Director

In March 2021, during his last major interview, Jean-Luc Godard reiterated a previous point about the coronavirus being a form of communication. “At first, I thought that production was the main aspect of cinema, and I realized distribution was more important, today more than before. Distribution has choked production by pretending to be at the service of the audience...The virus in its own way, distributes. Today, it would be interesting to know how the virus produces, but we only care about what it distributes.

Later this week, probably the world’s greatest living film director will celebrate his eightieth birthday. However he celebrates — whether in the company of friends and family in his no doubt opulent Manhattan home, or working on his eagerly awaited new film Killers of the Flower Moon — Martin Scorsese can reach his milestone age in the confidence that his position in cinematic history is assured forever. For a man so steeped in the art and practice of filmmaking — and who has made several excellent documentaries about movies — it must be intensely gratifying for Scorsese to be aware that he is that rarest of persons, a living legend, whose contributions to film will live forever.

If anyone told you that Ron Howard was their favorite film director, you might be forgiven for laughing out loud. Yet on paper, Howard has had as successful a career as any other filmmaker working today. Of the twenty-seven pictures he's directed, there are Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Film, massive box office hits and several critically acclaimed pictures that show a degree of both eclecticism and an apparent ability to turn his hand to anything imaginable. There are few directors who have made everything from epic fantasy to gritty '70s-set dramas about the David Frost and Richard Nixon interviews.

One of the most enduring images from the Oscars came two decades ago, at the 2002 ceremony, when director David Lynch revealed himself as one of the most courteous and pleasant figures in contemporary cinema. Ron Howard had just won the Best Director award for his work on the dishonest and ephemeral mental health drama A Beautiful Mind. As the beaming Howard — one of the most popular figures in Hollywood — headed onto the stage to collect his prize, two of his defeated rivals, Robert Altman and Lynch, embraced one another.