Nearly the whole conversation here is about how terrible it was to update the list to include some women.
Imagine if instead of "women" it was something else. Maybe, "Why didn't you include any Soviet filmmakers?" Or, "What about Alfred Hitchcock?" Or maybe, "You should include some films from the silent era." And imagine Spike Lee took those suggestions and said, you know what, you're right, I should include some films from the silent era, there's some great stuff in there.
Would you be just as upset about Spike Lee bending to his critics instead of sticking to his guns in that case? Or would you see that maybe there is some merit in this sort of back-and-forth? Would you accept a suggestion for "silent films" but rail against a suggestion for "films by female directors"? If so, why is that, exactly? Does the merest suggestion of political correctness shut off your thinking?
The reason it irks me is because it has nothing to do with the quality of the film, which this list is ostensibly based on. What if the suggestion was, "There aren't enough movies that start with the letter F, Spike you should add some so as not seem letterist."
Taking the sex of the director, or writer, or lighting tech, into account weakens the list because you're introducing noise into your criteria.
>quality of the film, which this list is ostensibly based on.
No, the list is of "must watch" films for aspiring artists. Certainly quality will be a factor, but artistic diversity is far more important. A crappy film that demonstrates a unique style of direction is far more important than more high quality examples of common styles.
And when seeking artistic diversity, it's not unreasonable to suggest that lack of diversity of artists might indicate oversights.
Most commenters seem to be assuming that he took his original criteria seriously and the result happened to be one that some people found offensive. I think that's assuming the best. Meanwhile, those offended seem to be assuming the worst - some sort of bias.
>Most commenters seem to be assuming that he took his original criteria seriously ... Meanwhile, those offended seem to be assuming the worst - some sort of bias.
Firstly, I'm not offended by the original list, and I don't think many people were. Most people arguing here are offended by the reaction to the additions.
But more importantly, I don't think someone has to be biased to simply not think of particular films when compiling his list, nor do I think one has to be "not taking it seriously" in order to do so.
Thanks for making this comment. I'm not sure I understand whose side you're on, but personally, this sort of debate really irks me.
Are people seriously conveying that Lee purposely left out women? Would you purposely leave out female authors if someone asked you to name your favorite 10 books? It's just ridiculous.
It seems to me that people are looking to create issues where there are none. I'm not sure this can even be called "political correctness." It's something even worse.
My position is that at least some of the criticism was warranted, and there's nothing wrong with responding to such criticism with an update.
I don't know if the critics were implying that Lee purposely left out women. But the fact is that he left out women. I assume totally by accident. When this was pointed out, I imagine his reaction was something like "whoops, slipped my mind."
I agree that people are looking to create issues where there are none. It's happening right here with all the people complaining about "PC run amok" and whatnot. A guy released a list, people thought the list was incomplete and suggested changes, the guy sees merit in the suggestion and makes changes. Whoopdie-do. The only reason anti-PC warriors are upset is because the changes involved including women.
> Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn't waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk. They're getting burned right and left, for Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won't see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.
Soon they'll protest college rankings. Princeton shouldn't be in the top 10 because one of its buildings is named after a racist. Stanford should be knocked out because it's only 6.5% Latino. Et cetera.
If by "just as upset", you mean "not upset at all, but rather curious", then yes, I would be exactly as upset.
> Would you be just as upset about Spike Lee bending to his critics instead of sticking to his guns in that case?
I would wonder why he changed a list of something entirely personal to him after some people pointed out that he didn't include any films from the silent era. I am equally curious as to why the reply was "oh yeah, here are five films from women", rather than "oh yeah, I forgot a bunch of stuff, some including women". If anything, it sounds a bit patronizing to women filmmakers, that they're included as an afterthought.
A satisfying (to me) reply would be "holy shit guys I had a brain fart and was only thinking of men when compiling the list and completely forgot about my favorite female filmmakers, here they are, sorry about that, wow".
You may not be upset, but a quick glance at the comments shows a ton of people who are quite upset that Lee responded to this criticism the way he did.
You wonder why he changed a list of something personal to him after people gave him additional food for thought? Are your opinions so set in stone? If you compiled a list of top programming language features, could you not even conceive of adding more entries to it after publishing it and having people make suggestions? Why do people expect this stuff to be carved in stone from the beginning?
Your hypothetical reply looks a lot like his real reply to me.
I can definitely conceive of adding more features, but I can't conceive of adding more features that begin with a certain letter, since that has no bearing on whether they are good features or not.
Imagine if letter bias was extremely common in society, to the extent that you find yourself unconsciously applying it yourself even if you don't want to. Would you still hold that stance?
I wouldn't go so far as "I totally meant to." More like, "On further reflection, these features starting with the letter Z have merit and belong on my list."
I don't know, I find it completely foreign because I rarely know who directed a film. Of course, Spike Lee would know, but I don't know if the gender of the director would affect his opinion of a movie that much. That's what I find improbable in this specific case.
> since that has no bearing on whether they are good features or not.
This isn't a list of "best movies", it's a list of "movies aspiring directors should see". I have to imagine that such a list would strive to show all the diversity that exists in the film-making world, not just the ones held up as empirically "best".
Silent films is a genre of movies, but is "films by female directors" also a genre? It could be, but I would instantly question how we define a genre then.
Would "films by insert sexual orientation directors" also be a genre? What about "films by left handed directors"? The simpson had a whole episode about discrimination against people with blond hair, so what about "films by blond directors"? I don't think i have ever said that a list of movies should directors with any specific attribute, nor that would I ever say that it shouldn't.
Lets compare Hollywood movies with bollywood, two genre and two locations. Historically, a Hollywood movie is a movie made in Hollywood for an american audience, and bollywood is movies made in Inida for an Indian audiences. However, film makers in Hollywood has done Bollywood movies in Hollywood, and Indian movie makers has made Hollywood movies in India.
Can a male director make a "film by female director"? if not, then its not a genre. female directed and male directed style of movies could become a genre, and then we would see female directors make male directed styled movies, and male directors make female directed styled movies. The question is how we would define that style, specially if we want to avoid sexist generalization.
Bollywood genre is categorized by a movie with a lot of songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour extravaganza with an intermission. Bollywood plots have tended to be melodramatic.
How would you describe the female directed genre as?
> Imagine if instead of "women" it was something else. Maybe, "Why didn't you include any Soviet filmmakers?" Or, "What about Alfred Hitchcock?" Or maybe, "You should include some films from the silent era."
I think there'd be a similar response.
