David Hast: Scott, have you seen Wildlife?
Scott Vander Werf: Yes, I've seen Wildlife. I just saw it, the first feature film directed by the actor Paul Dano.
DH: Yeah, and we'll talk about it in a second. It's an excellent movie, especially for a first feature. The phenomena of movies being directed by people who have primarily been actors before that is interesting. It's something in cinema that's worth talking about, there have been a lot of good movies directed by people who up to that point had been just actors or only been actors, not just actors. And historically this goes all the way back to the beginning of movies. I mean the very first people that invented the cameras, movie cameras, went out and by themselves they were shooting little movies. But then once they started to be stories, this mainly started to happen in the 1910s and later, you had the person that knew how to run the camera, the sort of technical person, but then now you had a script and actors doing things. And of course, actors knew how to direct the other actors. So you either had someone who maybe came from directing and or acting on the stage. And so it was a kind of natural fit.
In modern times, actors who've then made a transition to directing, it's interesting, sometimes they go on, you know, like a Clint Eastwood or Ron Howard to become almost primarily directors and make a lot, become mainly directors at that point. But then you have these ones who've just make one or two. The most famous is the 1955 masterpiece, The Night of the Hunter, which we talked about when we did an episode on the great British actor, Charles Lawton. It's a masterpiece and it's the only movie he ever directed.
SVW: Of course, the question there is, it was a flop. when it in its first run, if it had been successful, maybe he would have directed a second film.
DH: Right, that's what, yeah, when you read about it, that it kind of, he was very disappointed. I mean, it's too bad that people often in the industry are judged and even judge themselves based on the box office success of a movie, but yeah.
SVW: Wild Life is directed by Paul Dano, the actor. It was released in 2018 and Paul Dano wrote the screenplay with Zoe Kazan, his life partner, adapted from the novel. by Richard Ford and Dano, best known for acting in Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood, Meeks Cut-Off, The Batman, The Fableman's, Dumb Money, and he made lots of others.
DH: Wildlife is remarkably good for a first feature. It's a realistic drama set in 1960s Montana, and it's this, it's really basically, there's really only four actors who have any substantial screen time, and it's really about three. It's about this family, a father, a son, a father, a mother, and their 14-year-old son. The young actor Ed Oxenbold plays the kid, and he kind of reminds me of a young Paul Dano.
SVW: He does, he looks like Dano.
DH: Yeah, and has that very low-key, but wise kind of demeanor. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the father, and Carey Mulligan plays the mother, and they're fabulous, particularly Carey Mulligan are great, and it's a story about a 14 year old child who really is wiser and more mature than his frustrated and often inappropriate parents who feel trapped by this narrow little world.
SVW: Yeah, that's the really amazing thing about this movie. As I was watching it, I thought this 14 year old boy is acting like the adult and his parents are just it's they're like using him at times to get at each other and they're behaving as if they're the adolescents.
DH: They really are. Yeah, the mother particularly feels like she's got an unfinished teenage years that she's trying to live out, and the father too. We should talk about a few people who are actors who became directors. Like I said, this goes all the way back to the beginning. D.W. Griffith, widely regarded as sort of the grandfather of the Hollywood industry, began as an actor in...you know, little one-wheelers in 1908. And when a director wasn't available, he switched over to directing. But he acted in like 40 short films. Of course, the greatest two comedian directors of the silent era, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, what were they first? They were vaudevillian performers. They knew about performance first.
One of my favorites from the classic era and who we've talked about before when we've talked about film noir and we talked about the man I love is Ida Lupino, who was one of a rare breed of female directors in the golden age of Hollywood. Along with Dorothy Arzner, she was really the only woman directing in like the 1940s and into the 50s. She too began and continued as an actress.
SVW: Then from the 60s to the 90s, Clint Eastwood and Ron Howard, you mentioned earlier, Rob Reiner, who of course people remember as in all in the family on television as an actor, and he did Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, and so many others since then.
DH: Yeah, and Ron Howard, well, Eastwood of course, first became renowned as a director in the Sergio Leone Westerns and then the-
SVW: An actor.
DH: Did I say director? I meant as an actor, thank you.
And then in the Don Siegel, you know, Dirty Harry, and action films. And he's continued to direct himself. This often happens in movies where the director is an actor. Sometimes they're the lead actor in their own movie. But Ron Howard and Rob Reiner, they quit acting.
SVW: Quit acting altogether. And in the case of Ron Howard, he became a much more accomplished director than he ever was an actor. I mean, as fine an actor as he was.
DH: Yeah, yeah, Ron Howard was, he was a child actor, right? He was okay.
SVW: And he did A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Cocoon.
DH: Yeah, yeah, he's done some really wonderful films. I wouldn't say he's a great director, but he's a very good director. Some others I think of, sometimes the first or only film, like in the case of Charles Lawton, are memorable. Stanley Tucci's first film was Big Night, the wonderful drama about the 1950s, these Italian immigrants who start a restaurant.
SVW: Which is a very much a low budget film that takes place only in the restaurant. Primarily, I believe it's all in the restaurant. And it's all great actors that are in it.
DH: Right. Very much about performances. Sling Blade, Billy Bob Thornton. Which really made Billy Bob Thornton's career. He was unknown relatively until that film.
DH: And he's the lead in it.
SVW: He's the lead.
DH: Tremendous as the actor, but he also directed it.
SVW: He also wrote it.
DH: Oh, did he?
SVW: Yes.
DH: Wow, yeah. That's sort of reminiscent of Stallone with Rocky, right? Although, did Stallone direct Rocky? No, I don't think so. But he wrote and starred in it. High profile one lately is Bradley Cooper, whose first film was the fourth remake of A Star Is Born. Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter is a really interesting little film. Have you seen that one?
SVW: I have not seen that one. I've not seen a star is born. I did see a gone baby gone by Ben Affleck and which is, which is a wonderful thriller that takes place in the, in the Boston area.
DH: And Affleck's a good director, but a good actor. But a lot of people say he's more talented as a director.
SVW: It's interesting because there are, you know, the actors get this bug, uh, to act first. And then some of them just, they need to direct.
DH: Yep, they need to direct and we haven't even mentioned, and I don't even have any notes on that, on actors who really shouldn't have dried their hands at directing. Some aren't great, but it's good to know that some are and it's an interesting thing to look for in movies.
