Top 60 Directors

Those young post-suburbanite Squarebeards over at Paste Magazine recently felt the need to rank the Top 50 Living Directors. I won’t say that they did an awful job or anything so extreme, but I will say that we at Ze Catalist can do much better. In our sleep. On a Sunday. During leap year. In the middle of a tornado. On a boat. Hanging upside down. With a mullet. On the tail end of our 15 minute lunch break ... during third fucking shift.

Their list ranked good ‘ol Martin Scorsese at No. 1. Cool. Hard to argue with that. But Terrence Malick at No. 43? Ha! A-holes. What else … hmm … well, they fearlessly ranked Steven Spielberg at No. 3. I bet that had the folks over at The Auteurs.com roaring with laughter and anger.

Okay, fuck it. Rather than pick the list apart, we’ll just reproduce it here for you, minus all their lame explanations. Then, below that, we’ll post the REAL list. OUR list.

Paste Says: 50. Mel Brooks; 49. Charles Burnett; 48. Errol Morris; 47. Jim Sheridan; 46. John Sayles; 45. Sofia Coppola; 44. Cameron Crowe; 43. Terrence Malick; 42. Jane Champion; 41. James Cameron; 40. Guillermo del Toro; 39. Jacques Rivette; 38. Spike Lee; 37. Pedro Almodovar; 36. Richard Linklater; 35. Ridley Scott; 34. Gus Van Sant; 33. Alain Resnais; 32. Michael Haneke; 31. Chris Marker; 30. Danny Boyle; 29. Christopher Nolan; 28. Claire Denis; 27. Terry Gilliam; 26. Jim Jarmusch; 25. Wim Wenders; 24. Tim Burton; 23. David Cronenberg; 22. Agnes Varda; 21. Apichatpong Weerasethakul; 20. Hayao Miyazaki; 19. Clint Eastwood; 18. Abbas Kiarostami; 17. David Fincher; 16. Hou Hsiao-Hsien; 15. Lars von Trier; 14. Francis Ford Coppola; 13. Werner Herzog; 12. The Dardenne Brothers; 11. Wes Anderson; 10. Wong Kar-Wai; 9. David Lynch; 8. Quentin Tarantino; 7. Woody Allen; 6. Paul Thomas Anderson; 5. Steven Soderbergh; 4. The Coen Brothers; 3. Steven Spielberg; 2. Jean Luc-Godard; 1. Martin Scorsese

Okay, okay, okay. So it’s not THAT bad of a list. Actually, it’s pretty good. Some of the exclusions - Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Leigh, Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci and Sidney Lumet, to name just five - hurt, but, overall, they did a fine enough job. (And what about Peter Fucking Weir for chrissakes!)

I can’t figure out, though, if some of their rankings are based largely on the promise of some of the directors. Listing Paul Thomas Anderson higher than Clint Eastwood and Terry Gilliam, for example, seems strange. I LOVE Anderson, and do think he’s maybe our era’s Kubrick, but his work thus far can’t quite hang with, say, the aforementioned Malick - let along Gus Van Sant. He just simply hasn’t done enough yet. (Okay, I take that back, he’s well deserving of super-high ranking … but hopefully you get what I’m saying.)

I also found it a bit strange that Paste didn’t include more recent directors like Ramin Bahrani, who has made three films - all classics - in just a few years. His second film, Chop Shop, is literally one of the best films I’ve ever seen. E-V-E-R.

So, hey, no, we might not make a BETTER list. That’s not really what we’re aiming for. We just want to post a list of our own. Because it’s fun. And that’s all. Our list WILL include young directors and will not shy away from NOT (double negative!) kissing the ass of, say, Francis Ford Coppola, who only ever REALLY made four great films (and about five stinkers for each of those). Also, our list will heavily consider what these people have been doing over the last few years. For example, we’d easily rank Jean-Luc Godard at No. 2 (as he is one of our favorites ever) if he’d done anything worthwhile in the last decade. But he hasn’t, and this isn’t an all-time list, so we have to take that into account. (That said, Godard in the 60s is maybe the best director listed on this entire article.)