The people who've made the response have done so on the view that whatever was on Lee's original list was what he considered the important films (for the purpose of that list), and on the view that if there weren't films that meet some criteria on that list it wasn't because he just didn't consider any films of that sort.
Really, you think that "You should include some films from the silent era" followed by "You're right, I've revised the list to include some silent films" would make it to the front page of Hacker News and spawn a huge, vitriolic discussion?
I do think people would object to it, doing so on the view that he would have already considered silent films and didn't think any of them should make the list, and that now he was just bowing to external pressure.
I'm sure some people would object to it, but you wouldn't see anything like the craziness we're seeing here. A few uptight nitpicky people would say "he shouldn't have done that!" and then it would die.
It's not uptight to object when someone is (as far as we know) expressing their honest, fair opinion and they're pretty much forced to change their expression of that opinion.
[EDIT. I want to add a bit more. A person's list of their important films for aspiring directors is just one tiny part of all their views. A person can think that women have faced a lot of sexism, and that this has prevented many women from directing films -- and that if that sexism hadn't existed we'd have many more excellent films by female directors -- while at the same time thinking that, out of all the films that have been made so far, the ones that they think are most important for aspiring directors to see is this set, which just happens to not include any films directed by females.]
EDIT 2: In response to mikeash's reply, that would be assuming that Lee has a bias against films directed by women. Would you care to explain how you think he managed to overlook those films in the first place? It may well be that he does have such a bias. And if so, that's a shame. But then think what that would mean: it would seem to mean that he has suddenly been able to overcome that bias, and see things fairly - something which, unfortunately, rarely happens.
> Would you care to explain how you think he managed to overlook those films in the first place?
Because he's human?
I'm baffled by the number of people who seem to think any individual, even a talented director, is somehow able to bring to mind all films that meet a particular criteria, with such absolute precision that a film's exclusion from the initial list is a definitive statement that he considers it unworthy.
It's typical hacker absolutism. You see it everywhere. The very notion of subjectivity is rejected because it's too difficult to deal with.
It shows up all the time in discussions of hiring diversity. A large number of people assume that hiring decisions are done by making a perfect ranking of all candidates by ability, then choosing the one at the top. Any deviation means you're getting someone suboptimal. Thus, any hiring diversity initiative necessarily means a decrease in worker quality.
Same thing here. Spike Lee created an exact, perfect list of films that exceed some threshold. Altering it afterwards means the list is no longer perfect.
> Nearly the whole conversation here is about how
> terrible it was to update the list to include some
> women.
Yes. And it's a really, really boring conversation as well. It tends to devolve into mathematical/logical-type arguments that seem to imply that there are "solutions" to messy things like relationships, emotions and perceptions.
I just flag these stories and hope others do the same.
Of my three hypothetical scenarios, one is people, one is a person, and one is a timeframe. None are genres. So I have no clue what they're alluding to. Maybe you're a better mind reader than I am.
Already I am confused: are women the same as men, that is, they make the same kind of movies. In which case, why explicitly include them? Or are they different from men and make different movies? Then perhaps he simply didn't like them as much? (Just pointing out why that kind of discussion/criticism rarely has a positive outcome).
> When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of female filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list.
Does that mean that he saw movies that he felt were worthy of being on the list and (perhaps subconsciously) decided not to list them? Or did he end up listing some movies that he didn't feel were as good as the others, just to meet the quota?
The latter doesn't seem terribly likely. If he wanted to avoid criticism, he wouldn't have set himself a quota as low as 8%.
It seems more likely that when he thought about the criticism, he thought about whom he might've overlooked and remembered Lina Wertmüller. Come to think of it, I'll watch something by her.
If you read his lists, either the original or the amended versions, you'll see that they are really lists of his favorite filmmakers, grouped by the filmmakers' best or most representative works. It's obvious, by the way the list is categorized, that Lee was thinking of it that way.
Ah, that makes more sense, thanks. My question was because, if this were a list of films, the works themselves are pretty removed in someone's mind from their creators, so I doubt that there would be as strong a bias there. If it's actually a list of filmmakers, then the reaction makes sense, thank you for clarifying.
I'm assuming it's both. Kind of. I mean, the supposed purpose is a list of films, but as you read through that list and the way it's been laid out, you see that Lee approached the task by first thinking about a list of filmmakers.
And then you have some other films on the list which are there because they're noteworthy, regardless of the director. So it's sort of a hybrid.
A lot of filmmakers, critics and film buffs, when asked to list the best films of all time, will start from the perspective of their favorite filmmakers and then work backwards from there. (The general public takes the opposite approach.) Similarly, if you ask a music critic or musician to list his favorite songs, he'll often start with favorite albums and then back into songs. Or maybe favorite artists -> albums -> songs. They're used to thinking about an individual work in the broader perspective of its creator's entire catalog.
This can be a useful perspective to consider. Especially since there are some filmmakers (or authors, or artists, or bands) whose career output is highly influential, but whose individual works never really crack the Best of All Time list. Scorsese is a good example. Arguably none of his films, individually considered, ranks as a Best of All Time contender. But when you consider his entire output, you can't deny his influence on the technique of modern storytelling. I'd say the same thing about Milos Forman, for instance, though One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest does stand on its own merits on many people's lists. You could also make this argument for Steven Spielberg, controversial though he may be to film snobs. He hasn't made any given work as singularly brilliant as many of the movies listed here, but you can't deny that Spielberg has basically been synonymous with popular American cinema for the better part of an entire era. From the late 70s through the mid 2000s, he basically is the pop movie industry. And like Scorsese, he has had an outsized impact on the way people tell stories through the medium.
Why are so many people assuming that the initial list represented his comprehensive judgement of all films ever?
Is it not far more likely that he added films as sufficiently important ones occurred to him, and at some point decided the list was fairly comprehensive and stopped?
Then subsequently, someone pointed out that there weren't many films by female directors, and this prompt made him think of a bunch of other films worth adding?
Why are so many people assuming that the initial list represented his comprehensive judgement of all films ever?
Because he's doing it in his role of NYU professor! If Donald Knuth released a list of "CS papers every professional should read," I would fully expect it to be his comprehensive judgement of all papers ever. Do you think that he may have missed one? Do you think Spike may have? In both cases it's their professional environment, and I would expect that it would have been discussed in their professional environments. To imply that they missed something important is to imply that their close colleagues missed it too. It could happen, of course, but not something that you think about when you read a list like that.
Until you see that he missed "Captain Ron." Then all bets are off.
I would apply more lenient standards when looking at lists of arts or crafts. Sure, Spike Lee is a professional in the field, and I am not. But many of the films I see in his list, I would consider "boring". This is his personal list of films that contain important teaching moments. And because it is the arts, the list has to be personal.
