I donāt know if itās fair comparing the first three years of a decade (years which were hammered by the pandemic) against a complete decade, especially when (at least in my case) plenty of gems rise to the top over time, reappraisals occur, and indie/international movies which didnāt make a splash on release find a second life in streaming/video. 13 years ago Iād have told you the 00s were a crap decade devoid of cultural impact, but things look a lot better with distance.
Maybe. On the other hand, you have this quote from Greta's agent that dropped recently:
"Barber told me that Mattel had figured out how to āengage with filmmakers in a friendly way.ā Gerwig, meanwhile, was looking to move beyond the small-scale dramas she was known for. āGreta and I have been very consciously constructing a career,ā Barber explained. āHer ambition is to be not the biggest woman director but a big studio director. And Barbie was a piece of I.P. that was resonant to her.ā
āIs it a great thing that our great creative actors and filmmakers live in a world where you can only take giant swings around consumer content and mass-produced products?ā he said. āI donāt know. But it is the business. So, if thatās what people will consume, then letās make it more interesting, more complicated.ā He wondered aloud whether such directors as Hal Ashby and Sydney Pollack would be making movies with Mattel if they were alive today: āItās a super-interesting question. Itās also an argument that weāve lost already.ā
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My friends often lament the fact that no real autuers have emerged from the millenial generation. In reality, they exist. Greta is case in point. However, they are shuffled into the world of IPs as soon as they drop a good indie and have years of their career wasted on unoriginal ideas.
Jeff Nichols is probably just outside of the millenial marker. But he has gone 7 years without a film in large part because he signed up to do A Quiet Place 2 and then balked. His new film The Bikeriders is finally gonna drop but has a very small budget. In the 00's he would have been working with 50m $ budgets as soon as Mud happened.
Another example is Sean Durkin... the director of Marcy Martha May Marlene. That film is, in my book, one of the best films of last decade. It launched Elizabeth Olson's career and should have done the same for Sean. Instead, he had project after project fall apart then made a micro budget film that was solid enough to get the ball rolling on the A24 wrestling film he is now making (which has a steller cast). 12 years after MMMM...
Or there are the countless directors who have gotten shuffled into making TV that makes it two seasons in and then gets canceled or isn't their project. Britt Marling, Lilli Amirpour, Jeremy Saulnier, Antonio Campos...
Bottom line-- as somebody who has always gravitated towards the Linklaters, QT's, PTA's, ext-- outside of a handful of exceptions (Villenue, Peele and Damien Chazelle), what new directors have emerged within the American system in the past 15 years that are being given the freedom to make original content with a real budget?
