Conversations Landing
Back in the spring, DGA Quarterly conducted an experiment: we asked two of our most prominent directors—James Cameron and Jon Favreau—to get together and discuss with each other their shared passion for new technologies. The premise was simple: two directors talking about common experiences, with no intermediary to get in the way. Be a fly on the wall and just see what might naturally come from that conversation. The story proved to be so rich and layered and
open that we wanted to replicate it on a variety of topics with a number of directors.
The four Conversations featured in this issue paired pros from shared experience speaking their minds about approach, collaboration, cinematic obsessions, and the state of the business going forward.
Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are born storytellers, not just in their movies—which bear each director's unmistakable stamp—but in their deep-seated appreciation for the medium. They are veritable walking, talking encyclopedias of film. The two sat down to talk movie obsessions, director heroes, process and violence as catharsis, among other topics, in Wise Guys.
From what
mutual friends say about them, Mark Cendrowski and Pamela Fryman are very much alike: amiable, quick-witted, authoritative-yet-nurturing personalities on a set. Together, they're akin to a Nichols/May routine—the patter is snappy
and the chemistry infectious in Funny Business.
Thirty years ago this December, Ed Zwick's Glory was released. In November, another movie about the abolitionist Harriet Tubman that focuses on roughly the same time period will hit theaters, directed by Kasi Lemmons. In a recent conversation, the directors discussed The Weight of History, achieving authenticity, and connecting the past to the present.
Bo Burnham and Olivia Wilde share at least two things in common: They both hail from acting, and they both probed the teen mindset with coming- of-age movies that marked their feature directorial debuts. These Auspicious Debutants traded war stories on making their first features and drawing on their own experience as actors to guide their young casts.
