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[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (38 children)


Here is a list of cinema's greatest directors (or at least those usually deemed so) and their third full-length feature films:

My main goal was just to provide the data and let everyone else discuss, but I will offer my two cents. I think out of those provided Scorcese, Anderson, the Coens, Spielberg, Malick, and Keaton are the best cases to corroborate the OP's claim, and even then within each case it is debatable whether this third film is actually the director's best, e.g. I think most would say "Mean Streets" is not Scorcese's best film. But at least in these directors you do see them "hitting their stride" in their third film. (The notable exceptions are Malick and the Coens, who seemed to have just been born genius filmmakers that could make masterpieces from the get-go.) But the number of counterexamples to the OP's claim is staggering, and so, I remain skeptical about the theory, though, an interesting one it is.

EDIT: I can add to the list as others provide examples.

[–]codithou 12 points13 points  (36 children)


I'm going to add a few more directors, some more modern. I don't know /r/truefilm's opinion on them but there's really no denying their significance.

Though OP said, "don't feel the need to prove me wrong by citing examples", I feel citing examples would be the only way to expand on this theory. I'm going to say I don't really agree with OP's claim. I think most directors have good or bad films regardless of what order they made them in. I think they grow more into their own style after a couple films but that's just a natural progression in filmmaking. So no, "most" of the time, a directors' third film isn't necessarily their best.

[–]corumlala 7 points8 points  (13 children)


Apart from my opinion on those directors (from important to outright terrible), only Tarantino fits the OP's theory.

[–]whiteyak41[S] 3 points4 points  (5 children)


Are you saying Braindead isn't Peter Jackson's best film? Because this scene disagrees.

[–]DublinBen 4 points5 points  (4 children)


How did Peter Jackson ever get his hands on the Lord of the Rings franchise?

[–]Emperor_Tamarin 10 points11 points  (3 children)


Good summary here

A producer named Saul Zaentz acquired the rights to the Lord of the Rings franchise in 1976. It was Peter Jackson's dream to do it so he kept the idea in his mind and looked for the right. He apparently won over Zaentz and they originally worked with Miramax to make Lord of the Rings as two films. Eventually, Miramax wanted him to do it in one film and New Line Cinema (who desperately wanted to take a chance on a huge film and felt the LOTR had a huge fanbase that would bring in the bucks) came and Jackson (who had by now developed a killer presentation for his idea) and Zaentz made a deal with them to do the trilogy.

As for how Jackson convinced Zaentz? It seems like a combination of cream rising to the top (his unique visual flair (who else could do Dead/Alive and Heavenly Creatures) and love of fantasy set him apart from everyone in Hollywood at that time), his obvious love of everything Tolkien, and his ability to use special effects throughout his career up to and including The Frighteners (the latter of which likely helped convince Hollywood that he could handle making a bigger movie quickly and cheaply (and without expensive A-list actors) in New Zealand- kinda like how the Wachowskis had to make Bound before they could make The Matrix.

In Peter Jackson's own words:

PETER JACKSON: There's a long story behind that. I'll try to give you the short version of the long story, if you like, the history of it, because it is very interesting. I mean, people don't realize really how close this film came to not happening at all.

It was originally a Miramax production. We started developing it with Miramax in about 1996, you know, inquired about the rights in '95. Saul Zaentz had the right to become its producer.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Made English Patient.

PETER JACKSON: English Patient. And we called Harvey Weinstein and said to Harvey, you know, We'd love to-- love to do this.'' We had the first look deal with Miramax, which meant we had to take any project [unintelligible] gone to them. So we called up Harvey and said,We'd love to do this.''

He said, ``Who's got the rights?''

And we said, ``Saul Zaentz.''

And he said, ``Well, that's great because I'm making The English Patient with Saul right now, and he owes me a big favor because The English Patient was''--

CHARLIE ROSE: About not to be made.

PETER JACKSON: --made-- and then Harvey stepped [unintelligible] So that was our first piece of great luck is that Harvey happened to be working with Saul--


PETER JACKSON: --and so had the rights. So that legal stuff happened, and the rights became-- you know, became available to Harvey. And so we started to develop it with Harvey. We pitched the idea of three films, and Miramax didn't really want to take that risk.

