Five filmmakers who never managed to escape director’s jail
While plenty of directors have gone to actual prison over the years, ‘director’s jail’ is a very different concept. This cinematic slammer is reserved for filmmakers who commit the ultimate felony—making a criminally bad movie. It doesn’t matter what you did beforehand or what you have the potential for next, if you dare produce something that isn’t up to scratch or loses a studio wads of cash, then it’s off to the lock-up for you.
Generally, the director’s jail usually comes with a life sentence, but escape is possible. Josh Trank managed to break out after his disastrous Fantastic Four venture and has since made two much more interesting movies. Then there’s the case of Robert Zemeckis, who, despite releasing a string of flops recently, is somehow still able to secure funding for big projects.
Alas, the movie gods have not been so kind to these five lost souls. With one underwhelming release, they were shoved behind bars and had the keys chucked away for good.
As it stands, none of them have managed to dig a tunnel out of their professional penitentiaries, and it looks highly unlikely that they’ll ever get their ‘Shawshank’ moment. Let’s hope they like prison food.
Five filmmakers trapped in directors’ jail
Brian De Palma
It brings nobody pleasure to discuss the dramatic fall from grace of Brian De Palma, one of the leading lights of the new Hollywood movement. But that doesn’t make it any less true. At the top of his game, he was churning out classics like Carrie, Mission: Impossible, Blow Out, The Untouchables, and Scarface. Unfortunately, like the protagonist in that last feature, it all came crashing down in a cloud of smoke.
The first sign that the wheels were coming off was 1998’s Snake Eyes. Though not a bad film, it was the first in a series of box office disappointments for the former icon. His final studio picture was 2006’s The Black Dahlia, before he burned all his bridges in spectacular fashion with the film Redacted. This docudrama recounted an incident in Iraq when a group of US soldiers brutally murdered a local family. The project caused a major political incident, and De Palma was made public enemy number one by all flag-waving patriots. His career was never the same again. He’s only made two movies since, with his most recent, Domino, being a complete dud.
Richard Kelly
Some directors take a little time to reach their full potential. Others smash it out of the park the first time around. Richard Kelly is a perfect example of the latter, as his first feature was a little movie called Donnie Darko. Starring a young Jake Gyllenhaal, this mind-bending story of existential angst and giant bunnies set imaginations ablaze when it was released in 2001. Kelly followed up this triumph by writing the screenplay for 2005’s Domino, a Tony Scott project, before moving on to his second, significantly less successful feature.
Considering he had the world at his feet, Kelly made some bizarre casting choices for his sophomore film, Southland Tales. It was headed by Seann William Scott, best known for playing Stifler in the American Pie series, and Dwayne Johnson, who was yet to become the future money-spinning juggernaut. A sprawling, multi-layered narrative set in a Los Angeles on the verge of an apocalypse, the movie was way too smart for its own good. It’s developed something of a cult following these days, but it was not the hot follow-up Kelly needed to assure his status. He made one more movie in 2009, and that was it.
Jan De Bont
As a director of photography, Jan de Bont helped shape some truly impressive films. Die Hard, Cujo, The Hunt for Red October—the Dutchman had a hand in all their final appearances. He transferred this vision to a directorial role, helming both Speed and Twister in the mid-1990s. However, things started to slow down (pun fully intended) when he put out Speed 2: Cruise Control, widely regarded as one of the worst sequels ever made. He attempted to bounce back with The Haunting in 1999, but that was only marginally better. Finally, he sealed his fate with an adaptation of a beloved video game.
De Bont replaced Simon West as director of the Lara Croft—Tomb Raider franchise, taking charge of the second movie in the series, The Cradle of Life. Critically, while it performed marginally better than its predecessor, it underperformed at the box office. The series was put on ice, and its director never made another film again. He’s produced a couple of projects since then and has returned to cinematography, but ironically, The Cradle of Life killed his directing dreams stone dead.
Michael Powell
If you ask any cinephile who the most underrated directors of the 1940s and ’50s are, chances are they’ll say Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company, The Archers, and their keen eyes and sharp wit, they made a series of influential and groundbreaking movies, moving the British film industry forward leaps and bounds. They made a huge impact on the next generation of filmmakers, most of all Martin Scorsese, and are now widely remembered as the geniuses they were. That wasn’t always the case, though.
In 1960, Powell directed a solo effort called Peeping Tom. It told the story of a voyeur who, in an effort to create his own snuff film, murders the women he has been spying on and kills them in increasingly demented ways. This subject matter caused a serious stir amongst the reserved filmgoing audience, and critics tore it to shreds. In one fell swoop, Powell’s career was in tatters. It wasn’t until Scorsese began to consult him on his own projects that he began to regain some of his credibility. Now, Peeping Tom is considered a masterpiece, a pioneer of slasher horror to rival Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which was released the same year.
Martin Brest
Gigli is widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made. The story of two assassins (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) who fall in love on the job turned critics’ stomachs with its meandering plot, half-hearted gags, and inexplicable lack of chemistry between its stars. The two were dating in real life, which only added to the confusion. As if things couldn’t get any worse, it made a dismal $7.2million on a $75.6million budget.
Spare a thought, then, for director Martin Brest. Not only was he in the chair for the movie, but he also wrote it and produced it, which meant he was partly on the hook for all that lost money. This must have stung especially hard, as Brest was on an extraordinary streak. The movie he’d made prior to this one was Meet Joe Black, starring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt. In 1992, he directed Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, finally netting the veteran his first Oscar. Prior to that, he’d helmed Midnight Run and the original Beverly Hills Cop. At the time of writing, Gigli remains his final film. Yes, it really was that bad.