Knuth leaving out an important CS paper may do grave disservice to a huge chunk of the field (Edit: I mean disservice to the readers who intend to learn from the list). Science and technology builds on prior work. The arts, not so much. If I ignore the lessons taught by "The Godfather", the film I'm making may be weak in some aspects, as judged by some people. If I ignore the lessons taught by Turing's works on computability, my software (or research paper) could potentially be stillborn.
I would apply more lenient standards when looking at lists of arts or crafts
Why? I would expect the top of the line people in the arts to be as professional as in any other field. I would expect that great directors (and actors for that matter) have a notebook (or something) of great scenes and why they are great. I would expect artists to have their equivalent.
I mean, goddamn, if you are a great director and you say you have a list of essential viewing, then, yeah, I would assume that according to you the list would be at least very nearly complete. If may evolve a bit over time after review and discussion, but I wouldn't expect a 30% change in the list.
I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of effort that would be involved in comprehensively judging an entire field.[0]
Sure he's a professor, but he only has so much time in the day. At some point he has to say "Right, I think that covers everything important" and get on with teaching.
Not to mention, according to a quote in this thread Spike himself disagrees with you:
>He also asks backers to send in their suggestions for the list "because of course there's going to be stuff I left out."
[0] Although I might just about expect such a thing from Knuth...
That would be comprehensive. As I said in a sister answer, I would expect a little tweaking of the list after criticism and feedback, but I wouldn't expect large changes to it. If Jim Shepard published a list of essential reading for literary fiction writers, I would expect it to be his best idea about what aspiring fiction writers should read to learn from. Writers who could emulate (or whatever writers do) the authors in that list would be well on their way to being good writers.
It doesn't mean he has to have read every lit fic short story or novel out there. It does mean that these works form a comprehensive display of whatever it is that makes good fiction.
> JohnKacz 14 minutes ago
He also asks backers to send in their suggestions for the list "because of course there's going to be stuff I left out."
It's really amazing the degree to which many of us white dudes, over-represented in intellectual compendiums everywhere, react when we feel the slightest, feeblest threat.
It's not that. He could have put up a list with mostly women, or mostly African films, people would mostly be okay with that. It's the perception of his giving in and revising in the face of dissent on something more or less personal.
Let's say he put up a list of favorite foods. Then someone notices there are no lamb dishes and he adds lamb to it. Or there is no vegetarian dish and adds vegetarian dishes.
It's not a big deal either way but people read "undue influence to change personal preferences"
The thing is, it's not a list of his personal "favourite" films, it's a list of "must watch" films.
The latter is a more authoritative statement, and moreover it is a list in which diversity of art is to be expected. So it's not unreasonable to suggest a lack of diversity in artists might indicate some oversights.
It's still his personal take on what that list looks like.
In any event, for me it's neither here nor there. He's free to put up a biased or unbiased list of his choosing or anyone else's. If I dont like his list I can add my favorites, maybe they'll all be Easter European and African with no western European or Asian films.
He has imprimatur. Sure, but in the end it's an unscientific list. It's a starting point, it has a local cultural bias. If he had grown up in HK would his list be the same? No, and that's okay.
You seem to be missing the point of me highlighting that Spike Lee himself asked for people to point out omissions "because of course there's going to be stuff I left out".
If there's no lamb dishes, I request reminders, someone points out a lamb dish, and I add lamb, it's not healthy or reasonable to propose that I am being unduly influenced by the lamb lobby.
It's within the realm of possibility, sure, but to bring it up reflects paranoia, scepticism towards lamb dishes, and possibly a persecution complex due to overexposure to lamb-related GitHub drama.
It is a big deal, by the way. It makes HackerNews look like ReturnOfKings.
This looks almost exactly like the typical statement I see in discussions about diversity in hiring. "If we go out of our way to hire more minorities, then we're deliberately passing on the best candidates."
People seem to love to assume that everything can be perfectly ranked and compared.
I have no idea what "typical" would be, but my counterargument is that candidate ranking is extremely noisy and imprecise, and because of that it necessarily already includes bias. A good diversity initiative is simply an attempt to compensate for the existing bias, not add bias to a perfect system.
The parent asked whether the added films were either considered worthy but subconsciously omitted from the initial list, or considered unworthy and then added to the subsequent list anyway.
This question ignores the possibility that their worthiness was simply never considered at all in the creation of the initial list.
EDIT: It's possible the parent didn't intend those options as a dichotomy but nonetheless, that's what is implied.
>This question ignores the possibility that their worthiness was simply never considered at all in the creation of the initial list.
And why would their worthiness not be considered at all in the creation of the initial list? The whole point of the initial (and the second) list was to list worthy films for filmmakers to see.
Obviously, either a film comes to your mind when you're creating a list of what you consider the best films, or it doesn't. Whether the director was a woman doesn't come into play in this, unless you're a misogynist purposefully avoiding to list film by women filmmakers.
Since (I assume) Lee is not the latter, here's what seems is the case.
When Spike Lee thinks (on his own) of what the best films are, the first list is what comes to his mind.
But after he was questioned about it, and to appease the "crowds", he subsequently added some films by women to balance the list. In other words he added them to meet some quota (regardless of the films inherent quality, which after is all is not to be judged by Spike Lee only. E.g. the might be masterpieces too -- just not Lee's original masterpieces, but some that he had to be nudged to list).
Firstly, it's a list of "must watch" films for artists, not "best" films. The criteria are slightly different.
Secondly, whether a film "came to mind" is only somewhat related to whether he thinks it's worth inclusion in his list. Is it inconceivable to you that there could be films that did not initially occur to him, that he nonetheless considers worthy additions when he is reminded of them? Or do you suppose that Spike is a superhuman able to instantly recall all important films without fail?
>Secondly, whether a film "came to mind" is only somewhat related to whether he thinks it's worth inclusion in his list. Is it inconceivable to you that there could be films that did not initially occur to him, that he nonetheless considers worthy additions when he is reminded of them?
Not, it's very conceivable. What it's not conceivable is that those would only be films by women directors. Clearly the latter is just the response of the pressure to add some women's films.
He could be perfectly satisfied giving people the first list (which is exactly what he did) if it wasn't for people calling him out on that.
So, it's not like he suddenly realized he missed some. Of course he missed tons -- one always does in such a list. But having all the misses be women's films, means none of these he thought strong enough about to add it to his list -- and he had 70+ chances to do so.
Missing ALL of them (while coming up with 70 other films) shows that's not just a case of forgetting them, -- and that he did a conscious effort to come up with some women's films to add.
