[010]
TheMightyHeptagon
Current Version
Changed line(s) 1 from:
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Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just discuss commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema.
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just discuss commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema.
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
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to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema.\\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema.\\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the [=\\\"filmmakers\\\"=] folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the [=\\\"filmmakers\\\"=] folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear to belong on this page.
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
----
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
----
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[folder:Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[folder:Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
Alright, I think it really needs to be said:
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just discuss commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
The three entries under the \\\"filmmakers\\\" folder are all \\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\'\\\' questionable examples of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\", and they\\\'re formatted in a way that plays hell with the readability of this page. If nobody objects, I would argue very strongly for the removal of that folder.
For one thing, all three entries are ridiculously overwritten, and they come off as long-winded {{Info Dump}}s about cinema history that are of minimal interest to anybody without a specialized background in the subject. This page isn\\\'t for diatribes about the art of cinema in the form of drawn-out paragraphs, it\\\'s for listing \\\'\\\'specific\\\'\\\' examples of common misconceptions about movies in a bullet-point format. If examples can\\\'t be properly indented and explained in a Administrivia/ClearConciseWitty manner, they don\\\'t belong on the page.
For another thing, the entries stretch the definition of \\\"CommonKnowledge\\\" to the breaking point. CommonKnowledge is, simply put, \\\"A widespread \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconception that\\\'s commonly assumed to be the truth\\\". None of the entries about filmmakers seem to discuss \\\'\\\'\\\'factual\\\'\\\'\\\' misconceptions; they just discuss commonly cited \\\'\\\'\\\'opinions\\\'\\\'\\\' about certain filmmakers that seem a bit more questionable once one has a specialized background in cinema. \\\"
Most of the entries are [[WallOfText Walls of Text]]. But to boil them down to their key points, they essentially amount to...
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock wasn\\\'t quite as efficient or technically skilled as a lot of people give him credit for.
* Creator/OrsonWelles wasn\\\'t as much of a failure in his later years as a lot of people think he was.
* Creator/StanleyKubrick wasn\\\'t as much of an intellectual auteur as a lot of people think, and he was somewhat commercially minded.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa wasn\\\'t as popular or beloved in Japan as some people assume.
* Creator/IngmarBergman\\\'s movies were more popular and successful than some people assume.
Simply put, none of those five entries fit the definition of Common Knowledge--and since they\\\'re the only entries under the folder, there\\\'s no reason to keep the folder if they\\\'re removed.
(It may also bear noting that all of the entries in the folder seem to have been added by the same user; that user has since been permanently suspended for repeated trope misuse of exactly this sort)
While I can understand wanting to add a few examples of common misconceptions about filmmakers, none of the current examples appear belong on this page.
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder: Filmmakers]]
* There are a lot of misconceptions people have about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked and even his own personality.
** It\\\'s commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn\\\'s \\\'\\\'Hitchcock at Work\\\'\\\' reveals, while Hitchcock \\\'\\\'did\\\'\\\' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, his films were not such a model of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in the Golden Age, and it meant that a surprisingly large number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful in the box-office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies went into production without a complete script, the remake of \\\'\\\'Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Film/StrangersOnATrain\\\'\\\' and also \\\'\\\'Film/{{Notorious}}\\\'\\\', which was more or less [[IndyPloy made up as it went along]]. Likewise while Hitchcock did storyboard a large part of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in \\\'\\\'Film/NorthByNorthwest\\\'\\\' wasn\\\'t storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn\\\'t work. In the case of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\', he said that the film\\\'s ending was rejected because audiences didn\\\'t want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally \\\'\\\'approved\\\'\\\' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. In actual fact, the original ending of \\\'\\\'Film/{{Suspicion}}\\\'\\\' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn\\\'t find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock\\\'s real ending, had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant\\\'s character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there are huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles:
** The most common one is the AssociationFallacy that Orson Welles\\\' life paralleled \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' in that he started with big promise but ended up old, lonely and ended up DyingAlone and that Welles ended up LonelyAtTheTop. This myth has been spread by the likes of Creator/RobertWise in the documentary \\\'\\\'The Battle over Citizen Kane\\\'\\\' (he [[WeUsedToBeFriends did fall out with]] Welles over the editing of \\\'\\\'Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons\\\'\\\') and partially by John Houseman (who also fell out with Welles). In truth, [[https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2009/10/welles-failure-vs-thomsons-success/ at the time of Welles\\\' death]], he was involved in hustling and making many different kinds of movies, experimenting with video technology, and was also in a relationship [[MayDecemberRomance with the much younger]] Oja Kodor (and gloated about the same in \\\'\\\'Film/FForFake\\\'\\\' his last completed and released film, and far and away his most optimistic and happiest) and far from being on hard times, was still living off royalties and other inheritances that he apparently lived comfortably. Likewise, Welles never really reached the top, for him to be lonely there. As he stated \\\"I started at the top, and \\\'\\\'worked my way to the bottom\\\'\\\'\\\".
