Plugged In
Jonathan Demme
Always a bit ahead of the curve in his 40-year career, Jonathan Demme pioneered the psychological thriller in The Silence of the Lambs, caught a band at its peak in Stop Making Sense, and tackled social issues in Philadelphia. For his next act? Meryl Streep as a rock star.

Jonathan Demme

Always a bit ahead of the curve in his 40-year career, Jonathan Demme pioneered the psychological thriller in The Silence of the Lambs, caught a band at its peak in Stop Making Sense, and tackled social issues in Philadelphia. For his next act? Meryl Streep as a rock star.
With the 13th-century adventures of Marco Polo, a skilled group of directors gets a chance to make the kind of grand-scale epic rarely seen today. But not for theaters—it’s for Netflix.

Elementary

Director-producer John Polson and his crack team of directors help Sherlock Holmes and a female Watson solve cerebral mysteries in modern-day New York. It may be Elementary, but it’s never simple.

Cary Fukunaga

In the towering TV series True Detective and in his features, Cary Fukunaga researches like crazy so that once he gets to the set he can really let fly.

The Bourne Ultimatum

With this rooftop chase in The Bourne Ultimatum—all jolting camerawork and spiky editing—Greengrass redefined the punch and power of action filmmaking.
Karen Gaviola learned her craft as an AD and has now directed almost 100 TV episodes. For her, it’s all about exercising different muscles.
Jill Soloway took the genre into new territory with her groundbreaking transgender series, Transparent. The content might be different, but the emotions are real.
For almost half a century, Werner Herzog has been circling the globe capturing extraordinary images for both documentaries and features. Look closely and you can see the wonder of it all.

Neil LaBute

Neil LaBute pays tribute to the precision and boldness of Mike Nichols’ vision in Carnal Knowledge—a film he admits he has borrowed from freely.

Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula

Fox Searchlight Co-Presidents Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula talk about the challenges of the marketplace and making movies with a vision.

Depicting the machinations of filmmaking

With so much raw material all around them, directors can’t resist the temptation to depict the machinations of filmmaking—both on the set and in studio executive suites. The result is often great entertainment.

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Tony Eng

Solid 2nd

Second AD Tony Eng discusses how his experiences being a DGA trainee on ER helped pave the way to working on such diverse TV shows as Liv and Maddie and How to Get Away with Murder.

Lynn Finkel

Stage Bound

From Radio City Music Hall to the Oscars to Peter Pan Live!, Stage Manager Lynn Finkel discusses the excitement and pressure of working in live television.

Bruce Moriarty

Adventurous AD

Bruce Moriarty explains how his experiences training horses prepared him in becoming a skilled 1st AD.

Up in Flames

The Towering Inferno

Firefighters attempt a daring rescue in a blazing elevator in a scene from John Guillermin’s The Towering Inferno (1974), as shown in storyboards by Joseph Musso.

Slippery Slope

The Passionate Friends

David Lean (center) shot exteriors in the French Alps for The Passionate Friends (1949), his first film set outside of England.

DGA LAYOUT