But we agreed on two, two Lord of the Rings films, you know, two-and-a-half hours make five hours total, which we thought we could-- we could adapt the book, the three books, in that way.



And the we ran into a real snag because by the time we'd finished writing the screenplays and doing a lot of the development, we were able to come up with a much more definitive budget of what it was going to spend, and that was going to-- at that point, these two movies were going to cost about $130 million, $140 million to make.

And Harvey said, ``Well, I have-- I only have an ability to go up to $75 million on a film.''

And of course, Disney owns his company. So I understand. I'm not entirely certain, but I do understand that Harvey went to Disney and he asked permission to spend extra money to make these two films and was refused that permission.

So Harvey was in a real jam, and he turned to us and said, Look,'' you know,I've got a problem. I just cannot go ahead with these two films. So why don't we just make one?''

And we said, So you want us to make the first one first and release it,'' which is sort of the common-sense approach,and then if it's successful, we'll go and make the second.''

And he said, ``Well, no, no. I just want to make one Lord of the Rings films, so we've got to figure out a way to lose all the story and to compress it all into one movie.''

So we didn't really feel comfortable with that at all. In fact, we just felt it was a recipe for disaster, that anybody that had read the book that went along to a movie titled The Lord of the Rings was just going to be-- was going to be disappointed, was going to be shocked at what this two-hour version--

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Right.

PETER JACKSON: --was actually going to be like. And we just said, ``Why would you do that when it was guaranteed to disappoint?''

But anyway, Harvey had no real choice, and he said, ``This is the only thing I can do.''

So, at that point, we literally walked away from the project, and we said to Harvey, We can't be involved in this anymore.'' And we'd been on it for two years. So it was a fairly-- we were over-- we were over here in New York and had this-- had this rather gruesome meeting at the Miramax office and just said,Look,'' you know, ``we can't be involved.''

And Harvey said-- I mean, he understood. It was like we were both in a jam. And Harvey's heart was always in the right place, but he couldn't-- he had nowhere to do.

And so we got on the plane back to New Zealand. It's, like, a 20-hour flight. And we felt now that we'd come to the end of The Lord of the Rings, which was a tragedy. It's-- Because you put so much emotional investment into these things when you work on them for so long.

And our agent, Kim Kemmens [sp], in the meantime, while we were flying that 20 hours back to New Zealand, he'd called Harvey, and he said, Look,'' you know,Peter and Fran,'' who's my-- who's my partner, ``they've been working on this for two years, Harvey. You've got to give them at least a chance to take this somewhere else. If you can't do it, there may be someone who can.''

And so Harvey-- because Harvey was prepared to hire other filmmakers to make a single-film version because Harvey had spent $20 million, and he wasn't able just to kill it. He was now going to have to find someone else to do his movie so he could at least get-- get his investment back.

And so Harvey said, ``OK, there's-- there's two conditions. One, it's got to be-- it's got to be the two films. Somebody's got to agree to do two films because I'm offering to do one, so somebody's got to agree to the two. The second condition is if somebody wants to do it, they've got to write me-- they've got four weeks from now to write me a $20 million check.''

So we were now faced with the job of having to go to L.A., to Hollywood, and try and convince somebody to write Harvey a $20 million check and finance two Lord of the Rings movies. So we were in-- we arrived in New Zealand with this news, and we had four weeks.

And so we had all this visual material, all our designs, our creatures. We had a lot of stuff. And rather than just go into a Hollywood office and just, like, do a verbal pitch, we thought we've got to make use of all this wonderful visual material that we have because it was-- it was pretty amazing.

And so we decided to make a documentary because-- and so for the first week of our-- of our four, we got a video team in. We interviewed ourselves, you know, talking about The Lord of the Rings. It was like The Making of The Lord of the Rings--

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. [unintelligible]

PETER JACKSON: --before it got made, you know?

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Right. Right.

Part 2 next comment

[–]Emperor_Tamarin 8 points9 points  (1 child)


PETER JACKSON: But the interesting thing in that tape is that-- is that we're all trying to sit there and be really positive and confident.

