Me and the Director's Wall, or I Watched 1,306 Movies and Lived to Tell About It

By Ben White, ILV General Manager

I started this project in December of 2007. I've been working the counter at ILV for five years now, and I've seen, in the store, every movie I've ever been slightly curious about. It's getting BORING and I need to start a project to keep me motivated. So I walked over to the director's wall, grabbed Woody Allen's Alice and popped it in. I decided to watch every single movie on the director's wall, in order. This was going to take awhile...

1-1-08 I’m deep into Woody Allen, and I’m already wondering if this is a good idea. Every day I have to hear his persistent whining, over and over. I can tough it out though, I have a really long journey ahead of me.

1-28-08 I just finished a nice run of Hal Ashby movies. Coming Home, Harold and MaudeLast Detail, all in a row. That was really nice. Also watched: Pedro Almodovar (no hablo espanol!) and Robert Altman (he made Popeye starring Robin Williams).

2-20-08 I’m nearing the end of Bertolucci, and I haven’t heard a word of English for weeks, it’s easy to tune out, but I’m getting bored. Also watched: Richard Attenborough (I watched all of Gandhi!), Michael Bay (Bad Boys I and II) and Ingmar Bergman (the Seventh Seal! What a cool movie!).

3-6-08 Tim Burton! I’ve hit a real easy streak here, and it will segue nicely into the dumbed-down Hollywood megalomania of James Cameron. Also Watched: Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita and the Professional are both great), John Boorman (“Squeal like a pig, boy!) Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs, yeah!) and Luis Bunuel (je ne pas parle francais).

4-14-08 I’ve been basking in enjoying every movie I’ve played in the store lately, because I’m right in the middle of David Cronenberg, and before him Francis Ford Coppola and The Coen Brothers previous to that. Such fine cinema, surrounding me all day every day! Also watched Jane Campion (yawn), Frank Capra (In the fifties, everyone talks with this attitude, see?) and John Cassavettes (I discovered Minnie & Moscowitz. That was a good one!)

5-31-08 Joe Dante (Gremlins 1 and 2), Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs), and Brian DePalma (Scarface) have all been fun, the springtime in general has been very enjoyable, at least in terms of watching the entire director’s wall in order.

6-24-08 Just finished Eisenstein and Fellini, I’m looking forward to hearing someone speak English again. Also Watched: Rainer Fassbinder (watch for the awesome live footage of Amon Duul II in the Niklashausen Journey).

8-1-08 WHO THE FUCK IS PETER GREENAWAY? Why does he have so many fucking movies? Why do they all have the most grating, irritating, insufferably repetitive Philip Glass soundtracks? I’m going nuts here, for real. Also watched: John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath), Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), William Friedkin (the Exorcist), Samuel Fuller (I used to hate westerns, now I REALLY hate westerns), Terry Gilliam (Monty Python and the Holy Grail is just the beginning), Jean-Luc Godard (can you say Jean Seberg in Breathless? Hot-cha-cha.)

8-11-08 Thank god Christopher Guest was there to rescue me from that. I breezed through Hal Hartley (His love for Parker Posey is only surpassed by mine) and Howard Hawks (as this project wears on, I’m really starting to dislike the 1950’s), now I’m enjoying Herzog. His narration is so soothing to the ear, it makes work pleasant.

9-1-08 Oh man I’ve never been happier to watch Peter Jackson’s  Bad Taste. After the slow-as-molasses past few weeks of Hitchcock, Hitchcock, Hitchcock and then John Huston, I don’t know how much more 1950’s honkey horseshit I can put up with. Also watched: George Roy Hill (Slap Shot!)

9-24-08 Man, Kubrick is a nice reward for sitting through The Decalogue, by Kriestof Kieslowski. That’s ten parts, each an hour long. Ten hours, folks. I watched a ten-hour long movie. If I wasn’t getting to watch Full Metal Jacket right now, I’d probably kill somebody. Also Watched: Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law), Neil Jordan (the Crying Game).

10-2-08 My week and a half with Spike Lee proved to have me wincing at spoken-aloud “n-bombs” a lot less than I was expecting (25^th Hour was an exception, jeez!). Also Watched: John Landis (Slasher was amazing!), Fritz Lang (Metropolis is so amazing, just make sure you don’t get the version with the 80’s synth soundtrack, it’s not nearly as cool as it seems like it would be), Sir David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, so many epics on one shelf!).

11-11-08 Sidney Lumet and David Lynch were a nice, easy time, and Mike Nichols is proving to be pretty good too. (Who knew Silkwood was so good? Wow!) Also watched: Mike Leigh (Who seems to make nothing but 80’s shot-on-video british TV shows about old women arguing with each other), Richard Linklater (Slacker), Barry Levinson (Young Sherlock Holmes isn’t anywhere near as good as I remembered it).

12-5-08 It’s a Friday, and I’ve almost finished Pasolini. It’s been a quick, easy week with subdued, easy-to-tune-out Italian dialogue most of the week. I got a little nervous when it was time to put on Salo: 120 Days of Sodom. Sure enough, just as the poop-eating scene started, a dad and his toddler son walked in the store. I got the movie turned off before either of them realized what was going on, and so alas, I had to skip over Salo, hopefully I’ll get a chance to play it Monday morning when the store is really slow. Also Watched: Frank Oz (The Dark Crystal, Muppets galore).