** Likewise, on account of the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles is often held as the emblematic \\\"irresponsible director\\\" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now of course Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn\\\'t in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike say Creator/MichaelCimino, and Welles was critical of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large numbers of money]] for personal films, feeling it [[CassandraTruth would lead to irresponsible behaviour]]). Even \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production, the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles\\\' films were made on low-budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** In \\\'\\\'Film/CitizenKane\\\'\\\', Creator/OrsonWelles did not carelessly \\\"forget\\\" to explain to the audience [[PlotHole how everyone knows Charles Foster Kane\\\'s last words when he died alone in his bedroom]]. Near the end of the movie, Kane\\\'s butler Raymond explicitly says that \\\'\\\'he\\\'\\\' was the one who heard Kane say \\\"Rosebud\\\" while on his deathbed. We just don\\\'t see Raymond in the famous opening scene because the scene consists almost entirely of extreme close-ups (and it may, in fact, be shot from Raymond\\\'s point of view). Many of the misconceptions about \\\'\\\'Kane\\\'\\\' originated in Pauline Kael\\\'s essay \\\"Raising Kane,\\\" written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the above story, she argued at length that Herman Mankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] - an argument that\\\'s still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles\\\' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles\\\' completed films (\\\'\\\'Citizen Kane, Macbeth, The Tragedy of Othello, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial, The Immortal Story, F For Fake\\\'\\\') exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (who weren\\\'t even allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often, \\\'\\\'Film/AStarIsBorn\\\'\\\' butchered worse than any of Welles\\\' films (the latter film\\\'s ReCut version has to be filled in \\\'\\\'with Production Stills\\\'\\\'). It also differs him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of \\\'\\\'Blind Husbands\\\'\\\' faced ExecutiveMeddling \\\'\\\'on each and every one of his films\\\'\\\'). The butchering of some of Welles\\\' films (\\\'\\\'Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin\\\'\\\') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he\\\'s relatively fortunate for the fact that \\\'\\\'Ambersons\\\'\\\' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* A number of directors who are today known for having artistic reputations or being associated with LeFilmArtistique are considered to be far less commercial than they were. In the case of arthouse international film-makers, thanks to SmallReferencePools it tends to get overlooked that an European or Asian director who gets known in the West has to have been fairly successful in their respective native film industry for them to reach an audience in the Anglophone, although in other cases it can be inverted:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick enjoys a reputation among movie-buffs and other directors as a true intellectual director. This is based on his supposed eccentricity, secrecy, and his edgy films like \\\'\\\'Film/AClockworkOrange\\\'\\\' and others. In truth, almost all of Kubrick\\\'s films were commercial successes and box-office hits, and Kubrick for all his life was a mainstream film-maker. About the only film of Kubrick\\\'s in his life that was a commercial disappointment (and even then it recouped costs of production and made money in residuals and internationally) is \\\'\\\'Film/BarryLyndon\\\'\\\', but the rest -- \\\'\\\'Film/DrStrangelove, Film/FullMetalJacket, Film/AClockworkOrange, 2001\\\'\\\' -- were all hits. \\\'\\\'Film/EyesWideShut\\\'\\\' his final film released posthumously made $162 million, largely on the strength of its cast, despite being a serious, weird, strange story of sexual frustration, weird sex, and having entirely unsympathetic characters. The primary reason why Kubrick was able to maintain his independence and uncommercial appetitite was because Kubrick had a Creator/JamesCameron-esque knowledge of the commercial side of business ([[http://www.indiewire.com/2012/01/stanley-kubrick-the-unknown-father-of-the-box-office-report-183407/ he invented the box-office report]]), excellent relationships with producers, personally controlled marketing, distribution, exhibition of his movies[[note]]He literally had spies sitting in during screenings and if there was a report anywhere that a projectionist messed up the presentation, Kubrick would \\\'\\\'personally\\\'\\\' call that guy then and there and tell him how to do his job[[/note]] and that relatively speaking, they were not as high-budgeted as the normal Hollywood film of its time.
** Creator/AkiraKurosawa was regarded in the Anglophone as a major innovative film artist whose films were serious, stylish, and far more realistic and raw than those of the West, and he became the first Japanese director to have an international audience. Within Japan, his movies were commercially successful, but critically everyone saw him as a SellOut and \\\"too western\\\" with many noting that the dialogue of his movies were improved by subtitles, seeing his style as \\\"too Hollywood\\\", and criticized him for not giving good roles to women and they regarded Kurosawa\\\'s success as the BlackSheepHit of Japanese Cinema noting that it didn\\\'t really represent their best and most innovative film-makers and films. Critically, Kurosawa\\\'s reputation was better in the West than it was in Japan, and he was heavily influenced by Western writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, as well as film-makers like Creator/FrankCapra and Creator/JohnFord. Likewise, Kurosawa\\\'s films were generally big commercial successes, especially \\\'\\\'Seven Samurai\\\'\\\' and \\\'\\\'Rashomon\\\'\\\'.
** Creator/IngmarBergman was \\\"the\\\" arthouse film-maker, and the TropeCodifier of serious European intellectual film-maker, who makes depressing films where characters talk about the meaning of life and RageAgainstTheHeavens. His movies were made on low-budgets and were huge commercial successes in Sweden, and Europe, and his miniseries, \\\'\\\'Scenes from a marriage\\\'\\\', according to legend, increased the divorce rate overnight on its first airing. Likewise, Bergman\\\'s films were also successful and popular in America, not only among intellectuals but regular moviegoers. One reason why Creator/WoodyAllen openly name-dropped Bergman in his films in the Seventies, was that he was a household name at that time.
[[/folder]]
