30 Harshest Insults By One Filmmaker To Another

[The NZA]

source

 

 

1. Francois Truffaut on Michelangelo Antonioni:

“Antonioni is the only important director I have nothing good to say about. He bores me; he’s so solemn and humorless.”

 

2. Ingmar Bergman on Michelangelo Antonioni:

“Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness.”

 

3. Ingmar Berman on Orson Welles:

“For me he’s just a hoax. It’s empty. It’s not interesting. It’s dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of — is all the critics’ darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it’s a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie’s got is absolutely unbelievable.”

 

4. Ingmar Bergman on Jean-Luc Godard:

“I’ve never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual, and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He’s made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin, Féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mind-numbingly boring.”

 

5. Orson Welles on Jean-Luc Godard:

“His gifts as a director are enormous. I just can’t take him very seriously as a thinker — and that’s where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares about these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a pin.”

 

6. Werner Herzog on Jean-Luc Godard:

“Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film.”

 

7. Jean-Luc Godard on Quentin Tarantino:

“Tarantino named his production company after one of my films. He’d have done better to give me some money.”

 

8. Harmony Korine on Quentin Tarantino:

“Quentin Tarantino seems to be too concerned with other films. I mean, about appropriating other movies, like in a blender. I think it’s, like, really funny at the time I’m seeing it, but then, I don’t know, there’s a void there. Some of the references are flat, just pop culture.”

 

9. Nick Broomfield on Quentin Tarantino:

“It’s like watching a schoolboy’s fantasy of violence and sex, which normally Quentin Tarantino would be wanking alone to in his bedroom while this mother is making his baked beans downstairs. Only this time he’s got Harvey Weinstein behind him and it’s on at a million screens.”

 

10. Spike Lee on Quentin Tarantino (and the “n-word” in his scripts):

“I’m not against the word, and I use it, but not excessively. And some people speak that way. But, Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made — an honorary black man?”

 

11. Spike Lee on Tyler Perry:

“We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”

 

12. Tyler Perry on Spike Lee

“Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that… Spike needs to shut the hell up!”

 

13. Clint Eastwood on Spike Lee:

“A guy like him should shut his face.”

 

14. Jacques Rivette on Stanley Kubrick:

“Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it’s great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001.”

 

15. Jacques Rivette on James Cameron (and Steven Spielberg):

“Cameron isn’t evil, he’s not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag. “

 

16. Jean-Luc Godard on Steven Spielberg:

“I don’t know him personally. I don’t think his films are very good.”

 

17. Alex Cox on Steven Spielberg:

“Spielberg isn’t a filmmaker, he’s a confectioner.”

 

18. Tim Burton on Kevin Smith (after Smith jokingly accused Burton of stealing the ending of Planet of the Apes from a Smith comic book):

“Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.”

 

19. Kevin Smith on Tim Burton (in response to “I would never read a comic book”):

“Which, to me, explains fucking Batman.”

 

20. Kevin Smith on Paul Thomas Anderson (specifically, Magnolia):

“I’ll never watch it again, but I will keep it. I’ll keep it right on my desk, as a constant reminder that a bloated sense of self-importance is the most unattractive quality in a person or their work.”

 

21. David Gordon Green on Kevin Smith:

“He kind of created a Special Olympics for film. They just kind of lowered the standard. I’m sure their parents are proud; it’s just nothing I care to buy a ticket for.”

 

22. Vincent Gallo on Spike Jonze:

“He’s the biggest fraud out there. If you bring him to a party he’s the least interesting person at the party, he’s the person who doesn’t know anything. He’s the person who doesn’t say anything funny, interesting, intelligent… He’s a pig piece of shit.”

 

23. Vincent Gallo on Martin Scorsese:

“I wouldn’t work for Martin Scorsese for $10 million. He hasn’t made a good film in 25 years. I would never work with an egomaniac has-been.”

 

24. Vincent Gallo on Sofia (and Francis Ford) Coppola:

“Sofia Coppola likes any guy who has what she wants. If she wants to be a photographer she’ll fuck a photographer. If she wants to be a filmmaker, she’ll fuck a filmmaker. She’s a parasite just like her fat, pig father was.”

 

25. Vincent Gallo on Abel Ferrara:

“Abel Ferrara was on so much crack when I did The Funeral, he was never on set. He was in my room trying to pick-pocket me.”

 

26. Werner Herzog on Abel Ferrara:

“I have no idea who Abel Ferrara is. But let him fight the windmills… I’ve never seen a film by him. I have no idea who he is. Is he Italian? Is he French? Who is he?”

 

27. David Cronenberg on M. Night Shymalan:

“I HATE that guy! Next question.”

 

28. Alan Parker on Peter Greenaway (specifically The Draughtsman’s Contact):

“A load of posturing poo-poo.”

 

29. Ken Russell on Sir Richard Attenborough:

“Sir Richard (‘I’m-going-to-attack-the-Establishment-fifty-years-after-it’s-dead’) Attenborough is guilty of caricature, a sense of righteous self-satisfaction, and repetition which all undermine the impact of the film.”

