Filmmakers who vanished

[Monterey Jack]

I always find it odd when a director -- whose career seems to have been chugging along quite amiably -- just vanishes for no discernable reason. This thread idea occurred to me watching the 2014 movie The Angriest Man In Brooklyn this morning, an alternately tasteless and mawkish mess directed by...Phil Alden Robinson? Yes, the same man who gave us the sublime tearjerker Field Of Dreams and highly entertaining caper comedy Sneakers, then didn't make another theatrical feature for TEN YEARS (2002's bland Tom Clancy flick The Sum Of All Fears) before vanishing for another dozen years before making this lousy time-waster. Back in the early 90s I always thought that Robinson would have been one of those guys turning out a very good or even great movie every few years, but he just seemed to give up, aside from the occasional screenwriting or TV directing gig.

Also coming to mind is Jonathan Mostow, who hit the jackpot right out of the gate with the terrific thriller Breakdown, followed that with the terse submarine movie U-571, and did an admirable job in the unenviable position of replacing James Cameron in the exciting Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, but since then has made all of two movies, the second of which was a straight-to-Redbox clunker starring Sam Worthington.

Anyone else...?

[jkholm]

I don't think he vanished but Savage Steve Holland made what, three theatrical features? Looks like he moved on to various sitcom projects over the years.

[BobaMike]

I don't think he vanished but Savage Steve Holland made what, three theatrical features? Looks like he moved on to various sitcom projects over the years.

Growing up, I only knew him as the creator of the Eek the Cat cartoon!

[AndyDursin]

Phil Alden Robinson has always kept working, and he definitely segued into TV -- his credits have shows like BAND OF BROTHERS and he's done well as the creator/producer of THE GOOD FIGHT for CBS. But he was primarily a writer -- most of his credits early on are screenwriting credits, both things he was credited on (ALL OF ME, RHINESTONE) and plenty of other things he ghost wrote (GHOST DAD, THE CHAMBER, FLETCH, probably many others in the 80s and 90s). Just one of those guys who only helmed a handful of features -- even after SNEAKERS it was nearly a decade before he made THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, and as solid as that was, it failed to launch Affleck as Jack Ryan, so it was another decade before he directed another feature after it. He seems like he's had steady work though through his career though (and he's not young at this point either).

According to this interview he was choosy about what he wanted to do, and didn't seem like he wanted to "just direct" whatever was handed to him:

https://collider.com/phil-alden-robinso ... interview/

Jonathan Mostow though is a very curious case, because he definitely WAS rooted as a director, made a few financially successful films -- and then kind of dropped off the planet. U-571 and BREAKDOWN were both successful and well received. TERMINATOR 3 made a lot of money. Then he made a crappy Bruce Willis joint, SURROGATES, and it was curtains! You almost wonder if he was difficult to work with or had some other issue that precluded him from getting constant work because he wasn't able to parlay those 3 hits -- which also came all in a row -- into something more substantial.

[Paul MacLean]

Roland Joffe is another. Director of critical and commercial successes The Killing Fields and The Mission. Of course Fatman and Little Boy and City of Joy weren't exactly box office smashes but The Scarlet Letter (as Andy noted recently) was a strong effort.

But the last thing I saw Joffe's name on was MTV's Undressed!

[AndyDursin]

Joffe's career died out because he directed one massive bomb after another. CITY OF JOY, THE SCARLET LETTER were hugely expensive flops; FAT MAN & LITTLE BOY was another one. By the time he got to GOODBYE LOVER -- which had a comparatively small budget -- even then nobody saw it and it lost money. Still he's directed 6 other features since 2000!

Honestly I thought THE KILLING FIELDS was great but THE MISSION was hugely overrated by some. Kind of a spotty director who nailed it a couple of times, but he's managed to keep on working, even if it's been to a steadily declining audience!

[Paul MacLean]

Remember Alex Cox?

He was all the rage in the 1980s, lauded as a "game changing" iconoclastic maverick -- much in the way Tarantino later was (though Tarantino has obviously had more of a career).

I remember people bouncing up and down about Cox's "genius".

[Monterey Jack]

Jeannot Szwarc. "Rescued" Jaws 2 from the axed John Hancock, used that clout to get passion project Somewhere In Time greenlit, a pair of overproduced F/X movies in the mid-80s (Supergirl, Santa Claus: The Movie), but has barely any feature credits since (the last few of which were French productions in the mid-to-late 90s), and has primarily worked in TV since, on genre shows like Smallville, Fringe and Bones.

[AndyDursin]

I wouldn't say Swarzc "vanished," because he was always a TV guy. That's where he got his start -- NIGHT GALLERY and COLUMBO and many other series -- and did most of his work. Really his feature output was limited to just a few years, between BUG, then JAWS 2 and his Salkind stuff. I remember seeing a movie he directed with Martin Sheen from '82 -- some spy movie I reviewed years back on Blu-Ray -- and it was pretty terrible. But he's had a lengthy career, and is probably one of the most prolific TV directors around.

Cox definitely qualifies as someone who vanished -- and you're right Paul, he's someone who critics latched onto after SID & NANCY and REPO MAN, but then came WALKER and that was the end for him. Still he's resurfaced recently -- in fact he records 2 or 3 commentaries a month on Kino Lorber Blu-Rays!

[Monterey Jack]

Cox definitely qualifies as someone who vanished -- and you're right Paul, he's someone who critics latched onto after SID & NANCY and REPO MAN, but then came WALKER and that was the end for him. Still he's resurfaced recently -- in fact he records 2 or 3 commentaries a month on Kino Lorber Blu-Rays!

In his book Movie Freak, film critic Owen Gleiberman raves about Sid & Nancy, but goes on to bemoan that Cox basically sabotaged his own career with arteest pretentiousness and generally not giving a crap, relating a story about interviewing him when he was still writing for the Boston Phoenix in the 80s, and how Cox picked his nose and ate it right in front of him.

[AndyDursin]

That would gibe with his fast descent off the A list. Nothing kills your career faster than being a pretentious auteur who's tough to work with AND produces crap! Studios couldn't run away from him fast enough after WALKER.

He does a good job on these commentaries. Maybe he just mellowed out over the years.

[jkholm]

Not a director who vanished but what happened to Andrew Niccol? I watched Gattaca last night and was really impressed. It's a solid directorial debut with terrific visuals and a story that seems even more relevant today. (Companies that make their workers take constant medical tests just to keep their jobs? Why that could never happen!)

After I finished the movie I thought, what else has he directed? And then I looked him up on IMDB and realized I haven't seen a single movie made by him since. And they don't look all that great either. Am I missing out by not having seen S1m0ne, Lord of War or In Time?