MILES PARKS, HOST:
Where do you go after you've reached the top? It's a question more than 70 filmmakers have had a noodle on over the past century after winning a best director Oscar. I mean, how do you follow that up? Some want to astound us even more with their next act. Think of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu who followed up his first Oscar for the backstage satire "Birdman" with the historical epic "The Revenant."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE REVENANT")
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: (As Hugh Glass) I ain't afraid to die anymore. I done it already.
PARKS: "The Revenant" was an even bigger box office hit and garnered him a second win for best director. Other times, Oscar-winning directors just want to lighten up. That was the case for the Coen Brothers who followed up their best directing win for the brooding "No Country For Old Men" with the silliness of "Burn After Reading."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BURN AFTER READING")
JOHN MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) You have no idea what you're doing. And I warn you...
FRANCES MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) You warn us. You warn us?
MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Yes. Yes, I...
MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) You warn us.
MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Yes.
MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) Let me tell you something, Mr. Intelligence.
MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Let me...
MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) We warn you.
PARKS: It is Oscar season, folks, and to discuss more on the films that directors make after they win the best director Oscar, I'm joined now by ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer and our resident movie guy, Marc Rivers. Hi, Marc.
MARC RIVERS, BYLINE: Hey, Miles.
PARKS: And by freelance film critic Kyle Wilson, who writes a newsletter on Substack about this very theme called Oscar Chaser. Hi, Kyle.
KYLE WILSON: Hello. Thank you for having me.
PARKS: OK, so there are, like, a couple buckets, I feel like that the Oscar chasers fall into, Kyle. Can you walk us through these different categories of the movies people make after they reach the top?
WILSON: So sometimes there's these people who go off and they want to go and make, like, their big passion project that they've always wanted to make, like Peter Jackson doing "King Kong" after "Lord Of The Rings."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KING KONG")
JACK BLACK: (As Carl Denham) He was a king in the world he knew, but he comes to you now a captive. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kong, the eighth wonder of the world.
WILSON: And then there's, like, sort of these other directors, sort of - you talked about the Coen Brothers, we can talk about Bong Joon Ho for "Parasite" - who kind of, like, veer away from being like, I don't want to be this sort of, like, prestige best director. They go and they make these sort of, like, larks of movies like "Burn After Reading" or "Mickey 17." Steven Soderbergh is another good example of that - of someone who, like, had his big Oscar moment and then went off and made, like, "Ocean's Eleven."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OCEAN'S ELEVEN")
GEORGE CLOONEY: (As Danny Ocean) What I'm about to propose to you is both highly lucrative and highly dangerous.
RIVERS: I think the movie that comes after that Oscar win can be very telling because it can kind of key us into what the priorities of the filmmaker is, you know, creatively, what kind of filmaker they want to be.
PARKS: Yeah, what do you actually want, right?
RIVERS: Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned "Ocean's Eleven," Steven Soderbergh. It's a very - like, that is such a zag from the movie that he won for, "Traffic," which is, like, this big, important movie about this big, important issue, you know, the global drug trade, right?
WILSON: Right.
RIVERS: And, you know, Soderbergh started out his career on the outside of the industry. You know, he was part of the kind of Sundance boom with this film "Sex, Lies, And Videotape." He was always kind of seen as an outsider. And I feel "Ocean's Eleven" was his way of kind of recovering that bit of himself, you know? And I think since then, that he's done a lot more "Ocean's Elevens" than he's done "Traffics."
PARKS: But I do want to focus on the failures, whether box office-wise or artistically. I guess the flops, to me, are in some ways more interesting because they are - in a lot of cases, seems like they're bigger risk. Like, the director just, you know, had carte blanche and took a direction, a swing and a miss for lack of a better term. Kyle, can you lay out some of the movies there that really stick out to you?
RIVERS: I mean, Kyle, you mentioned one already. You can elaborate on this, but I think Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" was a bit of a disappointment after the historic win of "Parasite," right?
WILSON: Yeah. I mean, look, I'm kind of a "Mickey 17" defender, I'm sorry to say (laughter).
RIVERS: OK, OK. All right.
WILSON: Here's the thing - I'm never going to say no to a movie that has two Robert Pattinsons in it.
RIVERS: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MICKEY 17")
ROBERT PATTINSON: (As Mickey 18) I don't like you.
(As Mickey 17) But I'm you.
(As Mickey 18) I'm not you. I'm not going to live like you.
WILSON: So as much as I have my issues with Mark Ruffalo doing whatever he's doing in that and Toni Collette going on about...
RIVERS: Her sauces or whatever.
WILSON: ...Sauce.
RIVERS: Yeah.
WILSON: Yes, yes, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MICKEY 17")
TONI COLLETTE: (As Ylfa) So glad you seem to be enjoying it. How's the sauce?
WILSON: So I'm a little bit of a defender of that movie, but, like, no doubt about it - it was a big disappointment. It was sort of meh-received critically, and obviously it was a huge box office flop. I think that's a really interesting one because "Parasite," it was such an exciting Oscar win. Obviously, Bong is, like - has been a great filmmaker for a very long time but, like, was never really someone who you'd ever expect to, like, really get that sort of Oscar moment. And I think the fact that it was, like - what? - five years, five or six years since "Parasite," it just built this crazy anticipation.
