John Huston was often sick as a child, with many kidney ailments and stuff wrong with his insides
6. Frank Capra moved to America as a child by boat, he was inside a storage box for thirteen days as it was the cheapest ticket available
7. David Lynch was one of the Boy Scouts standing outside of the White House during the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy
8. Fritz Lang lost sight in his eye during the First World War in which he brutally injured
9. Federico Fellini only entered law school to please his parents, but was to poor to support himself and not bothered with the work at all
10. Luis Buñuel played the violin very well
11. Sidney Lumet studied theatre acting in university
12. David Cronenberg has a weird obsession with botany and originally went to do a Biology degree, but switched to English instead
13. Alfonso Cuarón is the only arts-minded person in his family. Both of his parents were scientists, with his father a nuclear scientist and his brothers are both scientists too
14. When he was young, Darren Aronofsky trained as a field biologist in Kenya
15. Orson Welles' older brother was put in an institution as a child because he had learning difficulties - that is so upsetting

IV

1. Ang Lee was once a classmate of Spike Lee
2. Alejandro González Iñárritu used to be a sailor
3. As a child, Michael Bay strapped a firework to a toy train and almost burned down the house. His mother grounded him
4. Sofia Coppola was firstly a fashion designer, not a director
5. Edgar Wright initially studied Audio Visual Design at the Arts University of Bournemouth
6. Rian Johnson graduated from USC's School of Cinema-Television in 1996.
7. Matt Reeves was first chosen to direct "Man of Steel"
8. Kathryn Bigelow used to live in a loft with Phillip Glass in L.A and hung out regularly with Susan Sontag
9. Steve McQueen cites his influences as Andy Warhol and Buster Keaton - for some reason
10. Damien Chazelle graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies
11. Ava DuVernay initially wanted to be a journalist
12. Alex Garland spent many months as a teenager living in Manila in the Philippines
13. Bong Joon Ho served two years in the military whilst attending college
14. James Wan was the first Asian Director to make one billion dollars at the box office
15. George Miller was once a practicing physician

V

1. Jennifer Kent attended drama school at the same time as Essie Davis, who would later star in Kent's film "The Babadook"
2. Patty Jenkins' father is the second cousin of Sir Richard Burton
3. Ryan Coogler used to be a security guard
4. Taika Watiti invented a tie with a hole in it so you can button it into a shirt. Yes, you read that correctly
5. Luca Guadagnino never learnt how to swim
6. As a child, Jordan Peele was on the ABC Network asking questions to President Bill Clinton
7. Barry Jenkins does not storyboard any of his films
8. Greta Gerwig, though a successful film director, grew up in a house without television
9. Noah Baumbach writes short stories for New York Magazines
10. David Leitch is incredibly skilled in martial arts
11. Doug Liman is the cousin of fellow director, John Hamburg
12. James Gray is a huge fan of Claude Chabrol
13. Adam McKay was a stand-up comic in High School and once, someone threw a bottle at him
14. Shane Black suffers with Tourette syndrome
15. Guy Ritchie has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

And there you have it, seventy-five facts about filmmakers.

Look out for the next article where we will be returning to learning about filmmaking and literature.