Filmmakers Insulting Filmmakers
“Antonioni is the only important director I have nothing good to say about. He bores me; he’s so solemn and humorless.”
Francois Truffaut 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.” Ingmar Bergman on Michelangelo Antonioni “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.”
Ingmar Berman on Orson Welles “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.”
Ingmar Bergman 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.” Orson Welles on Jean-Luc Godard “Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film.” Werner Herzog on Jean-Luc Godard “Tarantino named his production company after one of my films. He’d have done better to give me some money.”
Jean-Luc Godard 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.” Harmony Korine 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.” Nick Broomfield on Quentin Tarantino “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?” Spike Lee on Quentin Tarantino (and the “n-word” in his scripts) “We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”
Spike Lee on Tyler Perry “Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that… Spike needs to shut the hell up!”
Tyler Perry on Spike Lee “A guy like him should shut his face.” Clint Eastwood on Spike Lee “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.”
Jacques Rivette on Stanley Kubrick “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.“ Jacques Rivette on James Cameron (and Steven Spielberg) “I don’t know him personally. I don’t think his films are very good.”
Jean-Luc Godard on Steven Spielberg “Spielberg isn’t a filmmaker, he’s a confectioner.” Alex Cox on Steven Spielberg “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.”
David Gordon Green on Kevin Smith “Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.” Tim Burton on Kevin Smith (after Smith jokingly accused Burton of stealing the ending of Planet of the Apes from a Smith comic book) “Which, to me, explains fucking Batman.”
Kevin Smith on Tim Burton (in response to “I would never read a comic book”) “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.”
Kevin Smith on Paul Thomas Anderson (specifically, Magnolia) “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.”
Vincent Gallo on Spike Jonze “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.”
Vincent Gallo on Martin Scorsese “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.”
Vincent Gallo on Sofia (and Francis Ford) Coppola “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.”
Vincent Gallo 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?” Werner Herzog on Abel Ferrara “A load of posturing poo-poo.”
Alan Parker on Peter Greenaway (specifically The Draughtsman’s Contact) “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.”
Ken Russell on Sir Richard Attenborough |
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great list between, didn't know directors can say such hideous things about their contemporaries!
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“Spielberg isn’t a filmmaker, he’s a confectioner.”
Alex Cox on Steven Spielberg - LOL
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Really, Godard is a fucking bore.
When everone is wondering what the twist is on your latest film rather than if it is an entertaining movie with an engaging story, something is wrong.
He seems to think Tyler Perry is too white and Quentin Tarantino is too black.
Vincent Gallo on Martin Scorsese
Wasn't Vincent Gallo in GoodFellas?
So disappointed by Bergman. He is one of the best directors of all times, and he doesn't like Welles or Godard? What the hell!
P.s: Rivette on Kubrick is also pretty hilarious