And I'm being interviewed, and I'm saying, ``You know, the most wonderful thing about Tolkien's story is that''-- but we're all dying inside because this is, like, the project that's going to-- unless this works, it's all over. And we're hoping and we're-- but we're trying to not show that, and we're all-- you know, and so we did all this lovely photography of these-- these monsters, where we turn them [unintelligible] tables and lighting them. And we did [unintelligible] ended up being 36 minutes long. And so then we got-- then in week number two, we go to L.A. and we-- we now have to hit Hollywood with our-- with our videotape and try and get someone to do this.

And by the time we arrive in L.A., our agent has gone through every studio, every producer who could possibly raise money, and he's virtually been turned down by everybody, even without seeing the tape, without meeting us. People just said, No, we don't want to do it.'' You know,The Lord of the Rings, two movies, $20 million check to Harvey-- no, no, no, no, no.''

And by the time we arrive in L.A., there were only two meetings. There were only two people who wanted to even meet with us. Everyone else had passed. And the first one was Polygram, who saw our tape and they loved it, and they said, ``Look, we-- this is fantastic. We really, really want to-- want to do it.''

And we thought, ``Great. Great.''

And then they said, But our company''-- this was in 1998. And they said,But our company is being sold.'' Polygram was now being-- it was up for sale.


PETER JACKSON: And they said, There's no way we could do this until the sale process is complete.'' And we said,Well, we've got, like, you know, two-and-a-half weeks. How quickly is it going to get sold?''

And they said, ``Oh, no. It's going to be months and months away.''

So we walked out the door. That was a no go.

CHARLIE ROSE: And one last shot.

PETER JACKSON: New Line. New Line Cinema was our last shot, who had agreed to have a meeting. And at this point, we were-- we were worried that we were going to be known as this failure. So with New Line, we tried to create the impression that we were really busy taking meetings.

And so you know, we had this one meeting that-- like, we'd phone up New Line and say, ``Meeting-- meeting at New Line 10 o'clock. No, no, no. We can't do 10. We've got a meeting. No, one o'clock? No, we're busy at one. How about 3:30?'' And we tried to create this impression that we were kind of really being sought after and we were going to-- we-- I mean, it was terrible.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you had nothing.

PETER JACKSON: But we had nothing, no.

So we turn up-- we turn up at our New Line meeting, and Mark Ordesky, you know, who's an executive at New Line, who-- who-- who was an old friend of mine, in actual fact-- and I knew that he was a huge The Lord of the Rings fan. Mark had set it up, and Mark was-- Mark was really excited about the idea of doing this.

And I met Bob Shay, who I'd known earlier, and Bob is a really straight guy. So you know, we knew we'd get-- you know, we'd get some sense from Bob of what he-- he was going to do. So we sat down.

He had a private meeting with me first, and he said, ``Look, Peter, I just want to-- before I see your tape, I just want you to know that if we don't do this, I want you to know that you're always welcome to bring projects to me in the future.''

So I thought, ``Oh, well, this is the classic kind of''--

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, right. He's setting you up for the fall.

PETER JACKSON: He's setting me up for the fall.

So we went in and we put the tape in, and we-- and he plays-- and he just sits there, completely silently, just watches it. And we're just nervous. We can't stand it. He's in the-- we're in the same room as he is, and he's just watching and watching for 36 minutes.

And as the tape comes to an end, he says, ``I don't get it.''

And I thought, ``OK.''

And he turns and he says, ``I don't get it. Why would you be wanting to do two The Lord of the Rings films? It's three books, isn't it? Shouldn't it be three films?''

And I thought, ``What's he-- what's he saying here? What's he-- what's he saying here?''

And he said-- he said, ``Look, we're interested''--


PETER JACKSON: --``but we're basically interested in three movies.'' And it was-- [crosstalk]

CHARLIE ROSE: I hope you got up and went over and kissed him.

PETER JACKSON: Well, I felt like hugging him, yeah.

I mean, it was unbelievable. And now, you know, these sorts of stories don't really happen.


PETER JACKSON: They're not--

CHARLIE ROSE: So you left there saying, ``I'm going to make three movies. We're going to go back to New Zealand''--

PETER JACKSON: We went back to New Zealand. Miramax and New Line lawyers got hammering it out.


PETER JACKSON: Harvey got his check.


PETER JACKSON: And we were--

CHARLIE ROSE: Plus he got 5 percent, too, didn't he?

