Spike Jonze – “Being John Malkovich” (1999)
When you suggest that “Being John Malkovich” is one of the weirdest movies ever to lead to its helmer getting an Oscar nomination, you have to remember that David Lynch has three Best Director nominations. Even then, though, Spike Jonze’s movie has a claim to take the title. Also the first produced movie script from former TV writer Charlie Kaufman, it sees an unemployed puppeteer (John Cusack) take an office job in the seven and a half-th floor of an office building, where he falls in love with a colleague, and discovers a portal that puts him inside the head of actor John Malkovich. Even seventeen years on, it’s hard to believe that it’s an actual movie that got made (or that it goes to places even stranger), but harder still to believe that it turned out so beautifully. Kaufman’s screenplay is profound, funny and melancholy, while Jonze, a skateboarder-turned-music-video-master, makes something utterly beguiling and unexpected with it, resisting any hint of flashy MTV vibes for a style that’s entirely of his own. He matches the writer’s ambition and intelligence, but softens his more misanthropic urges, bringing out the humanity while coming up with all kinds of memorable images, too. The two haven’t worked together since ‘Adaptation” in 2002, though were said to have a third collaboration brewing: we sincerely hope it comes to pass one day.
Bennett Miller – “Capote” (2005)
Some Oscar categories have a tendency to confuse ‘Best’ with ‘Most’ when they’re picking their nominees: when “Transformers” turns up in VFX, when Tarantino gets a writing nod, when whatever British period piece wins Costume Design, Sean Penn. But the directors have a better track record, highlighting the kind of subtle, unshowy helming that even critics don’t give them their proper due. Like Lenny Abrahamson this year, for instance, or when Bennett Miller picked up a nod for his first feature, “Capote.” It’s the kind of movie that would, in some years, have been overwhelmed by the titanic nature of its lead performance, Philip Seymour Hoffman utterly embodying the “In Cold Blood” author as he’s permanently broken by his attachment to one of his subjects (Clifton Collins Jr. — god, remember how good he was in this, too?). But Miller, who’d previously made the documentary “The Cruise,” demonstrated the kind of controlled, meticulous filmmaking that’s made him one of our favorites (and would later earn him a second nomination for “Foxcatcher”). He expertly slides the tone from New York culture-clash to horribly sad one-man show over the film’s running time, lets a number of other actors (Catherine Keener and Chris Cooper, in particular) make impressions too, and picks the perfect shot almost every time. It’s dispiriting that we’ve only had three films in a decade from him, but if they keep being as good as this, we don’t mind waiting.
READ MORE: 15 Cinematographers Turned Directors
Tony Gilroy – “Michael Clayton” (2007)
Between 2014’s “Nightcrawler,” the first film directed by Dan Gilroy, and his brother Tony’s helming debut seven years earlier, we think that the way to save the film industry might be to give anyone with the surname Gilroy a few million dollars and Robert Elswit and let them make a movie. Tony was able to turn his success penning the “Bourne” movies into his first directorial movie, and turned out a complex, endlessly rewatchable drama of the kind they supposedly don’t make any more. George Clooney took the title role, a fixer for a law firm with personal troubles, whose friend, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), in the midst of a mental breakdown, has exposed a pharmaceutical conspiracy which attorney, Karen (Tilda Swinton), is desperate to cover up. A sort of meld of 70s conspiracy thriller and character drama, it sees Gilroy take what could have been a convoluted plot and take it down fascinating tangents that seemingly don’t feed the main plot. And yet the writing’s so specific, so smart, so detailed, that everything ends up building to the whole, from the hit-and-run he’s asked to cover up in the opening flash forward, to Sydney Pollack’s last great on-screen performance (released six months before he passed). It’s almost like an act of alchemy, letting Clooney, in particular, give a performance you’d never think he was capable of. Depressingly, you suspect that not even a decade on, this would now be an HBO show rather than a movie, but we’re glad that the Academy of 2007 appreciated what they had, nominating it seven times, including a Directing nod for Gilroy.
These aren’t the only Oscar-nominated debuts, just the ones we’d suggest were the cream of the crop. Among those with Best Director nods (and in most cases, Best Picture, too) first time out include Jack Clayton with “Room At The Top,” James L. Brooks with “Terms Of Endearment,” Hugh Hudson with “Chariots Of Fire,” Jim Sheridan with “My Left Foot,” Kenneth Branagh with “Henry V,” Kevin Costner with “Dances With Wolves,” Chris Noonan with “Babe,” Sam Mendes with “American Beauty,” Rob Marshall with “Chicago” and Benh Zeitlin with “Beasts Of The Southern Wild.”
And some other excellent Best Picture nominees from debuting directors (which weren’t, however, Best Director-nominated) include Randa Haines with “Children Of A Lesser God,” Frank Darabont with “The Shawshank Redemption,” Peter Cattaneo with “The Full Monty,” Todd Field with “In The Bedroom,” Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris with “Little Miss Sunshine,” Neill Blomkamp with “District 9,” Lee Unkrich with “Toy Story 3” and Damien Chazelle with “Whiplash.” Any others you love? Let us know.