PARKS: Yeah, I feel like it gets at this kind of idea of - it's really hard to live up to whatever it is.
RIVERS: Yeah.
PARKS: "Parasite" is the ultimate example of that because it's, like, considered one of the best movies of the last 30 years, right?
WILSON: Right.
RIVERS: Right (ph).
PARKS: But I feel like, is there - was it even possible for him to make a movie that would have fulfilled all of those expectations?
RIVERS: Probably not, right?
WILSON: Yeah.
RIVERS: I mean, it's both the expectations that he set for himself and also audience expectation. And I find that latter thing to be particularly interesting sometimes. And another kind of what might be called a financial failure that I would look to is Damien Chazelle's "First Man," and this was the film that he made after winning the Oscar for "La La Land." I would even pair him with Barry Jenkins, who did not win best director for "Moonlight," but he did win an Oscar for "Moonlight." And they were kind of paired together, probably unfairly paired together...
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: ..."La La Land" versus "Moonlight" back...
PARKS: For a very specific reason, yeah.
RIVERS: Yeah, and - but they both followed up those successes in 2018, Chazelle with "First Man," which is about Neil Armstrong and getting to the moon...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FIRST MAN")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Neil, if it does turn out, you'll go down in history. What kind of thoughts do you have about that when the thought hits you, gosh, suppose that flight's successful...
RYAN GOSLING: (As Neil Armstrong) We're planning on that flight being successful.
RIVERS: ...And "If Beale Street Could Talk," the James Baldwin adaptation.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK")
KIKI LAYNE: (As Tish Rivers) I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.
RIVERS: And both of those movies got very muted reactions from audiences. And even critically, while they were both kind of acclaimed, there wasn't the same kind of euphoria, I felt like, around the films as there were around "La La Land" and "Moonlight," even though I would say that "First Man" is Damien Chazelle's best movie to date.
WILSON: Listen, you're speaking to the right guy here about that.
RIVERS: Oh, (inaudible).
(LAUGHTER)
WILSON: I am such a huge "First Man" fan. I think it is interesting to look at the Barry and Damien of it all 'cause, yeah, I mean...
RIVERS: They were, like, anointed as, like, the new generation of great American filmmakers.
WILSON: Absolutely. And then "Beale Street" and "First Man" were just absent from that entire Oscar season, at least in, like, the best picture, best director sort of sense.
PARKS: I want to shift gears to talk a little bit about the successes - the success stories, as well, I guess. Are there movies, Kyle, that you think of that maybe haven't gotten the same critical acclaim as the wins for these people, but that you consider to be better movies?
WILSON: I'm a big Spielberg nut. I know that that's mildly lame to say, but I do think "A.I." is finally getting a bit of the critical reevaluation over the last, like, 10 or 15 years that I think it's long been deserved.
RIVERS: Yeah, so for listeners who don't know, this is "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," Spielberg's 2001 film, which was originally supposed to be a Stanley Kubrick film. He passed it along to Spielberg before he died. And "A.I." was Spielberg's first film after "Saving Private Ryan," which won him his second directing Oscar. And it depicts this futuristic kind of dystopian world, where humans have created robots who look and behave like humans, and it stars Haley Joel Osment as this kid robot who wants to actually become a real boy.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE")
JUDE LAW: (As Gigolo Joe) They hate us, you know? - the humans. They'll stop at nothing.
HALEY JOEL OSMENT: (As David) My mommy doesn't hate me because I'm special and unique.
RIVERS: "A.I." kind of represents kind of the start of a really fascinating run of films for Spielberg, where I felt like, to me, that he was almost like subverting some of the tropes and ideas that he had established with classics like "E.T." and "Close Encounters," even "Schindler's List." And I think - yeah, I think that run in the early thousands where his films got more emotionally complicated and less tidy, I think you can trace, you know, films like "Munich" and "War Of The Worlds" and "Minority Report," and I think that all starts with "A.I. Artificial Intelligence."
WILSON: Absolutely. And I think now that we have had all those movies and we've realized that he's sort of nestled into getting a little darker and a little more moody, for lack of a better word...
RIVERS: Yeah.
WILSON: ...I think "A.I." makes a lot more sense in that context. It's also a movie that has Jude Law playing a sex robot. So I'm...
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: And just the fact that there's even sex in a Spielberg movie was like...
WILSON: I know.
RIVERS: It was, like, kind of...
WILSON: Where else does that happen?
RIVERS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
PARKS: That's film critic Kyle Wilson - he writes a Substack called Oscar Chaser - and NPR's Marc Rivers. I don't know what you guys are doing after this, but hopefully it follows up and you can live up to the high standards you've set here.
RIVERS: That's all we can hope for. Thanks, Miles.
WILSON: (Laughter) Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF LG MALIQUE SONG, "VISION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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