“All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They’re obliged to overstate their own importance.” – Francois Truffaut
Maybe that’s true when talking to film directors, but is it true when we talk about film directors? You decide for yourselves, Austin Freaks!
Because here he is, everyone! The Avocado’s Favorite Director….RON HOWARD!
Yes, it’s been a real Cinderella (Man) story here as Howard came from only three votes in the first round to net the coveted 127th place in our hearts.
Anyway, now that we’ve settled all that, we move on to the important stuff.
FOURTH PLACE
The man who made Ernst Lubitsch feel that uncertain feeling…showed Sergio Leone the good, the bad, and the ugly… gave Mel Brooks High Anxiety…went haywire on Steven Soderbergh….and spirited Hayao Miyazaki away…
….The Master of Suspense and sending you into a frenzy…
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
THIRD PLACE
The guy who showed Peter Bogdanovich his last picture show…made Barry Jenkins need medicine for melancholy…sent Tim Burton back to Sleepy Hollow…trapped John Carpenter in the mouth of madness…showed Martin Scorsese these were mean streets indeed….and drove Alfred Hitchcock Psycho….
….a director who ran the course and had his share of dreams…
AKIRA KUROSAWA
SECOND PLACE
The towering figure who tore up the moth diaries of Mary Harron…trapped Mike Nichols in the bird cage….drove Charles Chaplin out of the limelight…showed Sidney Lumet he wasn’t fail-safe…taught us Quentin Tarantino wasn’t death proof…and kicked Kurosawa to the curb like a stray dog….
….an auteur who everyone here took quite the shining to….
STANLEY KUBRICK
FIRST PLACE
Drum roll please…
…these brothers made Damien Chazelle the first man to go down…ruined Greta Gerwig’s nights and weekends…forced Werner Herzog to live in the cave of forgotten dreams…got double indemnity from what they did to Billy Wilder…threw Steven Spielberg off their bridge of spies…took out Alfred Hitchcock as part of a family plot….and made Stanley Kubrick keep his eyes wide shut…
….the directors who showed us this contest was no country for old men…that they had true grit….that they were capable of intolerable cruelty….that no matter how “far” they’d “go,” they’d always be able to tell us the ballad of Buster Scruggs and other tales of the American Frontier…
…The Favorite Film Directors of the Avocado…in 2020…by one vote….
JOEL & ETHAN COEN
Well, that’s it everybody! Thanks for playing along, everyone. It was a nail biter to the very end. For the curious, I’ve compiled the following list of our contestants based on when they went out, their seeding, the number of points they scored, and so on.
The Avocado’s Top 128 Film Directors
- Joel & Ethan Coen
- Stanley Kubrick
- Akira Kurosawa
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Martin Scorsese
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Steven Spielberg
- Quentin Tarantino
- Wes Anderson
- David Fincher
- Orson Welles
- John Carpenter
- Ridley Scott
- Steven Soderbergh
- Billy Wilder
- Sidney Lumet
- David Lynch
- Alfonso Cuaròn
- Guillermo Del Toro
- Mel Brooks
- Paul Thomas Anderson
- Taika Waititi
- Christopher Nolan
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Spike Lee
- Fritz Lang
- James Cameron
- Tim Burton
- John Huston
- Kathryn Bigelow
- Werner Herzog
- Charles Chaplin
- Rob Reiner
- Rian Johnson
- Peter Jackson
- Sam Raimi
- George Miller
- Frank Capra
- David Cronenberg
- Richard Linklater
- Penny Marshall
- Jonathan Demme
- Robert Altman
- Denis Villeneuve
- Darren Aronofsky
- Bong Joon-Ho
- Edgar Wright
- John Ford
- Spike Jonze
- Brian De Palma
- Buster Keaton
- Sergio Leone
- Ang Lee
- Christopher Guest
- Terry Gilliam
- F. W. Murnau
- Michel Gondry
- Amy Heckerling
- Jordan Peele
- Miloš Forman
- Barry Jenkins
- Greta Gerwig
- Alex Garland
- Mike Nichols
- Pedro Almodóvar
- George Lucas
- Ingmar Bergman
- Lana & Lily Wachowski
- George Romero
- David Lean
- Robert Zemeckis
- Brad Bird
- Clint Eastwood
- John McTiernan
- Michael Curtiz
- Peter Weir
- Carol Reed
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- Danny Boyle
- Elia Kazan
- Yorgos Lanthimos
- Georges Méliès
- Paul Verhoeven
- Phil Lord & Chris Miller
- Federico Fellini
- Sarah Polley
- Ryan Coogler
- Jim Jarmusch
- Takashi Miike
- Alexander Payne
- Isao Takahata
- Ari Aster
- Joe Dante
- Michael Mann
- Carl Reiner
- Joe Johnston
- Preston Sturges
- Woody Allen
- John Waters
- Terrence Malick
- Wong Kar-Wai
- Howard Hawks
- Todd Haynes
- Ava DuVernay
- Roman Polanski
- Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Lars Von Trier
- Ken Russell
- Patty Jenkins
- James Mangold
- Luis Buñuel
- Sofia Coppola
- Charles Laughton
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Armando Iannucci
- Kenneth Branagh
- Duncan Jones
- John Landis
- Cameron Crowe
- John Cassavetes
- Peter Bogdanovich
- Steve McQueen
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Mary Harron
- Nicolas Winding Refn
- Walter Hill
- Ron Howard
- Damien Chazelle
I know, I know, I’m so proud that George Lucas turned out to be our 66th favorite director as well. The memes write themselves.
While I know you’re all supremely satisfied with how this all shook out, feel free to pop off in the comments. Do you love the Coens more than life itself? Who you think should have won? Got any ideas or suggestions for future tournaments? Looking for directions? Wondering what a movie is?
One question I know I can answer is how happy I was to see people get involved and make their voices heard about the hundreds of dynamic artists whose work we got to debate these past couple weeks. I hope you all had as much fun as I did making it.
I can think of no better nor more insightful words on the art of film directing to leave you on than this quote.
“I mean Joel talks to the actors more than I do and I probably do production stuff more than he does.” – Ethan Coen
