the filmmaker as slacker

Just read Sharon Waxman's "The Mystery of the Missing Moviemakers" (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/movies/04waxm.html?ex=157680000&en=2bd3cb4967a53a03&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink).

Would have seamlessly pasted the hyperlink into the text, but Blogger won't let me. Pisses me off.

Basically the article's about how unproductive the darling filmmakers of the 1990s are today. This group includes Spike Jonze, Kimberly Pierce, Darren Aronofsky, and David O. Russell. I have to disagree with these last two: Aronofsky might have taken seven years to make The Fountain (2006), but does this mean he'll take another seven for his next project? And in those seven years he was making something very intricate and personal (have you seen it Sharon, even if it was critically panned and seen by almost no audiences?). Should films be rushed? Why do we have to see a movie from a director every year? Then it's as if it's a factory, mechanical and thoughtless, on an assembly line. What fun is that? Woody Allen makes a movie every year pretty much, and well, these past ones (yes, including Match Point [2005]) have sucked.

Now. David O. Russell has never struck me as being a lazy, unprolific filmmaker. An asshole, but not a lazy drudge. Again: so he made I Heart Huckabees in 2004. Who gives a shit if he didn't come out with a film in 2005 and 2006?

And so Waxman ends her article about the Mexican triumvirate: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo del Toro. This year they've been compared a lot to one another because of what they have in common, let's face it: Mexico. (Is it not interesting that though they're from Mexico, their films from 2006 are not wholly about Mexico?) I rolled my eyes when I saw her comparison, but at least she acknowledged their link as being the superficial reason for their constant comparison. And I didn't know Iñárritu and Cuarón are such good friends they help each other with the other's work (ideas and editing). So that was refreshing, but I couldn't help noticing the trajectory her argument had taken: "here are filmmakers who don't work much and we had such high hopes for them" to "why is this? are they not being properly nurtured?" to "the Mexicans who are compared to each other all the time." The Mexicans get it right. They nurture each other. Obviously this is not enough.

And why didn't Waxman think about FINANCING? How it's so hard to secure? C'mon! That's the obvious answer, is it not?