When a film gets shot it results in an environment that is creatively pumped by an assortment of collaborators, most important of all might be the director. By the time a film makes the long journey from pre-production to theaters, it’s the director’s vision that is most noticed on-screen, his instinct to mold every collaborator’s inclusion into a whole. Of course, sometimes when a film goes bad shots are fired and bad blood emerges, but the main fall guy always ends up being the director. Although most end up staying quiet and just letting time do the healing, others can’t help but shout out their discontent. Here are 15 famous directors who hate their own movies and made sure to let us know.
Tony Kaye, “American History X"
“The movie they put out was crammed with shots of everyone crying in each other's arms. And, of course, [Edward] Norton had generously given himself more screen time.”
David Lynch, “Dune"
"Dune I didn't have final cut on. It's the only film I've made where I didn't have, I didn't technically have final cut on The Elephant Man but Mel Brooks gave it to me, and on Dune the film, I started selling out even in the script phase knowing I didn't have final cut, and I sold out, so it was a slow dying- the-death and a terrible terrible experience... I trusted that it would work out but it was very naive and, the wrong move. In those days the maximum length they figured I could have is two hours and seventeen minutes, and that's what the film is, so they wouldn't lose a screening a day, so once again it's money talking and not for the film at all and so it was like compacted and it hurt it, it hurt it."
Alfred Hitchcock, “Rope"
"I undertook Rope as as stunt; that's the only way I can describe it. I really don't know how I came to indulge in it. The stage drama was played out in the actual time of the story; the action is continuous from the moment the curtain goes up until it comes down again. I asked myself whether it was technically possible to film it in the same way. As an experiment, Rope may be forgiven."
Joel Schumacher, “Batman & Robin"
“I wanted to make The Dark Knight desperately,” Schumacher said in 2011, “but the studio didn’t want that and it’s their money and they’re my bosses."But I was shooting A Time To Kill and the studio had been very generous to me, and much was expected of me by the toy manufacturers and the Warner Bros. stores. I think I'm the most envious of Chris Nolan because he got to do The Dark Knight -- and that's the one I begged to do as my second Batman film," he said. "I wanted to do a whole other thing, because we had kind of re-invented franchise with Val as Batman and it was a very young, sexy, and much less expensive movie. We brought in Robin and I wanted to make The Dark Knight desperately, but the studio didn't want that and it's their money and they're my bosses."
David Fincher, “Alien 3"
“No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me." "There’s nothing worse than hearing somebody say, ‘Oh, you made that movie? I thought that movie sucked,’ and you have to agree with them, you know?"
Steven Soderbergh, “The Underneath"
“My heart wasn’t in it, it was some kind of a mess and dead on arrival.”
Woody Allen, “Hannah and Her Sisters"
“Hannah And Her Sisters is a film I feel I screwed up very badly,” he admitted later, pinpointing the film’s reasonably upbeat ending as “the part that killed me. "Hannah and Her Sisters was a big disappointment because I had to compromise my original intention tremendously to survive with the film."
Steven Spielberg, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"
"Too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific"
Woody Allen, “Annie Hall"
"The film was supposed to be what happens in a guy's mind, and you were supposed to see a stream of consciousness in his mind and I did the film and it was completely incoherent," Allen said. "Nobody understood anything that went on and the relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about. That was not what I cared about."
Michael Cimino, “Heaven's Gate"
“I never knew how to make a film, and I still don’t know. … My background is architecture, painting, that’s where I come from. I’m much more intrigued by a good building than by a good movie.”
Stanley Kubrick, “Fear and Desire"
“A bumbling amateur film exercise. Pain is a good teacher.”
Michael Bay, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"
"We made some mistakes. The real fault with it is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers' strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you've got to have a story in three weeks. I was prepping a movie for months where I only had 14 pages of some idea of what the movie was. It's a BS way to make a movie, do you know what I'm saying?"
Josh Trank, “The Fantastic Four"
“A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality, though.”
Noah Baumbach, “Highball”
“It really was an experiment, and kind of a foolish experiment, because I didn't think about what the ramifications would be if it didn't work. And it was a funny script. But it was just too ambitious. We didn't have enough time, we didn't finish it, it didn't look good, it was just a whole… mess. [Laughs.] “
Walter Hill, “Supernova”
“We limped in, in post we had a tremendous amount of effect stuff to do. They decided they wanted to preview the movie without the effects. I said this was insane, it’s a science fiction movie. The effects had to be added. They wanted to see how it played. I told them it would be like shit, terrible, very bad preview, you will give up on the movie. These previews under these conditions are political. ‘Are you saying you won’t preview the movie?’ I said ‘You own the goddamn thing. If you want to preview it, I can’t prevent you, but I won’t go.’ They saw this as defiance.”