 

30. Uwe Boll on Michael Bay:

“I’m not a fucking retard like Michael Bay.”

 

ouch. glad Kevin Smith shat on Tim Burton (heard that one live), but some of the shots on him sting too. I adore Clint, but some of Spike's films are better than he gets credit for. the rest...shit, Gallo sounds like a dick.

[Lorelei]

Werner Herzog on Abel Ferrara

Have to remember that this was due to Herzog's Bad Luietenant film having the same name as Ferrara's. Ferrara went pretty crazy, and Herzog said it wasn't a remake - he'd never heard of his film.

 

Herzog may be one of the most genuinely interesting and honest artists I know. I don't feel as if he's trying to belittle viewers with "intelligence", and if a film of his is considered inaccessible (like Fata Morgana), you can't dig up any pretention on his part. His more recent films show that he can step away from an "art house" nature and make something that is Entertaining without insulting the viewers intelligence.

 

I think I've just seen one Jean-Luc Goddard film. It was heavily luscious. If I think of a director's work being nothing but self-masturbation, the more I see of JLG the more I empathise with viewers cries of pretentious and why they'd rather watch the latest comic book movie and run from any film where there's no explosions.

[the division of joy]

Harsh on Spike Jonze, man...

[The NZA]

i wish i knew the names loreli was referencing better without running to imdb. i blame the lack of junkerseed in my life, dude took me to indie film fests and made shit approachable.

 

i tend to agree with DoJ, if for nothing other than being john malkovich, adaptation & his work with bjork.

[the division of joy]

Didn't see Lor's post before I replied. I'd tend to agree with him on Herzog. Guy's pretty great.

 

As for Godard, I've only seen King Lear and I was fairly meh about it. I've not seen enough of his stuff to really judge him.

 

As for Jonze, he's only done the 3 movies, the 2 nick mentioned and Where the wild things are which I really dug, despite it being based off a kids book. I've seen no reason to full on shit on the guy like has been done up there.

 

Rest of seems to be be pretty fair, especially re: Tarantino and Spike Lee.

[Keth]

Haha, love the Cronenberg to M. Night and Uwe Boll to Bay stuff. The majority of those quotes just reek of douchery.

[Thelogan]

Herzog is the shit and I've enjoyed everything I've seen from him, but a little google search before naming your movie isn't a terrible idea either. He doesn't have much ground to stand on to be too pissed at Ferrara (who I know nothing of).

I remember there was someone around here that was basically calling someone else either misinformed or a liar for saying that the new Bad Lieutenant wasn't a remake, before it came out. All I remember is that I don't think I was involved.

 

The Burton/Smith thing is from the first Evening with dvd, right? Maybe the 2nd. Anyway, yeah, I've seen that one live too. And it's a good point. Fucker shouldn't be fucking with comic book movies if he hates them so much.

I think the apes replacing Lincoln's head was in the Chasing Dogma Jay & Bob run, parts of which were later loosely adapted into Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.

 

Fuckin' Gallo. I love Buffalo '66 hard. I've seen that movie a dozen times at least, never gets old for me. I guess that's the only movie I've ever seen of his. Odd, for a movie I love so much I wouldn't actively seek out anything by the same director. I have Brown Bunny in my queue, but I honestly just want to see the Chloe Sevigny blowjob scene. He seems like a prick. Shit, he's an ex-underwear model, I guess we should be happy that he can formulate coherent sentences. I've always assumed lightning struck exactly once with him.

 

Uwe Boll...he tears me up inside. It's quotes like that and his bit in Postal and the critic boxing thing, it makes me think he's a cool dude and I would really like him as a person. But jesus fuck, he's a terrible artist, and he isn't doing it ironically. I'm convinced the dude is trying, and when he finishes each one he's genuinely pleased with himself and a little baffled by the reaction they get.

 

But at least he's not a fucking retard like Michael Bay.

[Iambaytor]

Clint Eastwood's remark was a response to another of Spike Lee's "I am the president of black people" remarks. Spike Lee seems to think that if anyone is going to reference (or in Clint's case, not reference) black people in any way shape or form they have to run it by him first.

 

 

Logan: I was the guy who called out Jax on the Bad Lieutenant thing. Port of Call: New Orleans is as much a remake of Bad Lieutenant as Hollow Man 2 was a remake of Hollow Man one. The core idea is the same, there is a lieutenant and he is bad, but the ideas/stories/characters/plot structure work entirely different. Keitel's character is an asshole who learns his lesson, Cage's character is a prick who becomes a fucking cunt. It's a straight-to-DVD cash-in sequel that amazingly was not a bad movie.

[the division of joy]

Herzog's Bad Lieutenant was fucking amazing and one of cages best roles, I think.

[Mr. Hakujin]

This list makes me think about that quote form Batman about directors being an insecure and super-sensitive lot.