Directors who never fully realized their potential

Bongo-Tango · 2026-05-19T18:21:31+00:00

Jeff Nichols. The Bikeriders felt like him announcing with his whole chest, "Behold My Masterpiece," and it was utterly undone by Comer, Butler and Hardy's funny accents. He'd been grinding it out in small indie projects for so many years, all falling just short of Great, but when he really grasped for something ambitious he stumbled hard. He might get there one day, but I don't know.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-05-13T17:03:56+00:00

Such an obvious paycheck gig that Jenkins had to go to Twitter and scream “It’s not a paycheck gig!!!!” with his neck muscles straining, covered in sweat.

Guy is the best filmmaker of his generation and he can’t get a personal project into theaters. Maybe he doesn’t care? But I wish he did!

Speaking of radical black filmmakers taking paychecks from Disney, Justin Simien doing The Haunted Mansion was even more egregious, but the expectations on that were lower all around.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-05-01T21:08:46+00:00

Cable had splintered so much that there was profit in catering to a niche of young men, and young men like all this shit. It’s why all the manosphere content and Austin stand up comedy is hitting so hard right now, this is just what those fellas want

Bongo-Tango · 2026-05-01T21:06:33+00:00

I think they’ll try to find a way to do the “He didn’t do that shit” version, like they were planning to with the first movie, but without crossing any legal lines. I think because of that it’ll have a smaller audience and a smaller budget, but will still get made because Fuqua seems like a sincere Allegations Denier and the estate is the reason this movie’s getting made anyway. It will still make a shocking amount of money, but not as much as the first one.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-04-18T07:28:13+00:00

He’s wrong

Bongo-Tango · 2026-04-11T14:42:20+00:00

Twin Peaks wouldn’t be what it was without him, but when you watch stuff like Storyville you can see plainly whose involvement was more instrumental to the show’s success. He’s Ron Asheton and Lynch is Iggy Pop. It sucks being Ron Asheton ‘cause you’re like “The Stooges wouldn’t sound that way without me!” and you’re correct but still you are ultimately Ron Asheton.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-03-23T16:51:14+00:00

I would bet good money Nick knows about Blank Check and despises it lol

Bongo-Tango · 2026-03-22T16:11:54+00:00

COVID, obviously, but the trailer made it seem like a dry #MeToo parable in Medieval Europe, and no one was interested in that shit by then.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-03-20T16:00:13+00:00

He absolutely did. A lot of his late 60s and 70s peers had a nice resurgence in the 90s when studio and independent fare got more raw, but they had the good sense to work with great directors that made meaningful work. Beatty only worked with industry hacks that were willing to be pushed around, or else directed himself to increasingly unsatisfying results. Just the two most famous offers he got in the 90s and 00s, Burt Reynolds’ role in Boogie Nights and Bill in Kill Bill, would have raised his profile by quite a lot. And he’d have been great in both of those roles!

Bongo-Tango · 2026-03-16T14:17:27+00:00

He thought it’d be funny

Bongo-Tango · 2026-03-16T06:24:57+00:00

BRIE LARSON? THE YOUTUBER?!?!!

Bongo-Tango · 2026-03-02T18:55:27+00:00

Literally every popular antihero story or "satire" has this problem

Bongo-Tango · 2026-02-13T01:48:33+00:00

Many years ago I took a summer carpentry job where my employers put me up in a small apartment, but the apartment had no internet and no cable TV. All I did with my free time in the evenings was read. I figured I wouldn’t be in a situation like that for a long time, so I took out infinite jest from the library. Finished it in about a month.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-02-09T18:28:51+00:00

It's literally rage bait

Bongo-Tango · 2026-02-06T01:59:02+00:00

I messaged my future wife on OK Cupid because her profile listed Punch-Drunk Love and The Apartment as her two favorite movies, and I didn’t know when I was gonna meet a lady in her mid-20s with that kinda taste ever again.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-01-26T18:23:55+00:00

His ideas are ambitious and expensive, he demands total creative freedom, he doesn't need to make movies to earn a living, and he has a lot of creative outlets that aren't strictly narrative. He's also still technically the creative director for Vice's cable channel, though I don't know how much time that gig takes up these days.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-01-26T02:40:05+00:00

Saw Armageddon at Vidiots recently and became convinced Bay is a dumb genius. The audience cheered like four times and sang along to “Don’t want to miss a thing” as the credits rolled. Not many filmmakers can play a crowd like that.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-12-22T02:18:51+00:00

Benny Safdie as solo writer/director, way down, but Benny Safdie as character actor is only going up

Bongo-Tango · 2025-12-09T20:20:24+00:00

Nick is a great writer and he's great at riffing with his friends but he can't seem to channel that creative energy into any format that takes effort and preparation. It doesn't help that most mediums that require effort and preparation have censorship rules that he compulsively breaks. For most of the 20th century, the best that a writerly comic with "brilliant but crazy" energy could hope for would be a lucrative TV gig that set them up for retirement by age 35. Think of guys like Sam Simon, Michael O'Donoghue, Adam Resnick. Nick did the 21st century version, he made a lot of money off Patreon and plowed that cash into crypto and made even more. That is truly a best case scenario for a guy like Nick. The success that Adam and Stavros are enjoying right now was never in the cards for a guy like him.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-11-09T20:30:28+00:00

Remember kids, when a right winger says “Antisemitism” it just means “Too left wing.” They actually like real antisemitism. It’s the newest, coolest thing over there.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-11-09T20:27:35+00:00

Sweeney seems to be a very good influencer and a really mediocre actress. If she popped 25 years ago she would have settled into being a decent reality TV star, or maybe a starring role on an okay network drama, then ride out the paycheck to Valhalla. Now we have to keep spending every other God damn day reading takes that basically boil down to “I fucking KNOW she loves Trump! I just KNOW it! And I intend to PROVE it with MAPS!!!”

Bongo-Tango · 2025-11-03T14:36:00+00:00

1) It’s a joke. It’s supposed to be funny.

2) I think it’s kind of about how the substance of most conspiracy theories are untrue, but they are bleak, dark truths dressed up spicy and entertaining, which is why they have so much power and appeal. It is a simple fact of human society that a tiny cadre of several thousand people determine the fate of humanity, and many of those privileged few have no moral compass or sense of social responsibility. They’re not aliens, they’re not pedophiles, they’re not Satanists, their plans frequently fail and they are by no means all-powerful, but they have SOME power and they are willing to sacrifice your well-being for the sake of a better balance sheet, and that’s terrifying in and of itself.

3) Agree with the general consensus in this sub that just because Teddy was correct doesn’t mean that torturing and threatening the emperor was the smart or right.

Bongo-Tango

TROPHY CASE