Not that he thinks those women's films are bad -- he could find them very good.
But he clearly he's not that obsessed/connected with them enough to include them in a list of 70+ films he considers best WITHOUT someone telling him to explicitly add women's films
>Or do you suppose that Spike is a superhuman able to instantly recall all important films without fail?
You present a bogus strawman (that "it's inconceivable to me that he missed some and thus I seem to think of him as a superhuman with instant recall") -- when I never said either of these things. I guess the intention is to make my argument look silly -- only that isn't my argument at all.
I don't expect any such list to include "all important films". Heck I don't even expect it to include the full list of "most important films" of the person compiling it.
But I fully believe that if something didn't make it on a list of one's most important 70+ items, then it's probably not something they regard highly and think often of.
>> When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of female filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list.
>Does that mean that he saw movies that he felt were worthy of being on the list and (perhaps subconsciously) decided not to list them? Or did he end up listing some movies that he didn't feel were as good as the others, just to meet the quota?
The charitable interpretation would be statistics: if 90+% of recognised films have been directed by men - and I'd expect more men to have directed films in, say, the 1950s than the present day - it's not terribly unlikely that a list would feature only men through chance alone.
Given that such lists are going to be loosely defined - I imagine Lee could come up with several, different, lists on any one day - I don't see why including women directors would be to the detriment of a list and only to meet a "quota."
>I don't see why including women directors would be to the detriment of a list and only to meet a "quota."
Obviously women aren't a detriment to the list in and of themselves. It's the fact that Mr. Lee made a list of must see movies, was critcized, then went back and changed the list based on the criticism.
So which is the list of must see movies? What movies were "must-see" pre-criticism, that were no longer worthy post-criticism? PC run amok.
Just as I can't write a sensible comment responding to someone-- just one guy remember -- making a "top list" of movies, then having to update it based on a silly criticism.
He picked his top movies. Do you think he deliberately left films by female directors off his list? Then who cares.
>The current list
Thankfully we have the PC crowd around to tell Mr. Lee what movies are his actual top films.
That's how the PC thing operates. "You don't have to revise your opinion. We'll keep piling on the guilt and doubletalk meantime. I'm sure you'll make the right decision, because you're not a bad person right?"
And equally, the opposition says "He changed his stated opinion[0] after a social justice flavoured criticism? There's absolutely no way he could agree with them, so he must be lying out of fear!"
I prefer to assume people are telling the truth about their opinions until shown evidence to the contrary.
[0] EDIT: Which, incidentally, was never asserted to be complete, and indeed solicited suggestions for improvement.
Its clear that both are true, to some degree. He clearly overlooked good movies directed by women, guilty. He clearly responded to criticism and overrode his original judgement to satisfy them. Its never black and white (unless talking about race; then its always black and white!)
>Why is it clear that he "overrode" his original judgement by adding films, rather than simply being reminded of some he hadn't considered?
The films that he was "reminded of" all happened to be directed by women, after a bit of a public hand-slap about that exact subject?
Possible, but not probable.
Again, what the hell does the director gender even have to do with this? What sort of person reads Spike Lee's List of Movies that Every Aspiring Director Should See and says, "Boy, I hope everyone is equally represented here!". The fact that it was even a "thing" is ridiculous, and yes, Political Correctness gone overboard.
>The films that he was "reminded of" all happened to be directed by women
Well yes that's my point? I'm saying that on seeing that comment he thinks "Films by women? Oh that reminds me of X, Y and Z! They should be on the list too!"
Who is assuming the worst? I'm not the one who's claiming that the guy deliberately left women off the list. I'm assuming he sat down, thought of a bunch of movies and made a list. It probably never crossed his mind that there were no women.
And, honestly, I have no idea why it even matters. Had it not been pointed out to me, I'd have never even thought about the gender (am I allowed to say that word?) of the directors. It seems irrelevant to the subject matter.
Isn't it worse if it wasn't deliberate? Then, either he unconsciously marginalizes women. Or his first list was right, and now its patronizing to pad the list with lesser movies because equality.
Everybody is biased. The average person is blissfully unaware. Better people are aware and attempt to compensate. The worst of us are aware and embrace it.
We all do things like this. It says nothing about us, other than that we're human. Our character is shown by how we deal with it, not by whether we do it at all.
Considering that Lee's reaction was to essentially say, "Oops, thanks for pointing this out, here's some more," I'd say he's doing OK. But somehow everybody's losing their mind over it.
Spike wrote on this change on his Kickstarter blog:
> As The Fall Semester Nears At NYU Grad, We Thought We Would Reprint My Revised Essential Film List (With Women Directors). Many Of You Informed Me Of That Omission.
You publish some code saying "this is the right way to do things." You get criticized for leaving out some important stuff, so you go back and revise it.
Which is the right way to do things? Which techniques were "the right way" pre-criticism, and are no longer the right way post-criticism?
PC run amok, or a natural give-and-take that comes from exposing your ideas to other people?
In the programming world, we don't expect our first attempts to be perfect. Why would we expect that here?
"The charitable interpretation would be statistics: if 90+% of recognised films have been directed by men - and I'd expect more men to have directed films in, say, the 1950s than the present day - it's not terribly unlikely that a list would feature only men through chance alone."
Can we get a statistician here, stat?
We have a jar with 9000 blue marbles and 1000 white marbles. We reach in, blindly, 87 times. What is the expectation that we have drawn 87 blue marbles?
We expect this one time in ten thousand. When we observe this in real life, we ordinarily suspect that the procedure is flawed in some way, rather than pure luck.
>We have a jar with 9000 blue marbles and 1000 white marbles. We reach in, blindly, 87 times. What is the expectation that we have drawn 87 blue marbles?
>We expect this one time in ten thousand. When we observe this in real life, we ordinarily suspect that the procedure is flawed in some way, rather than pure luck.
Doesn't that presume equal distribution?
What if all the white marbles are at the bottom of the jar? Or stacked on one side?
Just like me wondering about how many woman directed films in the 1950s, I think that there may be painful numbers of skews and presumptions that'd affect the final result.
(although - mea culpa - yeah I was very lazy with that original comment)
>I don't see why including women directors would be to the detriment of a list and only to meet a "quota."
It's changing the list post-facto that suggests that he added those extra movies just to meet the quota -- i.g. they were not the ones that he first thought as best.
It's unfortunate Spike was shamed into updating the list.
