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Written by April Yorke

Wednesday, 30 April 2008 19:00

When RKO landed wunderkind Orson Welles for his feature length debut, it must have seemed like the un-gettable get. He was a celebrated young director, and his first film would surely go down in history. Instead of supporting the film, though, RKO railed against Welles’ overblown production, the movie flopped during its theatrical run, and it received boos at the 1941 Academy Awards every time one of its nine nominations was announced. In the end, history did remember the film quite differently. It was re-released for the public in the mid-fifties, and the American Film Institute has twice over (first in 1998 and again in 2007) named it the greatest film of all time. That film, of course, is Citizen Kane.

Making a Citizen Kane isn’t what you would call “easy”. In fact, it’s hard as hell. Simply making a memorable feature length debut is tough enough. The writer-director needs to establish him- or herself in such a way as to secure a place with an audience, the critics (if s/he is lucky), and the studios. A handful of directors have gone on to push through those criteria to something bigger: they’ve used their debut film to stake out a career. Let’s take a look at some of the more successful attempts from the last two decades.

Cameron Crowe, say anything . . . (1989)

Cusack and Ione Skye

Crowe is strange breed. He’s practically got a TM after his name (TM MFF of the currently-defunct Fametracker), but only six directorial credits under his belt. Up to four years can elapse between pictures, and he’s had nothing on the docket since 2005’s half-baked Elizabethtown. He’s even had the wherewithal to make a semi-auto-biopic that many still regard as his masterpiece. Still, it was the romance say anything that got him into the director’s chair for the first time, and it showcases what would become his trademarks: wall-to-wall music, lost leading man, intense quotability. Lloyd Dobbler (John Cusack) is the kind of man you wish you knew, and you really do want to see him come out on top. From the moment he dimly announces to Cory (Lili Taylor) and DC (Amy Brooks) that he “wants to get hurt!”, to the dinner scene with possibly his best mini-monologue, it’s impossible not to like Lloyd. That’s what Crowe’s better movies offer at the end of the day: a chance to get to know someone you might like.

Steven Soderbergh, sex, lies, and videotape (1989)

Gallagher and San Giacomo

Soderbergh couldn’t be more different than Crowe, so it’s all the more exciting that the movie-going public was introduced to both of them in the same year. Sex, lies, and videotape is sexy, twisted, and short. We meet Ann (Andie MacDowell), John (Peter Gallagher), and Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), follow Graham (James Spader) back into their lives, and then watch those lives implode inside of a hundred minutes. Soderbergh has picked up on notions of sexuality, identity and morality in pretty much every film he’s made since, although perhaps never again with the degree of devastating simplicity that he achieves here. These definitely aren’t people we know (well, they could be behind closed doors), but they are people we want to know more about. This movie’s not as smooth and stylish as Soderbergh’s later films would be (especially the Ocean series), but you get to meet the man behind the myth.

Wes Anderson, Bottle Rocket (1996, co-written with Owen Wilson)

The Brothers Wilson

Anderson has given us a lot over the years: perfectly matched songs and scenes, worlds unto themselves Jason Schwartzman. Perhaps his greatest gift was schoolmate and writing partner Owen Wilson. Bottle Rocket was, after all, also Wilson’s big screen debut. The film gives us a different Wilson than the one to which we’ve grown accustomed. He’s not an easy going, charming stoner. Instead, as Dignan, a would-be criminal and gang leader, he’s wound tighter than a drum, forever frustrated by his own ineptitude, as well as that of his accomplices (Luke Wilson and Robert Musgrave). Wilson fits right into Anderson’s trademark off-centre worlds. Anderson’s later features would be more assured with picture perfect detailing, but he cut his teeth on this one, his first insular world that seems impossible but manages to be believable.

Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides (1999, based on Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel)

Kristen Dunst

Coppola would win greater acclaim for her next feature, Lost in Translation, but this movie has every element that makes her pictures so beautiful: scant dialogue, beautiful blondes, sunlight streaming through leaves. Part of what makes Coppola's movies work is her quiet and slow storytelling. It's not so much economical as it is hazy, lulling you into contemplative complacency like a cat lying in a shaft of sunlight. The Lisbon girls are introduced with doodles out of a notebook, and the movie never loses that daydream quality. It serves her well here, mesmerizing the audience so that they’re willing to follow the story through to its tragic conclusion. In fact, her later films would lose the emotional connection that grounds the far-fetched misfortune. For all her acclaim, it is this first, smaller picture that might end up being remembered as her greatest. Of course, we’re only three pictures in. She has plenty of time left to stun us.

Rian Johnson, Brick (2005)

Gordon-Levitt and Matt O'Leary

Johnson’s brilliant high school noir is the anomaly on this list, to be sure. It’s from this century, and it’s Johnson’s only film to be released to date. (The Brothers Bloom is due out later this year.) If you’ve seen it, though, you know why it belongs on the list. The story of a high school student (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)’s search for his ex-girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin)’s killer, it is too original, too smart, and too entertaining for us to allow Johnson to slip away. There’s not a compromising moment in the movie that took him 10 years to bring to the screen. Johnson’s debut shows the same creative spark that runs through each of the four preceding pictures. It’s careful and subtle and expertly shot. In short, it’s exactly what you need in a debut in order to mark the beginning of a successful career.

Boxcar Bertha, a 1972 film based on the true story of a young woman who rode the rails as a criminal and union sympathizer during the Great Depression, has that just-graduated-from-film-school vibe: it’s overly arty, impersonal and too long. It’s not exactly what you’d expect from Martin Scorsese. The next year, Mean Streets would be released and so would Scorsese as we have come to know him. He was able to overcome his early missteps and carve out a long, successful career. It was something these five directors never had to do. In some ways, Crowe, Soderbergh, Anderson, Coppola, and Johnson have little in common, aside from job titles, yet all five of their feature length debuts announced to the world the writer-directors they would be, and we continue to reap the benefits. This year more first timers will take their chances at the box office, with the critics, and with us. Some will succeed, some will find the middle of the road and stick with it, and some will disappear. We should all be breathless to find out who will bring us the beginning of another worthy career.

© 2008 April Yorke; licensee (Cult)ure Magazine.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This article belongs to the Launch Issue.

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