Who is your favorite asshole director?

Herzog? really?

anybody who votes for James Toback is a jerk, because that guy SUUUUUUUUCKS

where's polanski?

probably godard but I doubt I've seen his assholiest movies

oh nevermind films not director check.
xp

where's polanski?

-- Cosmo Vitelli, Thursday, May 8, 2008 9:43 PM (2 minutes ago)

i'll tell you, but only after you prove you aren't a cop

I hate Harmony Korine SO MUCH

i would kill to see all these guys drinking wine together at a banquet.

I love bloady loads of these, but ultimately it's a toss-up between Herzog and Waters.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe!

Non-incisive reasoning:

*Catherine Breillat - dunno
*Uwe Boll - ugh, no
*Vincent Gallo - loved Buffalo 66 at the time, not seen anything else, too much of an actual asshole.
*Jean-Luc Godard - A Bout de Souffle and Week-End both awesome, but haven't seen enough to feel properly able to put him top.
*Michael Haneke - I'm a Haneke apologist, but dubious about the Funny Games remake, and he just isn't as good as...
*Werner Herzog - Popol Vuh, monkeys, shoe-eating, being shot... oh yeah, and Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, et al
*Kim Ki-Duk - dunno
*Harmony Korine - so-so
*Takashi Miike - meh
*Michael Moore - I like him more than most do, but he doesn't help himself.
*Gaspar Noé - should know, but don't
*Park Chan-Wook - dunno
*Todd Solondz - good, but not great
*Oliver Stone - meh
*James Toback - dunno
*Lars von Trier - lots of good stuff, but again, a bit too much of an actual asshole.
*John Waters - Divine, eggs, bad rock'n'roll, perversion... what's not to like?

Herzog wins.

emil.y speaks for me

No Bruno Dumont? i actually don't think he's as asshole but he seems like he should be on this list. Haneke is my favourite here. Solondz is the actual asshole on the list.

how is Herzog an asshole, again?

Why is Breillat an 'asshole'?

or Waters for that matter ... some of these are pussycats.

how about him what made I heart huckabeez?

how is Herzog an asshole, again?

unsafe working conditions on Fitzcarraldo and making a chicken dance endlessly to a song it hated.

but yeah he's def my favorite on the list.

Didn't he threaten to shoot Kinski as well, or do I have that backwards?

I believe he waved a gun at Kinski at one point on the set of "fitzcarraldo", I forget the exact details, I haven't seen "burden of dreams" for a few years.

I think he threatened to shoot both of them.

i think several people actually died trying to pull the ship over the hill.

oh i missed Von Trier. he's probably as much of an actual asshole as Solondz.

i sort of love von Trier for his anti-American screeds and simultaneous refusal to ever visit the U.S. firsthand.

To be fair to him does he not have a fear of flying?

Wouldn't be my vote but PECKINPAH COME ON

yeah why didn't his ghost make the list?

Haneke is a genuine arsehole in my book for one reason: the actual killing of the horse for 'Time of the Wolf' (which I mostly liked), which was defended by him and other fuckwits as being somehow transgressive and daring and honest (as opposed to vile and cruel). I'd have had more time for this argument if they'd had the balls to actually kill some of the humans in the film. Now that would have been transgressive and daring and honest.

Way belated, but the article these directors were mentioned in stipulates living assholes. Actually, it stipulates living people, I just added "asshole" so the poll would get a few more votes.

I'm pretty sure Gallo is the biggest asshole on the list.

I'm also pretty sure John Waters is my favorite director on the list.

Sean Penn

david o russell should really be on there

JW doesn't strike me as an "asshole" is the thing, but he's also my favorite on this list

Yeah, he doesn't really strike me as that much of a confrontational director either, which is really what the Onion list is about.

No Hitchcock?

john ford was supposedly quite an asshole in real life.

Huston too.

There's a Jonathan Richman song in this.

"Not in Mexico."

<i>i think several people actually died trying to pull the ship over the hill.</i>

It's easy to get this impression from Burden of Dreams. I think what actually happened was that several extras died during the filming, but for reasons unrelated to the movie.

Herzog = actually exploited teh natives

the question is, were any directors nice guys? even, like, renoir was supposedly a bitch to work for.

He even hinted at that by making a movie with that title.

And Lang referred to his time of the month as Scarlet Street.

Haha. From what I read, everybody loved working for Charles Laughton on Night Of The Hunter and look how far that got him.

This discussion is reminding me of a section contrasting different directorial styles during the silent era in an interesting book I recently started, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930, by Scott Eyman, featuring a sarcastic Allan Dwan at one end of the spectrum and a weeping Frank Borzage at the other.

Uwe Boll, for this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rsb-rSELaI0

note: i have never seen any of his movies

Really? Only 17?

What about John Landis?
Or is he just criminally negligent?

I definitely agree Polanski should be included. And what about Woody Allen, John Cassavetes, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Welles, Maya Deren, D. W. Griffith, Andy Warhol, David Lynch, and Sean Penn? Each of them is controversial and polarizing in life as well as in the industry. I mean, there's hundreds more, right?

I think it could be argued that the inevitability of/need for asshole, provocative directors is a cliche/myth in the same vein as the inevitability of/need for tormented, miserable painters.

Uwe Boll is a nob. So him.

Shouldn't Fassbinder be here? Or was he mostly an asshole to himself? Voted Waters, Herzog's better I guess but John's NICE.