I fear the effect is not to help remove the discrimination and bias (that certainly exists) against women in many areas of society. The effect is more likely feeding a backlash against this kind of unnecessary thing, by providing another example of what many people will just label as "PC gone wild". The net effect, it hurts the cause of trying to increase diversity, instead of helping it overall.
Provide scholarships. Encourage girls to enter film programs. Put quotas in film schools even! That's the way a woman will direct the Godfather of the future, not shaming people into including diversity into every single thing.
It's important to have role models you can identify with. Recognizing and celebrating the achievements of female directors is important. When you don't include female directors in lists of great movies, when female directors don't win awards, it reinforces the idea that women are allowed to enter the industry, but they can never really thrive and succeed in the same way a man can. Scholarships and quotas help at the top of the funnel, but if the middle of the funnel is still awful and discriminatory you're just feeding more people into the meat grinder.
> It's important to have role models you can identify with.
Anyone that cannot identify with someone as a role model just because s/he has a different sex, is incredibly sexist and doesn't deserve to be accomodated in any way.
> when female directors don't win awards, it reinforces the idea that women are allowed to enter the industry, but they can never really thrive and succeed in the same way a man can
IMO, it just reinforces the idea that women need to try harder to become better.
>Spike Lee speaks his mind. Nobody tells him what to say. //
Isn't that demonstrated to be false here. He spoke his mind and then he was told that he shouldn't have said what he did so he revised it and made his "speech" more acceptable to those who complained.
It likely means he chose many of these films based on specific directorial characteristics, a number of which were easy to swap out for similar, female-directed films containing the same characteristics.
Only when Spike Lee ads them to the list, and Polish Directors as well. We should all be offended by the clear discrimination towards Polish in this list.
I believe the issue was that the 'white man' demographic had been given special reservations in the first one. When they asked him if a bunch of white men had (unknowingly to him) influenced him to overrepresent by a laaarge margin, he opted to account for the unconscious bias by 'thinking' more consciously about it.
Of course, now those goddamn petulant PC white men want all the spaces in the list, even AFTER he has acknowledged his bias inherent in the original list. If they'd ONLY choose to be objective and stop being selfish about the goddamn unconscious bias they are favored with. But nooo, in this ridiculous age of political correctness and 'everyones view is correct', they get do goddamn complain that they didn't get 100% of his opinion. These people are pretty much Hitlers to free speech : /
PS: BTW, what's the politically correct term for a 'petulant white man-child"? I've gotten some sideeye once in a while by one of those radicals when I've used the term in public.
The list has little value in isolation. A brief context about why a particular film is in the list would be much more helpful. The audience can then understand why he included "controversial" directors like Gibson.
The list on its own is just a list of films to watch that someone enjoyed...and everyone would most likely have a different list.
I'm not sure I said the list was created in isolation. The list if most valuable when taking with the film school lectures. Without the lectures I cannot be expected to understand why Spike add a particular file into the list. Therefore they are a list of films to watch recommended by a notable directory; of which there are many such lists.
But this is a list for aspiring directors - If I'm currently aspiring to be a better director, then some level of explanation would be beneficial to me
It's a list for aspiring directors who are part of the NYU Graduate Film programhttp://tisch.nyu.edu/grad-film/courses ... and they get three years of context.
You could ask for context from any university reading list... http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/offerholders/... ...they're of passing interest to people looking to be 'well read', but are provided mainly for the students, and the context is the course.
I think that was my point. As a reader of this list, it is of passing interest. Take the course this list accompanies and I will receive much better context and substantially improve my understanding of their inclusion.
Well, no. You stated it was list of films someone enjoyed.
But that's not what it is. It's a list that one of the top living film directors on the planet thinks that directing students at one of the leading film schools in the world should watch.
That's a different thing entirely.
Each one of these films has things directors can learn from by just watching them. Film being a visual medium and all.
Sure, some lectures can provide context, but the movies themselves are the actual content.
Fair point. I'm sure he did enjoy them as well as their content being of notable worth.
I very much doubt the list, and the act of watching them is the whole lesson Spike is trying to impart. The lecture series would complete the educational message.
The interruption of art is deceptive with nuance and esoteric means. Simply reading Shakespeare doesn't provide someone with understand of the proposed wisdom behind the text.
"When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of female filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list."
It's interesting to see that people that label themselves anti discrimination actually not only live perfectly fine with positive discrimination, but they actually come to expect it as a standard policy and take offense when it doesn't happen.
Being anti-rascist or anti-sexist does not necessarily imply being is anti-discrimination. To give an example, in many places positively discriminate old people by offering lower prices or better seating. Yet it would be absurd to claim that this constitutes ageism towards young people. It is understood that being old is in many ways a handicap, and by discriminating positively, we seek to lessen that handicap.
>Yet it would be absurd to claim that this constitutes ageism towards young people. //
Can you walk me through this?
A pensioner is a millionaire, say, and gets a free bus pass (OAPs in the UK are entitle to a travel pass regardless of their financial position). A school child wants to get to school but can't afford the bus so has to walk 2.9 miles each way to school.
How is it not ageism that based only on age the pensioner gets a bus pass and the child doesn't? You can argue that the ageism is justified as the general principle is sound (for example) but it's still ageism - discrimination based solely on the age of the subjects.
The child could be disabled, they still wouldn't necessarily qualify for a bus pass.
Read the last sentence in my post:
It is understood that being old is in many ways a handicap, and by discriminating positively, we seek to lessen that handicap.
You wrote:
but it's still ageism - discrimination based solely on the age of the subjects.
I disagree with this definition of ageism. Ageism is not simply discrimination based on age. If it were, then requiring people to be of a certain age to vote, drive a car etc. would also be ageist. Ageism implies injustice.
That's not discrimination against young people because it's not saying that young people aren't allowed to ride the bus, just that they have to pay the regular price. (Also, most children in the U.S. are bused to school for free. Is that not the way it is in the UK?)
What leap? You said normal vs premium was perfectly acceptable? Premium aircraft seating was at the front of the aircraft... How about if we call the back of the bus the 'premium area' and exclude whites?
PS: If you don't defend your argument, I am going to assume you already conceded defeat.
Your argument implies that women have an handicap and they can't direct movies as well as men and as such need positive discrimination.
You are not supposed to force just women, just men, or just any other person from some sub-group into being included in some achievement that you want to atribute to the best overall individuals.
I believe that is very clearly not the message of feminism and if it is, then feminism would be clearly broken.
The "handicap" in this case is the momentum carried by decades of forced subjugation, which can still be seen in tons of our social and cultural norms.
