Not everyone takes movies as business, not everyone takes movies as a pastime. The following eight hardcore directors, some take movies as faith, some take movies as battles, and some take movies to shake the world.
They all succeeded.
Quentin Tarantino
I went crazy, and even Weinstein dared to be afraid
Quentin Tarantino, in his debut film The Falling Dog, had a gangster cut off a policeman's ear.
The scene left countless audiences disfigured and angrily, and harvey Weinstein, the owner of the distributor Miramax, had already expected this. He advised Quentin to delete the scene: "If you delete it, we can expand the number of theaters to three hundred!" These 30 seconds can completely change the box office of "Falling Dogs" in the United States. ”
In the face of Weinstein, the famous bully and "scissor hand", Quentin did not flinch: "Harvey, this can't work. I think the movie is perfect now. I knew that deleting the scene would make the movie sell more money, but I think it's the best part of the film. I don't delete. ”
Weinstein had never met such a young director, so he was stunned. After a few seconds, the lifelong bully actually gave in: "Okay, but I want you to remember that it was Miramax who made the movie appear as you wished!" ”
Quentin reflected on the incident years later and found that this moment had played a decisive role in his career.
He became one of the few directors in Hollywood who had the final editing rights to his work, and no one would force him to compromise, because everyone knew that he ate soft and not hard.
He also became the darling of Harvey Weinstein for more than twenty years, because only he dared to face Weinstein and could retreat, and the others either instigated or lost both.
Martin Scorsese
I have offended all Catholics
Martin Scorsese was a devout Catholic, but in the 1980s, he was a thorn in the church's eye.
He insisted on bringing to the screen the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, which completely subverted the original meaning of the Bible: to set Christ as an indecisive and tempted "common man"; to set Judas as a brave and decisive revolutionary, not a traitor.
The film was a hot potato before filming began, martin looked for five or six years of investment for it, and was temporarily withdrawn by the film company in the middle.
When Martin finished the film, the Holy See and some radical Catholics began to boycott the film: Americans blocked the entrance to the theater to prevent the audience from entering, and the French believers burned several theaters, killing one person and injuring many others.
Due to death threats from religious groups, martin was at some point accompanied by bodyguards. But even so, he remained true to his original purpose—to show a Christ who was both human and divine.
He was far more devout to his faith than conservative believers who blindly followed dogma. Nearly thirty years after the film's publication, he made the Catholic theme of "Silence", which is also a kind of reflection and self-reconciliation to some extent.
Lo and behold, he went to see the Pope.
Robert Wise
If you dare not shoot, then I will blacken history
In the eyes of Fans of The Sound of Music, Salzburg, Austria, is a place of pure truth, goodness and beauty.
But it was also Hitler's favorite place: the Fuehrer was particularly fond of the mountains around Salzburg, and it was in his mountain villa that he completed the second volume of Mein Kampf.
And the citizens of Salzburg also loved the Fuehrer at that time, which is a black history that cannot be washed away, and it is also shown in "The Sound of Music".
In fact, when the crew came to Salzburg to shoot on the spot and began to set up the scene, the mayor of the city strongly asked the director Robert Wise to take off the Nazi flag.
Old Master Wise was not moved, and replied very stiffly- don't let me hang the swastika flag? Then I can only go through the historical database and cut into the movie of your newsreel that the whole city welcomed Hitler. Needless to say, when the mayor heard this, he obediently obeyed.
Oliver Stone
I only use one movie
It swept across the CIA, the FBI, the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the White House
Oliver Stone served in Vietnam
Oliver Stone is Hollywood's hottest leftist, and his three-hour-long masterpiece, The Assassination of Kennedy, is the most sensational conspiracy theory film of all time.
With this film alone, Stone offended the American ownership community: he thought that President Kennedy had died in an assassination, and the Top White House personalities, the Army, Navy, air force, the CIA, the FBI, the Dallas police, and the American conglomerate all inserted a foot in it!
In order to prove his suspicions, Stone did not hesitate to fabricate the facts. Film plots such as "The Assassin's Photograph Was Forged," "Kennedy Was Shot Three times in Five Seconds," and "All-Washington Telephone Lines Interrupted for An Hour After the Assassination" have all been falsified by historians.
But Stone did not make a fictional statement in the film. No wonder Jack Valenti, then president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was furious with Stone: "Your film is full of lies, no different from Hitler's propaganda film Triumph of the Will!" ”
As soon as "The Assassination of Kennedy" was released, it triggered a verbal attack throughout the United States. Politicians and historians scoffed at the film, and the media dismissed Stone as a "delusional maniac" who lacked cultural literacy and had no sense of civic responsibility.
Stone recalled: "I can't even remember how many death threats I received during that time. Only film critic Roger Ebert supported Stone because he believed that the focus of the film was not to provide the truth, but to restore the anger and frustration of an entire generation of Americans.
And history has gradually proved that Stone's doubts are not unfounded.
Congress promised to publish all records of Kennedy's assassination in 2017, but under pressure from the FBI and the CIA, President Trump withheld thousands of documents.
The truth is still waiting for brave people like Stone to reveal.
