Before Martin Scorsese became one of the greatest directors of all time there was “The Big Shave.” Before Taika Waititi directed a Marvel movie and won an Oscar for “Jojo Rabbit” there was “Two Cars, One Night.” Before Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay become two of our best working directors there was “Wasp” and “Small Deaths.” Most great directors start their careers with a great short film, several of which IndieWire has rounded up below for your streaming pleasure.
Of the selection below, short films by Andrea Arnold, Taika Waititi, Nacho Vigolando, and Marshall Curry all landed Oscar nominations in the Best Live Action Short Film Category. Both Arnold and Curry won the Academy Award for their shorts in their respective years. For Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky, the shorts below served as breakthrough moments as film school students at New York University and the American Film Institute, respectively.
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Of the selection below, short films by Andrea Arnold, Taika Waititi, Nacho Vigolando, and Marshall Curry all landed Oscar nominations in the Best Live Action Short Film Category. Both Arnold and Curry won the Academy Award for their shorts in their respective years. For Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky, the shorts below served as breakthrough moments as film school students at New York University and the American Film Institute, respectively.
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- 3/17/2020
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Only a few hours ago I brought you a student film that Christopher Nolan did called Doodlebug. This film was shot in 1997 when Nolan was just an aspiring director. It worth noting that he directed Memento only 3 years later. While Doodlebug seems almost completely random, is it? Directors develop their style very early and it’s fun to watch their early works. Speaking of early works, 30 years prior to Nolan’s Doodlebug, another aspiring director was working on his short film. Before he made it into the mainstream with his movie Mean Street, Martin Scorsese made a film called
Martin Scorsese’s Short Film “The Big Shave” from 1967...
Martin Scorsese’s Short Film “The Big Shave” from 1967...
- 4/10/2017
- by Nat Berman
- TVovermind.com
Update: Paul Thomas Anderson also discussed the film with Spielberg, which you can see by clicking on the second photo and going to the first video.
In 1967, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese met, showing each other their respective early films Encounter and The Big Shave. Nearly 50 years later, after dozens of iconic films to their name, they continue their friendship, and today we have something quite special: a one-hour DGA conversation that the pair held last week for Bridge of Spies.
While the first 35 minutes or so of the talk has to do with Spielberg’s latest recommended film (much of which he already discussed), they do reflect a bit on their legendary careers. One particularly great story has to do with Scorsese asking Spielberg for help in the editing room with Taxi Driver. Fearful that the MPAA would hand them an X rating, the studio pressured him to cut down the iconic,...
In 1967, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese met, showing each other their respective early films Encounter and The Big Shave. Nearly 50 years later, after dozens of iconic films to their name, they continue their friendship, and today we have something quite special: a one-hour DGA conversation that the pair held last week for Bridge of Spies.
While the first 35 minutes or so of the talk has to do with Spielberg’s latest recommended film (much of which he already discussed), they do reflect a bit on their legendary careers. One particularly great story has to do with Scorsese asking Spielberg for help in the editing room with Taxi Driver. Fearful that the MPAA would hand them an X rating, the studio pressured him to cut down the iconic,...
- 10/19/2015
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Well, if you don’t believe it, Ali Shirazi makes a compelling argument — Martin Scorsese loves mirrors. Yep. Mirrors. In his nearly three-minute video, Shirazi makes a pretty solid case for Scorsese’s frequent use of mirrors in film. Kudos to the editor for integrating “The Big Shave” — Scorsese’s 1968 short — and tracking the motif from there on out. “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Shutter Island.” They all fit the bill. Whether it’s Leo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, or one of the plethora of other stars Scorsese has worked with over his illustrious career, it’s not uncommon for moviegoers to observe them glancing — and talking — into a mirror. What is it about mirrors? Is it that they convey a reflection on humanity, on ourselves, that we make the determinations about? Are they how we perceive our reality? Is what you see in the mirror different than what I see?...
- 1/22/2015
- by Zach Hollwedel
- The Playlist
Everybody has to start somewhere.
The best and most successful Hollywood directors might find themselves marshalling $200 million epics, but in their formative years big budgets weren't at their disposal and they had to make do only with a good idea and the drive to make it happen. Many filmmakers use shorts to test-run ideas and explore themes they'd circle back to down the line.
From Christopher Nolan to Steven Spielberg, we look at nine short films that helped kick-start careers behind the camera.
1. Christopher Nolan - Doodlebug (1997)
Even before he hit it big, Interstellar director Christopher Nolan was distorting reality with his film work.
Doodlebug - led by Nolan's Following star Jeremy Theobald - played out an intriguing narrative loop over a brisk three minutes as a man chased a 'bug' around his flat with a shoe. A year after he made this film, Nolan took his feature debut Following...
The best and most successful Hollywood directors might find themselves marshalling $200 million epics, but in their formative years big budgets weren't at their disposal and they had to make do only with a good idea and the drive to make it happen. Many filmmakers use shorts to test-run ideas and explore themes they'd circle back to down the line.
From Christopher Nolan to Steven Spielberg, we look at nine short films that helped kick-start careers behind the camera.
1. Christopher Nolan - Doodlebug (1997)
Even before he hit it big, Interstellar director Christopher Nolan was distorting reality with his film work.
Doodlebug - led by Nolan's Following star Jeremy Theobald - played out an intriguing narrative loop over a brisk three minutes as a man chased a 'bug' around his flat with a shoe. A year after he made this film, Nolan took his feature debut Following...