If it was LEAST fav I'd rig up a bunch of logins and make Gallo win. If there's anything worse than a hipster wannabe it's a hipster who SUCCEEDS. Ew.

(I really mean "scenester" but I dunno how far that carries)

I believe he waved a gun at Kinski at one point on the set of "fitzcarraldo"

To hear Herzog tell it, and really anyone who ever worked with Kinski, the man was off-the-rails mad, and Herzog had just reached the end of his patience and run out of ideas for how to control him, so he tried a language he thought Kinski might relate to in the depths of his teeth-gnashing rage. So yeah, he ponted a gun at him. Also noteworthy, according to Herzog's side of the story: the indians were already plotting to kill him, because they believed him to be an evil and dangerous presence. He was certainly giving off some serious bad vibes, at any rate. So that was on Herzog's mind, too, having had several conversations already about why they *shouldn't* kill him. And hell, he admits himself, he was also thinking about having a goddamn movie to finish.

But yeah, I agree with all the "Whaaa???"; Herzog does not belong on any asshole list. I love the guy.

yeah, but if he hadn't made that chicken dance, Ian Curtis would be alive today!

Shouldn't Fassbinder be here? Or was he mostly an asshole to himself?

He was pretty much an asshole to everyone.

yeah, but if he hadn't made that chicken dance, Ian Curtis would be alive today!

Then there's the monkey in "Even Dwarves Started Small" and as for the camel...

If we're talking about the actual quality of their films, I gotta go for Kim Ki-Duk, because even though his films are often confrontational, they're never indulgently "shocking" (something Miike is often guilty of, as good as he can be) of finger waving or pretentious. I bet he's actually a really nice guy in real life though.

"of" = "or"

John Stagliano

well, Waters was pretty confrontational before Polyester, at least to ppl other than "his crowd" who happened upon the films. (Don't forget Ebert is so appalled by JW's early stuff he says they're not really movies. lol, Mr Great Critic.)

Why is Breillat an 'asshole'?

Yeah, given the closeups she utilizes a different orifice came to mind.

Godard is an asshole (sorry, Contempt is a big fucking bore and his anti-Spielberg rants should make him an honorary ILEer), but von Trier and Noé are the ones I'd like to punch in the face. (tho LvT HAD talent.)

I think Miike might make the best artistic use of his assholism.

Morbs OTM on Miike.

Werner Herzog pulled Joaquin Phoenix out of a burning car so he gets my vote. I'm bummed Sam Peckinpah isn't on this list, though.

well, Waters was pretty confrontational before Polyester, at least to ppl other than "his crowd" who happened upon the films.

This is true. Divine eating dog shit and raping her/himself is not really the mark of a non-confrontational film-maker.

Also, people, don't vote for the worst, please. It's your favourite director (who happens to be an asshole), not the most assholish or the worst...

browsing I Heart Video last night I noticed a double feature of "Fata Morgana" and "Lessons in Darkness" sitting in the Herzog section. I'm intrigued yet a little fearful. Any advice?

Watch 'em. Why be scared?

Morbs is kinda right about Godard but I still love the dude and his first ten years' worth of films alone make him easy winner for me.

'cause I'm a pussy with an occassionally short attention span

John Waters comes across as a total honey in interviews and at the Q&As I've seen him do, really.

John Waters is totally one of the nicest guys in the entire business. And by all accounts his sets are a party.

Alejandro Jodorowsky should maybe be on this list, if massive ritual animal murder stuff is being factored in, I mean.

John C. Reilly infamously quit "Manderlay" because von Trier insisted on killing a real donkey for a scene (a vet did the actual euthanization off camera).

there's a part in one of JW's books where he talks about nearly "pulling a preminger" on edith massey because she kept flubbing a line

I'm assuming Eric didn't include dead/retired directors because there are dozens of legendary examples.

(I mean, are we talking about set stories/gossip/interviews, or how their films come across?)

Way belated, but the article these directors were mentioned in stipulates living assholes. Actually, it stipulates living people, I just added "asshole" so the poll would get a few more votes.

-- Eric H., Friday, May 9, 2008 1:49 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Link

It's weird that this list includes Harmony Korine but not Larry Clark.

and whither Abel Ferrara?

xp: thx nick

dude yeah, ferrara's assholism is legendary

I've heard Ferrara is nice, just a large drug user with mental illness.

Oh yeah, Larry Clark had the thing where he punched Hamish McAlpine (Tartan Films head dude) over McAlpine making comments Clark perceived to be "anti-American," right after 9/11.

And then he had the thing where he filmed his then girlfriend, 37 years his junior, in hardcore sex scenes (to be fair - it was another Harmony Korine script... ah, 'Ken Park').

john waters always seemed to me like he would be the nicest most gracious dude in person

tru

Jean-Luc Godard for the win!

I <3 <3 him, btw, though saw some clip on Youtube where he meets up w/ Anna Karina on a TV interview - years after their last meeting - and he says some shit that makes her exit crying.

I was starting to wonder how many times people would studiously ignore the link above the poll options.

It's easy to glide yr eyes past it; that's my story an' I'm stickin' to it.

I believe that that Harmony Korine/Larry Clark/Ed Lachman vehicle is playing at BAM tonight for the curious.

a real BAM, alright.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Moore to score.

No Francis Ford, no credibility

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

uwe boll wants respect