Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/584985
dga quarterly 7 Dear Members: Directors are by nature people with a vision, and there is always something of the way they see the world in their work. Take Taylor Hackford, for instance, the subject of our DGA Interview. He has had an impressive and far-ranging career, but it is perhaps his affection for music that one notices most in his films, specifically in his Chuck Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll and his passion project Ray, a biopic of the great Ray Charles. "The first time I heard Ray Charles, he was my guy," Hackford tells Terrence Rafferty in "The Director's Chair." "That's why I spent 13 years trying to raise the money to make a biography of him." And talk about filmmakers with a vision. Euzhan Palcy's 1989 A Dry White Season was the first studio movie directed by a black woman. She was committed to telling black stories her way, but when that didn't work out in Hollywood, she decided to go home to Paris and develop projects there. She has been a role model for future generations of directors, and her story is extraordinary, as we see here in "A Filmmaker's Journey." King Vidor, co-founder of the Guild and its first president, was another director who brought a great visual imagination to his work. His idea for The Crowd was to follow an ordinary couple through the trials and tribulations of a lifetime. It makes no difference that this is a silent film; it is masterful storytelling, as director Paul Weitz (Grandma) shows in an insightful analysis in our Screening Room feature, "Faces in 'The Crowd.'" In his hit series of several years ago, Six Feet Under, about a family of morticians and their loved ones, Alan Ball dared to look at life—and death—in a way no one had quite done before. In "End of the Road," Ball explains to Rob Feld how he directed the heartbreaking yet uplifting series finale. You may have noticed that more and more miniseries are being helmed by one director, with, again, a single vision. In "One Director, One Miniseries," five solo directors of recent miniseries describe their experiences to Ann Farmer. And, finally, Out of the Past closes the issue with a shot of Wes Craven, who passed away in August. Some years ago, when I interviewed Craven in his Hollywood Hills home (Steve McQueen's old place, he told me), I was surprised to find two books on his coffee table: The Film Encyclopedia and The Story of God. I shouldn't have been. Craven was in reality an erudite and soft-spoken man, not the bloodstained lunatic I might have been expecting from his films. The thing about Craven, though, was that in films like The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Scream series, he had a unique vision and an instinctive understanding of how to scare the stuffing out of us. I hope these stories help to inspire your vision. Enjoy the issue. Best, James Greenberg jgreenberg@dga.org PHOTO: S. BETH ATKIN EDITOR'S L E T TE R