I'm not sure if that was serious, but women dominate in plenty of subjects. When are we going to accept that on average women are not interested in the same things as men? Trying to make everything 50-50 only makes people miserable. Give people equal opportunity, and if they make different choices that is a good thing, because they're choosing what makes them happy.
Yeah, it's just that the subjects women tend to dominate pay less than the subjects men tend to dominate. Go figure.
By the way, read this http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b... and tell me again that women are not handicapped simply by being women. Or maybe women on average simply do not make an effort to succeed unless they can somehow hide that they are women?
I'm all for blind auditions and eliminating discrimination. The problem is that the criterion for success cannot be a 50-50 split between men and women in every profession. That ignores that there are gender differences, and pushing for that goes against personal freedom and well being.
The market sets wages of jobs based on the value that they produce. A petroleum engineer earns more than a sociologist. This is not due to discrimination, it's due to market value of the degree. That women choose the lower paying degrees is a mark of a society where women can choose what they really want. If you look at countries like Iran and Pakistan you see more women in engineering than in Sweden and the Netherlands. Arguing that this is because of discrimination is ridiculous. It is out of economic necessity. The more wealthy and equal a society becomes, the more women choose professions they like and men choose professions they like. The criterion for succes should not be equal representation, but equal opportunity. The problem is that you have a fact-free branch of feminism that has completely taken over the political discourse. We need to listen to feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers who care about science and about the actual well being of women, instead of an ideological narrative.
I'm all for blind auditions and eliminating discrimination.
Good for you, but that wasn't really the point of that example. The point was that there is no good reason to assume that the same dynamic that caused women to loose auditions before blind auditions, doesn't apply in all kinds of other fields. How do you propose we deal with in occupations where we can't have the equivalent of blind auditions?
The problem is that the criterion for success cannot be a 50-50 split between men and women in every profession.
That's a red herring. No one here is arguing for that. Even Spike Lee only added a handful of women to his list of 80 directors.
That ignores that there are gender differences, and pushing for that goes against personal freedom and well being.
The problem with that argument is that it could have been made at any point during the last 200 years to argue that we had at that particular point in time reached the pinnacle of gender equality. In fact I'm certain that it has been used both for arguing against voting rights for women and against women working at all.
What do you propose we do with those professions where we can't have blind auditions? Pull a number out of a hat and enforce those quota?
It doesn't matter whether the number you're enforcing is 50-50 or another number. The whole principle is wrong. It's anti equality. The whole point of feminism used to be that we shouldn't care about gender where it's not relevant, and instead treat people as people.
It's utter nonsense that you could use the same argument against women's voting rights. Not having voting rights for women is completely opposite because you're discriminating based on gender. My whole point here is that we shouldn't discriminate based on gender. Another problem with this world view is that virtually nobody ever cares about the fact that men are overrepresented as garbage collectors and enforcing gender quotas in those areas. It's plain old sexism masquerading as justice, and it's doing a disservice to both women and men.
What do you propose we do with those professions where we can't have blind auditions? Pull a number out of a hat and enforce those quota?
I propose we agree to acknowledge that unconscious sexist bias exists and that it works against women, and that we should stop kidding our selves that the blind hand of the market will somehow fix this problem. If the market worked like that, there would be no reason for blind auditions in the first place. I am not arguing for quotas, certainly not as a general solution. But I can certainly sympathise with the idea, especially where the alternative is the status quo. I also think quotas are a bit of a red herring in context of the discussion about Spike Lee and his list of directors. We can of course not know Spike Lee's mind, but I think it's fair to assume that Spike Lee didn't include women directors simply because they were women, but because he had failed to even consider them in the first place because of unconscious biases he harboured like everyone else.
It's utter nonsense that you could use the same argument against women's voting rights.
Your mixing the arguments up. The argument I was referring to was your argument that things are the way they are because of unspecified gender differences. That has been argued always. As a society, we've constantly had to make short term sacrifices to further equality. For example having women be part of the work force has necessitated that we make it illegal to fire someone for being pregnant. That is a reduction of the liberties of employers. And paid maternative leave is in principle unfair to working men. But the result of those sacrifices is that the whole pie has grown and we as a society are wealthier.
He made a list of his favourite movies and then people complained that it didn't have enough movies directed by women.
I agree that gender bias is a problem, I just disagree that more discrimination is the way to fix it. It's also a problem the other way around. In STEM fields equally qualified women have an absolutely massive hiring advantage. That kind of bias is fuelled partially by the idea that you have to reach some kind of 50-50 situation or else society is sexist. This is also not good for women because it creates the idea that the reason she was hired was because she's a woman and therefore may be less competent than somebody who had to pass more a more stringent hiring bar, even though she might be very competent.
The market is actually a lot more fair than you think. If there is systematic bias against any group then somebody can make a lot of money by starting their own company and hiring those people.
In your last paragraph you're arguing against a strawman again. Not being able to fire somebody for being pregnant (or at home because of illness for that matter) is a good thing. Paid maternity leave is unfair to men if men don't get it, and then that's bad. I don't understand why people think it's okay to discriminate against men but not against women. It's plain old sexism. Both genders should get it.
The most important thing about maternity leave is that it should be paid for by the government, or there should be some system where if either the father or mother doesn't want it then he or she gets an equivalent amount of money. Else you make it a disadvantage for a company to hire somebody who is likely to take maternity leave (probably women), so you're creating discrimination.
I agree that gender bias is a problem, I just disagree that more discrimination is the way to fix it.
I believe that some discrimination applied intelligently is often less bad than no solution at all. If better solutions can be found, then by all means lets try those first, but in absence of those, it is frankly sexist to take the absolutist position that no solution at all is better than a little postive discrimination. That amounts to saying that the problem is not important enough to be worth making any sacrifice over.
The market is actually a lot more fair than you think. If there is systematic bias against any group then somebody can make a lot of money by starting their own company and hiring those people.
I know this line of reasoning. It isn't supported by the
evidence. I refer you again to the example with the symphony orchestra.
I agree mostly with what you wrote in your last 2 paragraphs.
The problem with this kind of discrimination, apart from it being discrimination, is that it has all kinds of side consequences and it's often applied unidirectionally. When you have a 2 to 1 hiring advantage in STEM that's a huge problem caused by this kind of thinking, yet it's not seen as a problem because women are supposedly the oppressed class. Meanwhile this policy is making it rational to believe that women working in STEM jobs are less qualified, which is a big disservice to the brilliant women who got there on merit. (note that I personally score some victimology points, and I HATE the quotum policies and special grants etc.) Instead we should decide what the situation is that we want to reach and aim directly for that. In my opinion that situation is one where gender does not matter in situations where it doesn't matter and everyone has equal opportunity. The goal should not be a situation where we're enforcing quotas because that's a situation where people are not doing what they want to do.