Russ von Trier
It can make both men and women feel pain in their lower bodies at the same time
When it comes to "everything is scary", we can't forget the most offending director of this century, Russ von Trier. His "sympathy for Hitler" at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival offended all Jews.
And his 2018 serial killer movie "This Room I Made" is eager to offend all mankind.
But his crushing pinnacle is his film The Antichrist, which premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
In the film, he first let the heroine take the big stone and angrily smash the male protagonist's yang*, and then let the heroine cut off her own yin*, which is simply a movie, double the pain.
Von Trier tortured the audience so much that two groups of critics accused him of being "misogynistic" and "misogynistic" at the same time – please, can't you all come together and accuse him of hating all of humanity?
All these controversies can be said to be in the right place. At a press conference after the premiere, he was overjoyed, declaring: "I am the best director in the world!" ”
Although he quickly changed his tune to say that this was just a personal feeling and "no confidence to confirm", at least we can be sure that von Trier is definitely the most provocative director in the world.
Jean-Luc Godard
I went crazy, and even the curtain of Cannes dared to be torn
Jean-Luc Godard has done countless hardcore things in his life, but his hardcore year was undoubtedly 1968, when his glasses were not known how many times they were blown away.
First, in February, the founder of the French Film Archive, Henri Langlois, was dismissed by the Minister of Culture, and Godard, who regarded him as a mentor, immediately joined the protest march of fans, fought with the police, and was briefly arrested.
Three months later, france erupted in an anti-capitalist "May Storm," with young people taking to the streets to protest against the economic and political system that suppresses humanity, which coincided with Godard's political views.
He immediately demanded an early end to the Festival de Cannes as a sign of solidarity with the demonstrators. For this reason, he scolded the reporters who came to report on the film festival on the spot: "I am here to talk about the same hatred with students and workers, and you want to listen to sports shots and big close-ups, you idiots!" ”
On May 18, a great battle broke out in the screening hall of Cannes, and Godard hung his hand on the curtain to prevent the film from showing the film, allowing his glasses to be knocked down, but his hands did not relax.
The next day, the president of the Festival de Cannes had to announce that the festival would end five days early.
Now it seems that Godard's behavior at that time may seem very middle-aged, but his bloody spirit of daring to think and dare to do it has undoubtedly added a distinct legendary color to the history of the film.
In 2018, 50 years after the "May Storm", the Cannes Film Festival "did not care about the previous suspicions" to choose Godard's "Pierrot the Mad" as the theme of the festival's official poster.
Spike Lee
I went crazy, and even the chairman of the jury wanted to beat me
The famous black director Spike Lee is sensitive to everything that is suspected of racial discrimination: he once had a verbal battle with Quentin Tarantino for more than a decade because of the "black*" in Dangerous Relations.
At the 2019 Academy Awards, he tried to leave the scene in anger because "Green Book" stepped on his "Black Party" to win the grand prize (unsuccessfully).
But his most violent proclamation was dedicated to the German director Wim Wenders, who, as chairman of the jury, did not give him even half the prize for "Do What You Should" at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
"Do What You Should" is a film that takes racial conflict as the theme, but the jury of that cannes film festival obviously preferred Steven Soderbergh's middle-class youth confession book "Sex, Lies and Videotapes", which won both the Palme d'Or and the Best Actor Award, while "Do What You Should" received nothing.
Coupled with the fact that Spike Lee heard through gossip that Wenders did not like the protagonist Mutch he played in the film, this is even more inflammatory.
Spike Lee then spoke up to warn Wenders to be careful, because "I'm not sure I'll come out of some street corner and squash your head with a baseball bat."
Fortunately, he just talked and didn't really hit people. Spike Lee also admitted more than two decades later that he was indeed immature at that time.
But he's not much better now — still taking the awards too seriously, and getting angry every time he loses (like this time). If he can be a little more personable, the popularity of passers-by will be much better.
Pierre Paul Pasolini
I made the first forbidden film in history to anger the world
To this day, the Italian film "120 Days of Sodom" is still recognized as the first of the top ten banned films. It is not the most flavorful film in history, but it portrays the distortion of human nature and society as cold and hard.
It mixes beauty in ugliness, mixes cautionary prophecy in obscenity, and the complex perception it gives people creates its unique position.
At the time of this film, director Pierre Paul Pasolini was furious with the world. He hated consumerism because it drove people to indulge in pleasure and self-materialization;
He hated the Italian authorities for manipulating popular sentiment and allowing neo-fascist forces to rise;
He also did not like the young Italians, and in his opinion the rebellious college students were some pampered brothers.
He didn't believe the world was going to get better, so he decided to anger the world with a twisted and perverted movie, and he succeeded.
Curiously, Pasolini's bizarre death makes 120 Days of Sodom even more legendary: he died under sticks and wheels three weeks before the film's premiere, and a male prostitute came forward to admit that he was the murderer, but retracted his confession more than three decades later, saying that there was another conspiracy in the case.
Pasolini's hardcore attitude against the world doomed his life and death to be invincibility.
What other directors do you know about hardcore stories?