Jedi Council Forums - Is Billy Wilder the greatest director of all-time?

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Author	Topic: Is Billy Wilder the greatest director of all-time?
BobaFrank Registered: Jul '01	Date Posted: 3/28 9:53pm Subject: Is Billy Wilder the greatest director of all-time? - Date Edited: 8/23 9:12pm (8 edits total) Edited By: Zaz
	The Godfather Trilogy Bram Stoker's Dracula The Outsiders Apacolypse Now Rumble Fish Not to mention his influence on George Lucas's films. I truly believe he is the greatest influence/director in the history of film. -----signature----- "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." -Yoda TPM "May the Force Be with You." "One Nation Under GOD." "I want to come with you to Alderaan and become a Jedi like my father." "I am a Jedi. Like my father before me."
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Zaz Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre Registered: Oct '98	Date Posted: 3/28 9:55pm Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	No.
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Sven_Starcrown Registered: Mar '09	Date Posted: 3/29 12:13am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Definetly not. Dont forget he is still alive, so we cant judge him like Altman, Kubrick, Cutiz............soo on. -----signature----- Nobody's perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just have half-angel and half-devil in you.
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Zaz Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre Registered: Oct '98	Date Posted: 3/29 12:14am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Do you mean Curtiz?
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Sven_Starcrown Registered: Mar '09	Date Posted: 3/29 12:30am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Yes. -----signature----- Nobody's perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just have half-angel and half-devil in you.
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Boba Jr Registered: Dec '98	Date Posted: 3/29 1:02am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Definitely not, not by a long shot - and I'm a pretty big Coppola fan myself. To truly make a case that a certain director is the greatest director of all time, you should be thoroughly familiar with the filmography of more than a dozen worthier candidates to the title: John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, Francois Truffaut, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, David Lean, Michael Powell, Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, etc. You can't really make an argument for "best director of all-time" when you're only considering movies from the last 20 or 25 years. You really have to go back almost 100 years and look at most of the really great movies that have been made during the last century or so.
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Nrf-Hrdr Registered: Aug '00	Date Posted: 3/29 4:40am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Boba Jr posted: Definitely not, not by a long shot - and I'm a pretty big Coppola fan myself. To truly make a case that a certain director is the greatest director of all time, you should be thoroughly familiar with the filmography of more than a dozen worthier candidates to the title: John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, Francois Truffaut, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, David Lean, Michael Powell, Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, etc. You can't really make an argument for "best director of all-time" when you're only considering movies from the last 20 or 25 years. You really have to go back almost 100 years and look at most of the really great movies that have been made during the last century or so. To be fair, the first two Godfathers are nearly 40 years old and their reputation and popularity are unlikely to diminish at this point. Coppola's greatest films are generally seen as on a par with, if not greater than, the strongest films of the directors you list, so I don't think the argument can be quite so casually dismissed. I wouldn't rank him as greatest myself though - his career has been far to top heavy and inconsistent.
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Bill-Thompson Registered: Jul '08	Date Posted: 3/29 7:06am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	No -----signature----- http://warstars.wordpress.com/ http://billsmovieemporium.wordpress.com/ http://billstvemporium.wordpress.com/ "You could warn me when I do something bad. Blink once for dark side, twice for light." - Revan
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Boba Jr Registered: Dec '98	Date Posted: 3/29 8:17am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Nrf-Hrdr posted: To be fair, the first two Godfathers are nearly 40 years old and their reputation and popularity are unlikely to diminish at this point. Coppola's greatest films are generally seen as on a par with, if not greater than, the strongest films of the directors you list, so I don't think the argument can be quite so casually dismissed. I wouldn't rank him as greatest myself though - his career has been far to top heavy and inconsistent. I would disagree with that. Some of the directors mentioned made dozens of unforgettable classics. No matter how brilliant the first two Godfather movies are (and there is no denying they are), it's just not something that can be compared with the careers of directors who, thanks in part to the old studio system, made dozens of classics. There is just no comparison, if you're going to make the argument about who's the greatest director of all time.