The orchestra is a good example where it did work. They started to use blind evaluations to hire the best players. They didn't implement gender quotas (as far as I know, and if they did I disagree that that's the solution).
My argument was merely that it is not unreasonable to be in favour of positive discrimination if you believe that this evens out some handicap. And if you don't think that merely being woman it is a handicap, I would ask you to ponder what caused women to suddenly begin winning auditions for symphony orchestras when blind auditions were instituted? (http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b...)
That said, I don't think I stated that it was my personal opinion that positive discrimination was the best way to solve this problem. I don't think I would rule it out in all cases, but I much prefer a solution like the blind auditions. But obviously this is not a universal solution.
Not when that discrimination is not to create equal opportunities but to forcible attribute achievements to a specific sub-group claiming that they earned those achievements in direct competition will the all group.
For instance, using your example, you could and should create the conditions for old people to feel less difficulty in accessing certain areas, but it would be ridiculous to put old people running against the 100m last olympic champion and then in the end by some argument claim some old person did the same time as the former champion and declare them both champions.
to forcible attribute achievements to a specific sub-group claiming that they earned those achievements in direct competition will the all group
As the example with the symphony orchestras showed, it is entirely possible that the achievements of women get discounted simply because they are women.
I'm not saying that it is necessarily always the case, but since it demonstrably is in some cases, you should at least concede that it is an entirely reasonable position to have that women should be discriminated positively against to balance this bias, even if you don't share the position.
Many people are talking about the great films that he is missing. But if this is a list of films every aspiring director should see and not just a list of very good films, I think it would also be important to watch bad and very bad movies. Ed Wood should be in a list like this, for example, as well as TV films, anime, stop-motion films...
We should just accept that whatever anyone puts on their "must see" list is up to personal discretion and, when asked of a director, is going to say more about the director's viewpoint and formative experiences than anything else.
If one wants to see "all the great films", I suggest focusing on specific genres/languages/formats one at a time rather than an uncategorized "top 10/20/87/100...".
It would be interesting to see top developers list their favourite computer programs.
Would you revise your list to be sure the lead developer on each program made a certain distribution amongst different characteristics sex/age/location/first-language? Should a Uni degree including dev ensure that amongst the programs/theorems/languages studied that some were from a particular group/sex/ethnicity/whatever?
I would actually. "Lists" of these types get stale after a while. Providing lusts along some defined attributes makes things interesting and can introduce one to something that would not make a typical best of list.
Netflix is doing it with their movie suggestion (ie. Strong female lead) and I'm sure they're not worried about being too "PC", though I'm sure some, somewhere have intimated at it.
How are The Element of Crime[0], THX1138[1] and the Qatsi Trilogy[2] not on this list?
The former is simply the best film ever made, the second interesting as a gritty example of lowish budget success in a completely different genre from that which the (very famous) director became known for (and is a successful remake of a film from his student days), and the latter proves once and for all the power of cinema regardless of conventional plot.
I find it disappointing that the films on this list are overwhelmingly old. Sure, many of these were groundbreaking and influential in their time, but filmmaking has come such a long way since the days of Hitchcock, for example.
In his original list, "City of Gods" (which he didn't even spell correctly-- the english title is "City of God") is the only film made in the last 2 decades.
His updated list, which was supposed to be more inclusive to women, adds Apocalypto, District 9, Kung Fu Hustle, and Dirty Pretty Things, all of which are directed by men-- and he even removed "City of Gods", one of the few movies from the original list that had a female (co)director.
In fact, the entire list reads like a giant insult to all of Lee's contemporaries. Does he want every aspiring filmmaker to enter the business with antiquated sensibilities about cinematography?
He's coming across like the smug high-schooler who just discovered Led Zeppelin and declares that they're the greatest band of all time, and all modern music is crap.
Good list. However, I notice lack of movies from such great directors as Wim Wenders and Andrei Tarkovsky. Well, I guess it is difficult to put together a list like this anyway.
Not the most elegant solution, but quick & easy: you could paste the list into a Google Spreadsheet, then add a formula to create a hyperlink to Netflix. E.g. for iTunes (I'm not on Netflix) this would be
Wow - this is lacking. Very much a Hollywood/ NYC focus.
I could think of 5 (each) Russian, Chinese, French, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Australian films would be before "Bad Lieutenant" (a film I like a lot - esp with the original Schooly D soundtrack)
For women - Maya Deren for historical purposes and no Chantal Ackerman or Pilar Nair?
I am not a film buff even - this is just a crap list.
It's not total crap; most of the films on the list probably do deserve their place on anyone's hypothetical list. But it's certainly light on indie, experimental, and world cinema (particularly non-Western cinema), and I can think of many films I'd swap out for films not on the list. As could any film buff, I'd imagine. Which is kind of the whole point of being a film buff: there will be plenty of room for disagreement.
But yeah, this is basically a Film Studies 101 primer list.
It shows a lack of imagination. You see this and want to be surprised. Learn about some fantastic unknown Malaysian film that blows doors...
I overuse a half learned Nietzsche quote from the beginnings of "The use and abuse of history..." - actually I think a requote of Goethe - along the lines of 'I hate that which merely instructs me without increasing my vitality...'
Butchered I am sure but I think that is the gist.
There is literally nothing new on this list.
Again - I am not a film buff - but I have seen movies in the past 3 months that are better than many movies on this list.
Glengarry Glen Ross comes to mind. Slate article is dead on about the omission of Ozu and Ackermann. What about documantaries like "Once were kings" or Errol Morris or for historical purposes, Leni Riefenstahl
I see things like this as an indictment of a dangerous lack of imagination in liberal US. Its killing us.
Ozu is a big oversight on this list. I'll grant you that few people outside of film scholars and students have seen anything in his catalog beyond Tokyo Story, but shit, that movie alone is easily one of the greatest ever made.
And the inclusion of films like Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" is bizarre. That film is like a 2hr episode of "Hogan's Heros" set in a Japanese POW camp.
I'm curious - why do you list women as a separate category, is there something essentially different about how women direct? I've never watched a film and thought "that must be by a $sex director".
Agreed - I didn't, the article did. It is a fatuous distinction. In fact - that categorizing is an example of the complete lack of imagination that I am talking about.
> Note: When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of female filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list.
Thanks, I'll stick with the original list. Given the small number of female filmmakers in Hollywood an only-male list is not unlikely. Political Correctness is a bitch.
Absolutely brilliant directing, and a good film to learn about staging.