1-2-09 I just finished Robert Rodruiguez, which means I watched two movies about six times each. One movie is about a gunfight in a dusty old bar in the middle of the desert. Cheech is the bartender. Sometimes there are vampires, but always there is a Link Wray song. The other movie is about a little boy and a little girl in front of a blue screen. He made about four of these. I’ve been doing this project for a year now, and I still have 22 directors’ sections to go. Also watched: Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs), Arthur Penn(Check out Dustin Hoffamn as an Indian in Little Big Man), Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby), Sam Raimi (Evil Dead series).

1-21-09 I’m just finishing up Martin Scorcese, which for the most part has been great; the only exception being The Last Waltz. I had to put my ipod on while it played, I just can’t hang with that grampa music. Before that was Ken Russell. I’d always been a fan of Altered States, but never really seen the rest of his movies, all of which have tons of giant dicks and weird vampire nuns in bondage and other stuff that made me wince every time a little kid came in the store. Also Watched: John Sayles (Brother From Another Planet was pretty cool).

2-6-09 Today I finished Stephen Soderberg. That means that the other day I had to watch Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, all in the same day. Fuck George Clooney. Last week I watched Kevin Smith. Despite the fact that he only made one movie that I like (Clerks) his section went by pretty fast. Suprisingly, his “An Evening With Kevin Smith” series was much better than I was expecting. Also watched: Ridley Scott (Alien).

3-3-09 I’m just finishing up Oliver Stone; well, by “finishing up” I mean I probably only have one or two more days left of watching his long-ass movies. Yesterday, during a six-hour shift, I only had time to watch two of his three-hour-plus epics. Jeez. Before that I watched Stephen Spielberg; he may make a lot of big-budget blockbusters, but when you strip away all the special effects and expensive sets, he can still tell a damn fine story. Penelope Spheeris, on the other hand, got famous for making documentaries about music (the Decline of Western Civilzation series), and then used that fame to make cinematic versions of The Beverly Hillbillies and The Little Rascals.

3-24-09 God bless Paul Verhoeven. He’s by far my favorite film director of all time, and I’m stoked to be watching hits like Starship Troopers and Robocop. Before Verhoeven I watched Quentin Tarantino (everyone talks shit but I think all of his movies are great),  Andrei Tarkovsky (It went by much faster than I was expecting, like most foreign language films, I tuned them out pretty easily), Francois Truffaut (The 400 Blows and Fahrenheit 451 were great!) and Gus Van Sant. What is Gus’ deal? Some of his movies (Good Will Hunting, Drugstore Cowboy ) are great, and some of them (Last Days, Finding Forrester) are total shit. Why he saw a need for a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho is beyond me.

4-21-09 I just finished Billy Wilder today, and I’m pretty convinced that he’s the best director on this wall. All of his movies are simple and easy to follow, yet are so superbly acted and directed that they’re completely enthralling. He really knew how to work the buddy-comedy style of Lemmon and Matthau (Some Like it Hot), but also could hold his own with riveting courtroom drama (Witness for the Prosecution) and two-fisted war tales (Stalag 17). I also watched Lars Von Trier, whose Kingdom series makes me see the real humor in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace,  Peter Weir (Mosquito Coast and Witness were both great) and Orson Welles. I’ve learned that Welles didn’t make nearly as many movies as his shelf would imply. There are 4 or 5 actual real films, and then a ton of post-mortem releases of half-finished films, all “restored” with commentary from various random cinema bigwigs. I mean, Citizen Kane was a great movie, but I dunno if it facilitates the release of everything he ever did, finished or not. Finally I watched Wim Wenders, who seems to be a huge fan of shitty Cuban hip-hop.

5-14-09 In the past few weeks, I’ve been promoted to GM of both I Luv Video stores, so my clerk time spent behind the counter has dropped severely, and as a result my progress is slowing down considerably. Not to worry though, I’m almost done. I’m finishing up Robert Zemeckis today (Did you ever notice that Marty’s girlfriend is played by a different actress in Back To The Future than in Back To The Future 2?). I also watched Robert Wise. I wanna know who decided that it was a good idea for him to direct Star Trek: The Motion Picture, When the last sci-fi movie he’d done was The Day the Earth Stood Still, 28 years earlier! After that I watched William Wyler (he did a lot of work with Audrey Hepburn: Funny Girl, How To Steal A Million,  The Children’s Hour and Roman Holiday to name a few. Personally, I can take him or leave him. I only have one director and fourteen movies to go!

5-21-09 The end credits of Top Secret are rolling, and my project is complete! The Zucker brothers started off strong with Airplane 1 & 2, but then I hit my Leslie Neilson saturation point by the time I got to Naked Gun 33 1/3.

What I learned: I learned that The worst movies were made in the 1950’s, the best movies were made in the 1970’s, and despite what everyone may tell you, VHS tapes are still better than DVDs.