So I suppose you could call this the Ze Catalist 50 … err … 60 Favorite Living/Working Directors. Or something. For the directors not on the Paste list, we’ve offered food for thought.  So … away we go!

60. M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense; Unbreakable; Signs; Lady In the Water)

... But no, seriously, keep reading ...

59. The Dardenne Brothers

58. Michael Winter bottom (Code 46; 24 Hour Party People; Welcome to Sarajevo)

57. Lars von Trier

56. Guillermo del Toro

55. Todd Haynes (I’m Not Here; Far From Heaven; Velvet Goldmine)

54. Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop; Goodbye, Solo; Man Push Cart; The Plastic Bag)

53. Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind; Apollo 13; Cocoon; Frost/Nixon)

52. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption; The Green Mile; The Mist)

51. Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich; Adaptation; Where the Wild Things Are)

50. Werner Herzog

49. Wim Wenders

48. Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs; Rachel Getting Married; Stop Making Sense; Philadelphia)

47. Robert Rodriguez (Desperado; Sin City; Once Upon a Time In Mexico; Planet Terror; From Dusk Til Dawn)

46. Michael Haneke

45. Cameron Crowe

44. Danny Boyle

43. Jim Sheridan

42. Julian Schnabel (Basquiat; Before Night Falls; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

41.  Milos Foreman (People vs. Larry Flynt; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Amadeus; Man on the Moon)

40. Mike Nichols (The Graduate; Catch-22; Working Girl; Closer; Charlie Wilson’s War)

39. Stephen Frears (Gumshoe; The Hit; The Grifters; High Fidelity; The Queen; Dirty Pretty Things; etc.)

38. Mike Leigh (Naked; Secrets & Lies; Vera Drake; Happy-Go-Lucky)

37. Michael Mann (Manhunter; Heat; The Insider; Ali; Public Enemies)

36. Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Sense and Sensibility)

35. Noah Baumbach (Kicking & Screaming; The Squid and the Whale; Greenberg)

34. David Gordon Green (George Washington; All the Real Girls; Undertow; Snow Angels)

33. Zhang Yimou (Hero; House of Flying Daggers; Raise the Red Lantern; Red Sorghum; etc.)

32. Pedro Almodovar

31. Francis Ford Coppola

30. Tim Burton

29. Ridley Scott

28. Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Human Nature; The Science of Sleep)

27. Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist; 1900; The Last Emperor; Last Tango in Paris; The Dreamers; etc.)

26. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie; Delicatessen; The City of Lost Children; A Very Long Engagement; etc.)

25. Terry Gilliam

24. Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men; The Fugitive Kind; Serpico; Dog Day Afternoon; Network; etc.)

23. Clint Eastwood

22. David Lynch

21. Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men; Y tu Mama Tambien; Great Expectations; Solo con tu pareja)

20. David Cronenberg

19. Richard Linklater

18. Steven Soderbergh

17. Peter Weir (The Year of Living Dangerously; The Truman Show; Dead Poet’s Society; etc.)

16. David Fincher

15. Christopher Nolan

14. Steven Spielberg

13. Spike Lee

12. Wong Kar-Wai

11. Terrence Malick

10. Roman Polanski (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby: Chinatown; The Pianist; The Ghost Writer; Tess)

9. Jim Jarmusch

8. Gus Van Sant

7. Paul Thomas Anderson

6. Wes Anderson

5. Jean Luc-Godard

4. Woody Allen

3. The Coen Brothers

2. Quentin Tarantino

1. Martin Scorsese

Paste … you guys forgot Roman Fucking Polanski. Good Lord. If you insist on writing about film, please try a little harder. F’real. Your list is garbage.

Written by G. William Locke