You know you have a great movie when you can turn the sound off and you're still captivated by the story.
Lots of people think you can treat a movie like a book. They forget that cinematics are far more important for movie storytelling than narrative.
If you want to write a book, then write a book. Don't make a movie if what you want is a book. Movies are different from books, and should be treated as such.
> If you want to write a book, then write a book. Don't make a movie if what you want is a book.
It depends a lot on the book/plot/style. If your book is about self-introspection, for sure it's going to be difficult to make a movie out of it. But there are many books out there which can be translated reasonably well into movies. An extreme example, but the Odyssey from Homer antiquity had absolutely no comments on how the characters felt and all, and merely describes a series of adventures.
In short, the man has had his share of troubles including alcoholism, and he had some extremely inappropriate outbursts in response to the negative criticism he received after making Passion of the Christ. But while a more savvy public figure would respond by going on a highly-publicized "apology tour" to repair his public image, he chose to address his problems privately and tried to make amends for his actions without bringing a film crew to capture every moment. Just because you weren't invited along for the spectacle doesn't mean it didn't happen.
For comparison: filmmaker Woody Allen, who does a great job of publicly portraying himself as a lovably bumbling and nervous little guy, has been repeatedly accused by Mia Farrow's daughter of raping her when she was 13. He also cheated on Mia Farrow with her own adopted daughter, who was 21 at the time. Mike Tyson, as the article mentions, is a convicted rapist. Yet these men have done a better job than Gibson at repairing their public image, but this says nothing about what goes on in their hearts and minds. Everybody knows Roman Polanski is a child rapist, and that's why he fled the country. But Jack Nicholson was clearly involved in that incident as well, and even if he didn't rape a child, it's clear that at the very least he knew what was happening and in some capacity shared some responsibility. Again, he's one of the most beloved actors of our time.
I'm not saying that just because those men got away with bad things that Mel Gibson should also be given a free pass. But you can't call him an anti-semite just because he was blackout drunk and said some nasty things about the jews at at time when his life was in the dumps.
If the world was privy to every nasty and embarrassing thing you've ever said or done, what would we think of you?
I have read my share of articles about Gibson's demise but I will read that one too. It's hard to fight the against antisemitic charge though, to say that he was really drunk is more an indictment than an excuse really. The way I see it all those Hollywood types are already very racist/sexist and there's no good reason to pretend that Gibson is an unique case somehow. Your comment is misdirected: I actually think it's a net loss for Hollywood that he isn't able to make the films he used to make when he was in his prime. I'd be glad if he is forgiven or accepted back again into the arms of mainstream Hollywood studios. The films he directed were among the very few high budgeted films that didn't predictably suck IMHO.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing for that one. I'm not sure why he picked it. I don't think Gibson as a director made any memorable movie (some are decent but I can't see them being in such a list).
I guess that's the problem with a list and no context. Without knowing what exactly he saw in it that he thinks an aspiring director should pay attention to then you can watch them, but to what end? The issue with being an aspiring anything is you likely lack the maturity and contextual awareness to glean knowledge from every experience.
Do we know this? Perhaps there's one scene that stands out; or he feels that the visuals are perfect but the story is terrible; or it's an example of how you can make great movies but still be hated; or ...
>No Psycho by Hitchcock but 3 other movies by him?
Not like my opinion matters (nor does Mr. Lee's, in the grand scheme of things), but Psycho probably isn't in my top 3 Hitchcock films, either.
Vertigo, The Birds, Rear Window for me. Consider Notorious, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder...there are quite a few permutations, taste dependent.
The list is for aspiring filmmakers, not necessarily just good movies. I can see why Rear Window made it to the list, because it's a script that is ideally made for the movie medium, for example.
Really? Rear Window always seemed like a script that would be ideally served as a play (i.e. not many scene changes) that Hitchcock had adapted well to a movie.
I'm not sure how you would adapt it as a play : how can you capture someone looking at many apartments at a glance in an act ? In a movie, you can just move the camera around in no time from one flat to another, and that effect is incredibly difficult to reproduce in about any other medium.
A few observations:
* No citizen kane, some other "classics" have also been omitted
* No French cinema
* No silent cinema
* The omission of what is generally heralded as Kubrick's strongest work surprises me
* No Tarantino
The following films are on Lee's list and are French:
Les 400 coups (400 Blows), Truffaut
La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), Truffaut
A bout du souffle (Breathless), Godard
Paris brûle-t-il? (Is Paris Burning?), Clément
If you start like that, then there's no Chinese cinema either (and there would be certainly a few worth mentioning). I'd take such a list as being mainly made of Hollywood movies, as well as whatever is appealing to Hollywood directors.
I feel bad that we now live in a world where a person can't release a list of influential filmmakers without including another group arbitrarily. As someone in the tech world, if someone asked me who my list of influences were, I'd be afraid to answer for fear of being lambasted for not including Sheryl Samdberg or Marissa Mayer.
My favorite movies, but for no particuliar reason:
Platoon
Wall street
Three days of the condor
Chinatown
Sunset Boulevard
The Stranger(actually all of Orson Wells movies)
Any Andy Griffith episode
Bicycle thieves 1948
Niagara
Double indemnity (actually most billy wilder films)
The Misfits (last film for Marilyn and Rhett Butler--forgot his name.)
Giant
Rebal without a cause
Leaving Las Vegas
Blow out (all three)
Saturday night fever
Yes, even Urban Cowboy
One flew over the cocos nest
Deliverance
Hanna and her sisters
East of Eden
Dr. Strange love
Back to the future
Jaws
In cold blood(with Robert Blake)
In cold blood (with Eric Roberts, and forget his name)
The asphalt jungle 1948?
All about eve
The hot rock
Little Haus Big Halsey (Redford said it was his worst movie. Yes, it's masagonistic. Yes, he plays a jerk. But the movie captures the 70's I recall as a kid. The filming is great. His side kick in the movie did a great job playing a sweet, innocent, country teen.)
Imagine if instead of "women" it was something else. Maybe, "Why didn't you include any Soviet filmmakers?" Or, "What about Alfred Hitchcock?" Or maybe, "You should include some films from the silent era." And imagine Spike Lee took those suggestions and said, you know what, you're right, I should include some films from the silent era, there's some great stuff in there.
Would you be just as upset about Spike Lee bending to his critics instead of sticking to his guns in that case? Or would you see that maybe there is some merit in this sort of back-and-forth? Would you accept a suggestion for "silent films" but rail against a suggestion for "films by female directors"? If so, why is that, exactly? Does the merest suggestion of political correctness shut off your thinking?