Six Studio Journeymen We Wish Would Return to Their Indie Roots

Know who directed "The Hannah Montana Movie"? You're bound to be disappointed.

Gavin Hood
First Directorial Feature: “An Unreasonable Man” (1999)
What He’s Doing Now: “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”

Well before he broke through as the writer/director of “Tsotsi,” Gavin Hood played heavies in films like “American Kickboxer” and “Project Shadowchaser II,” so let’s forgo any illusions that he sold out and went completely off the reservation when Fox came calling with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Still, one must wonder what Hood might’ve accomplished if he hadn’t immediately signed up for the bloated, star-studded terrorism drama “Rendition” and subsequently scored a payday with “Wolverine” instead of writing something new himself. Rather than parlaying his Oscar win into the intimate filmmaking that made “Tsotsi” so successful, Hood’s direction on “Rendition” showed proficiency as an action auteur, but its cold and calculated by-the-book methodology made his first two heartfelt South African-set films seem like isolated incidents.

Meanwhile, buzz on “Wolverine” has not been kind to the would-be blockbuster, with enough negative word of mouth for Hugh Jackman to try to calm fears with an e-mail message to fans on Ain’t It Cool News and Hood having to reshoot extensively amidst reports of micro-management by the studio. (And the recent leak of a workprint hasn’t helped matters.) Though we’re certainly not rooting against “Wolverine,” we are hoping that the Hood who once told Variety that having a $75 million budget would be “a nightmare” and who planned to make an indie thriller about the race to complete the atomic bomb at Los Alamos will return.

Nick Cassavetes
First Directorial Feature: “Unhook the Stars” (1996)
What He’s Doing Now: “My Sister’s Keeper”

There’s no greater proof that the movie gods have a sense of irony than Nick Cassavetes, the son of indie film royalty who’s ascended the Hollywood ladder by making contrived weepies like “The Notebook.” It now seems like an eternity since Cassavetes more or less gave up his acting career in 1996 to direct his mother Gena Rowlands in idiosyncratic “Unhook the Stars,” and then his father’s unfilmed screenplay for “She’s So Lovely,” which had the added touch of Sean Penn playing the part that was offered to him when John Cassavetes was going to direct the film himself. Neither film set the world on fire, but after a five-year hiatus, Nick Cassavetes left the “one for me, one for them” approach of his father behind and began churning out one heavy-handed studio drama after another, whether it was the ludicrous Denzel Washington hostage thriller “John Q,” or “Alpha Dog,” a middling, exploitative “based on a true story” crime film that had trouble getting released, since the real-life fugitive depicted in the film hadn’t yet gone on trial.

Although Cassavetes has been growing into a more confident filmmaker with each passing film, the quality of the material he’s shooting has gotten worse. He returns to the weepy well in June for “My Sister’s Keeper,” an adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s novel about a young girl who fights a court battle to be emancipated from her parents when it’s discovered she’s being raised to be a bone marrow donor to her older sister. At this point, we’re just thankful he’s leaving his poor mother out of it, so that perhaps she can make movies with her other children, “Broken English” director Zoe or “Z Channel” documentarian Xan.

[Additional Photos: Mark Waters directing Freddie Highmore in "The Spiderwick Chronicles," Paramount, 2008; Burr Steers directs Zac Efron in "17 Again," New Line, 2009; Gary Winick directing Kate Hudson in "Bride Wars," Fox, 2009; Nick Cassavetes, "Alpha Dog," Universal, 2007]

Are there any filmmakers who you’ve been let down by since their early films? Let us know in the comments below.

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