No director may be as simultaneously beloved and underappreciated than John Carpenter. The average moviegoer knows about Halloween. His version of The Thing is thankfully now considered one of the…
(Not So) Famous Firsts
20 Articles
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
Watching the movie for this article demonstrated the best and worst of streaming culture for me. On the one hand, I believe it’s safe to say original TV shows on…
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Daniel Suddes
6 Min Read
Jon Favreau may not be a household name yet but he is responsible for some of the most famous pop culture icons of the two decades. He started as an…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
David Cronenberg’s filmography is among the strangest in horror cinema. He started in Canada making an unofficial adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise — with parasites thrown in for good…
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Daniel Suddes
7 Min Read
Joel Schumacher passed away earlier this month after a yearlong battle with cancer. He was 80. And his obituaries have been some of the weirdest things I’ve read. Schumacher, throughout…
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Daniel Suddes
7 Min Read
I’ve covered two types of debuts on (Not-So) Famous Firsts. The first is the type of debut that, while embarrassing, allows the director in question to point to his roots…
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Daniel Suddes
7 Min Read
For more than sixty years now, Woody Allen has been an icon in the comedy world. Lately, though, it’s obvious that he’ll likely be remembered just as much for his…
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Daniel Suddes
8 Min Read
Halloween gets all the movie nerds excited. This is the season where it becomes not only socially acceptable to watch gory films, but it’s almost mandatory. It’s also the time…
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Daniel Suddes
8 Min Read
My goal with (Not So) Famous Firsts is to remind myself that everyone has stumbling blocks to get over. Steven Spielberg wasn’t automatically a superstar when he directed the made-for-TV…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
The most influential figure on the new Hollywood era was Roger Corman. He’s the one who gave Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman, Johnathan Demme, Robert Towne, Nicolas Roeg, and…
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Daniel Suddes
6 Min Read
In a career spanning 34 years, director Terry Zwigoff has only directed four major films. His 1994 feature Crumb may be the greatest American documentary ever made. He followed that…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
Ryan Coogler has only directed three feature films, but he’s already attained the success very few filmmakers ever attain in their careers. Coogler not only revived a dead franchise for…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
It’s been five years since Alfonso CuarÁ³n released Gravity and won the Best Director Oscar. But with the release of Roma he’s once again the front runner at the Oscars…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
Legendary spaghetti western director Sergio Leone was obsessed with genre pictures but was ignorant of the constraints traditional Hollywood studios forced on directors. He made some incredible films and his…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
These days, it seems like Sam Peckinpah will be remembered more for his outrageous behavior than for his films — if he’s remembered at all. Once Hollywood’s greatest enfant terrible,…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
I have long been a fan of Terry Gilliam. His Brazil is my favorite film of all time. But to say he’s been an inconsistent filmmaker is an understatement. I…
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Daniel Suddes
5 Min Read
Ridley Scott is unusual amongst A-list directors. He has several classics to his name, but is still not mentioned in the same breath as directors like Steven Spielberg or James…
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Daniel Suddes
8 Min Read
In the last decade, Kathryn Bigelow has become the most famous female American director. She has become the new chronicler of recent American history. Much like Oliver Stone’s films, her…
Daniel Suddes
4 Min Read
Jonathan Demme’s passing was marked by tributes to Silence of the Lambs, an American horror classic. Demme would still be considered one of the great American directors even if that…
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Daniel Suddes
6 Min Read
Every filmmaker follows one of two paths. The first path is the Orson Welles wunderkind path that sees a filmmaker dazzle everyone their debut, only to be incapable of replicating…
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