Directors on Directors (1997)

Jonathan Nossiter is the young winner of this year Sundance Film Festival with his controversial film "Sunday", also presented at the 50th Cannes Film Festival in the section Quinzane des realizateurs. Nossiter represents the new independent American cinema, committed to human values and social issues. In the episode he spends a whole day together with the great actors' director Arthur Penn. In his home facing Central Park, around New York on an old cab, on the stage of the Actor's Studio, Nossiter is looking for the real soul of his interviewee. Adam Simon, the director of cult-horrors like "Carnosaur" or "Brain Dead II", interviews his mentor and first producer Roger Corman. Simon meets him in his Concord Studios in Venice, Ca. With a frantic and creative style of shooting, the director explores the factory where great masterpieces of the B-movies industry were born, discusses with Corman the philosophy behind his career, his trust for younger talents, his obsession with sexuality and the unknown. Jonathan Mostow, a new revelation of big Hollywood Studios (Paramount recently released his box office buster "Breakdown" starring Kurt Russel) interviews Sidney Pollack one of the Hollywood commercial directors that better managed to keep a close-to-human-reality look in his films. In Pollack's office and during a walk through Paramount Studios, the two directors talk about how Hollywood has changed since Pollack started his career and how it is important for the director to always hold on to an artistic integrity. Actor-turned-director Bob Balaban is part of a certain cultural intellighenzia in the American independent market. He meets Robert Altman, probably one of the most provocative and European American directors. The meeting takes place in Savannah, Georgia, where Altman was shooting his latest film "The Gingerbread Man". The episode stands out for being very playful and at times almost surreal. Carlo Carlei, thanks to his epic style and technical resources, is one of the few new Italian directors to have found a space within the American film industry. He interviews Michael Mann, a big action movie director (his latest film "Heat") From Michael Mann hi-tech studio to his personal sports car shop, the two directors exchange ideas and secrets on action movies.