PETER JACKSON: We were on board. Yeah, that-- Harvey's done fine.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the title is executive producer or something like--

PETER JACKSON: Yeah. Well, he deserves it. I mean, Harvey was there at the very beginning and gave us a lot of support when we needed it. So it-- you know, it sort of-- everybody's come out OK.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. So all of a sudden, it's a go. You're going to--


CHARLIE ROSE: --spend how much money for three movies?

PETER JACKSON: Well, at that point, you see, we only had budgets for two movies. So then we had to write-- rewrite the script.

So we had to throw out our scripts, and we had to rewrite the scripts because the scripts for three films is a very different structure to two. So that was a-- it was another 18 months. I mean, this is now getting into 1999. They budget out at-- they ended up budgeting out at $270 million because we were able to put a whole lot more stuff back into the movies that we'd cut out.

And then, you know-- and we went into-- basically, into production in October, 1999, to shoot all three movies, $270 million budget, 274 shooting days. And we got going.

[–]im_so_metamy flair 1 point2 points  (0 children)


If people want to watch the interview by Charlie Rose, here ya go.

[–]DublinBen 3 points4 points  (0 children)


You magnificent bastard. I should have expected a response like this in /r/TrueFilm.

[–]HPLoveshack 0 points1 point  (3 children)


Just to be clear, you're saying Jackie Brown is Taratino's best?

[–]corumlala 0 points1 point  (2 children)


Yes, why ?

[–]HPLoveshack 0 points1 point  (1 child)


Just curious, never heard from anyone that didn't think Pulp Fiction was his best before.

[–]TheKakeMaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)


Pulp Fiction is my favorite film of all time, but I do believe Jackie Brown is his "best" work, objectively speaking.

[–]ixid 0 points1 point  (0 children)


Aronofsky's does too, though too many people seem to be offended by the film for it to get the recognition it deserves. It was strange to see the end scene tribute in ParaNorman, some people are on the same wavelength.

[–]jkeyz42 0 points1 point  (3 children)


Shouldn't Aronofsky's be The Fountain? Protozoa is listed as his third short film on IMDb with Pi being his first feature.

[–]codithou 0 points1 point  (0 children)


I'm not familiar with Aronofsky's work so I was just going off of wikipedia and it didn't say short film next to the title but you're right. Edited.



I think on this thread we are only talking about full-length feature films. For instance, Chaplin made at least 30 shorts before his first feature. But we are disregarding those.

[–]jkeyz42 0 points1 point  (0 children)


yeah that's what I was referring to, codithou originally had Aronofsky listed as Protozoa but he edited it to The Fountain

[–]snoharm 2 points3 points  (0 children)


I think this list sort of dissolves OP's point, unless he has a large list of examples proving otherwise. It seems like some directors' third film happen to be their best, but it's barely a pattern and hardly a rule.

[–]NickSalvo 5 points6 points  (1 child)


The problem with the theory is that seldom does a director get to choose his/her first film. They are hired and given an assignment. It usually isn't some personal story they have been waiting to get off their chest.

[–]ander1dw 3 points4 points  (0 children)


I think a bigger problem is that the "first film" for most directors isn't really their first film at all. The OP's theory excludes personal projects, student films, television, and many other types of film projects. Where do you draw the line to conclude that a film should be considered that director's "third"?

[–]spaceman2121 2 points3 points  (0 children)


This is usually true for most works of art, be it film or literature or even music. The 'sophomore slump' is well documented, and most writers/filmmakers first work is usually the most visceral, but rarely has the finesse to be classified as a work of genius. It's only around the third film, after a filmmaker or a writer has tasted both success and failure, that he becomes reassured enough in his vision to create a masterpiece.

[–]Anzai 2 points3 points  (0 children)


Doesn't really work for me. I think there are too many variables. Some make a brilliant first film and then never reach those heights again. DonnieDarko for example. Some start in the studio as a gun for hire and work their way up doing shit projects. Some do prestige films at home and then come to the United States and get given crappy projects for their third film and so on.

There's too many variables and career paths. A first film may totally tap out a creative mind so that all they can do is inferior iterations of it for the rest of their career, or they may take however long to learn their craft. I doubt there's even any statistical evidence of the 3rd film receiving the most acclaim.