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Zaz Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre Registered: Oct '98	Date Posted: 3/29 8:24am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	On one side, Coppola has made two great films (the Godfathers), one very good minor film (the Conversation), two-thirds of a great film (Apocalypse Now), an interesting misfire (Godfather 3), and uninteresting misfire (the Cotton Club), not very interesting stuff (the Outsiders, Rumble Fish) and some real garbage (Dracula et al.) and some commercial drivel (the Rainmaker, Peggy Sue). Most of his great work dates from the 70's, and it has been downhill ever since. Is this the best career in movies? I don't think so.
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon Registered: Dec '00	Date Posted: 3/29 8:54am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	BobaFrank posted: The Godfather Trilogy Bram Stoker's Dracula The Outsiders Apacolypse Now Rumble Fish 3 out of 7 ain't so great... -----signature----- Personally if treating homosexuals with respect and dignity is the definition of 'anti-Christian' then I hope that Obama is the friggin' anti-Christ. - FIDo
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Drew_Atreides Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 3/29 9:12am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	I think the experience making "Apocalypse Now" really destroyed him as a director. The stories of that shoot..... Wow... It's amazing the guy is still alive! -----signature----- Be sure to tune in for the Big Giveaway at 9!
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halibut Title: FF GSA & FF-UK RSA / Saga Mod Registered: Aug '00	Date Posted: 3/29 9:38am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Zaz posted: No. -----signature----- They are not "songs", they are "tracks" or "cues" ROTJ - "It has a nice mix of muppets and patricide that you don't see very often" - Darthboba Everybody knows that the bird is the word!
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corran2 Registered: May '06	Date Posted: 3/29 10:47am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	Perhaps best director of the 70's would be a better distinction. He made 4 perfect films: The Godfather(1972), The Conversation(1974), The Godfather Part 2(1974), and Apocalypse Now(1979). No director was that consistent in the 70's. After that, I'd only watch The Godfather Part 3, which is very close to greatness. -----signature----- Then my life felt as if it had been the length of one breath, one heartbeat.
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gonzoforce Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 3/29 10:51am Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	no, but he is right there with the greats, like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Spielberg, etc. -----signature----- "The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli" - George Costanza "My name is George, I’m unemployed and I live at my parents" - George Costanza "You're an anti-dentite" - Cosmo Kramer
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Boba Jr Registered: Dec '98	Date Posted: 3/29 12:11pm Subject: Is Francis Ford Coppola the greatest director of all-time?
	gonzoforce posted: no, but he is right there with the greats, like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Spielberg, etc. I think there's quite a bit of difference between someone like Coppola and Spielberg (a reliable, very commercial director, but whose greatest films are frequently throwbacks or homages to the great movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood), Hitchcock (still the undisputed Master of Suspense), and Kubrick (a brilliant filmmaker who had an unparalleled eye for examining the process of dehumanization). And that still leaves out some of the truly, undisputed great directors of American cinema: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, William Wyler, etc., and solid but less famous directors like Michael Curtiz, Vincente Minnelli, Victor Fleming, Mervyn LeRoy etc. This is not to minimize Coppola's accomplishments, but he really did go downhill pretty fast after Apocalypse Now and has frequently taken jobs which he must have known would result in mediocre movies just because he needed the paycheck (see Godfather, Part III). Possibly the best of his post-Apocalypse Now output has been Tucker: The Man and His Dream, which is probably one of his most underrated movies and in which he benefited greatly from having Lucas as a producer (being a good friend of his meant he knew Coppola's strengths and weaknesses better than perhaps any other producer). If nothing else, he must be proud of having made some of the undisputed masterpieces of the 70s, and of having a talented daughter who's turned out to be quite a good director herself. And he seems genuinely happy running his Napa vineyard, too.
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