- 11/9/2014
- Digital Spy
Why Watch? In 1967, Martin Scorsese put out a short film with a simple concept and the kind of execution you’d expect from a young Martin Scorsese. In The Big Shave, a young man (Peter Bernuth) stands in front of mirror, picks up a razor, and gets rid of his stubble. And then some. Obviously there are surprises in store. It’s Scorsese. The result is an experimental work (completely with incongruous jazz music) that acts as a striking anti-war metaphor, and an excellent lesson in how not to shave yourself. What Will It Cost? About 5 minutes. A New Short Film Every Weekday
"Martin Scorsese Teaches Us How to Shave in This Short Film" was originally published on Film School Rejects for our wonderful readers to enjoy. It is not intended to be reproduced on other websites. If you aren't reading this in your favorite RSS reader or on Film School Rejects, you're...
"Martin Scorsese Teaches Us How to Shave in This Short Film" was originally published on Film School Rejects for our wonderful readers to enjoy. It is not intended to be reproduced on other websites. If you aren't reading this in your favorite RSS reader or on Film School Rejects, you're...
- 5/7/2014
- by Scott Beggs
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Ever wonder how the great cinematic minds of our time got to where they are today? Give you a hint, Christopher Nolan didn't walk into a meeting and say, "Here's my film Memento, it's really awesome, I think you're going to like it." Hollywood is a very much a "walk before you run but only if you've been crawling for many years" kind of business, and it's most prevalent when you look at some of the masters of cinema today.
The following are selected shorts, music videos and commercials of famous directors when they were just directors. Watch and see how even they worked from the ground up to the eventual success that they have today.
"Doodlebug"-Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan
In a tale that plays out very much in the vein of Inception. Nolan's style is unmistakable in this short. The emotionally disturbed protagonist, the quick shots,...
The following are selected shorts, music videos and commercials of famous directors when they were just directors. Watch and see how even they worked from the ground up to the eventual success that they have today.
"Doodlebug"-Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan
In a tale that plays out very much in the vein of Inception. Nolan's style is unmistakable in this short. The emotionally disturbed protagonist, the quick shots,...
- 12/22/2011
- by Robot Reagan
- GeekTyrant
“I didn’t know who to believe—my parents or the television set.” — We Can’t Go Home Again ('73 cut)
“On the one hand, Ray has a knack for disrupting smooth sequences with odd interpolations… a sense of trying to carve out some space for immediacy and spontaneity inside institutionalized patterns of construction. But against this is a proclivity for heavy symbolic underlining and general schematization, which place the individual movements of the films within thickly determined contours” — B. Kite, Bigger Than Life: Somewhere in Suburbia
“Salvation is a private affair.” — Jacques Rivette, On Imagination
Some thoughts crystallized around We Can’t Go Home Again.
***
In retrospect, Nicholas Ray can seem as much like the last great Hollywood romantic as the first serious parodist of a generation, Godard, Oshima, Ruiz, still to come: anatomizing genre structure and hallmarks not to show the extension of personal philosophy into any...
“On the one hand, Ray has a knack for disrupting smooth sequences with odd interpolations… a sense of trying to carve out some space for immediacy and spontaneity inside institutionalized patterns of construction. But against this is a proclivity for heavy symbolic underlining and general schematization, which place the individual movements of the films within thickly determined contours” — B. Kite, Bigger Than Life: Somewhere in Suburbia
“Salvation is a private affair.” — Jacques Rivette, On Imagination
Some thoughts crystallized around We Can’t Go Home Again.
***
In retrospect, Nicholas Ray can seem as much like the last great Hollywood romantic as the first serious parodist of a generation, Godard, Oshima, Ruiz, still to come: anatomizing genre structure and hallmarks not to show the extension of personal philosophy into any...
- 10/4/2011
- MUBI
Danish writer/director Lars von Trier is set to remake The Five Obstructions, his 2003 documentary about filmmaking, this time with Martin Scorsese working opposite him, THR reports.
Both directors have an awards list longer than the eye can see, so what they will produce together should certainly be interesting.
Von Trier was a leading and founding figure in the Dogme 95 movement, though his later films have shifted away from the movement. Dogme was a group of predominantly Danish filmmakers who created their films by abiding by a strict set of rules. For example, filming must be done on location, and no exterior props can be used that aren’t already there; any music must be played within the scene itself and not later added over. Von Trier made the original The Five Obstructions with his mentor, Jørgan Leth, a fellow pioneering experimental documentary filmmaker. In it, he challenges Leth to remake his 1967 short film,...
Both directors have an awards list longer than the eye can see, so what they will produce together should certainly be interesting.
Von Trier was a leading and founding figure in the Dogme 95 movement, though his later films have shifted away from the movement. Dogme was a group of predominantly Danish filmmakers who created their films by abiding by a strict set of rules. For example, filming must be done on location, and no exterior props can be used that aren’t already there; any music must be played within the scene itself and not later added over. Von Trier made the original The Five Obstructions with his mentor, Jørgan Leth, a fellow pioneering experimental documentary filmmaker. In it, he challenges Leth to remake his 1967 short film,...
- 5/16/2011
- by Kenji Lloyd
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
There was a story circulating in February of last year that Martin Scorsese and Lars von Trier would be collaborating to remake the former’s 1976 classic, Taxi Driver. It would be done in the vein of the latter’s The Five Obstructions, a documentary he made where he challenges filmmaker Jorgen Leth to remake his short, The Perfect Human. It seemed like it was just a crazy rumor, and both parties blew it off as such.
But it looks like it’ll be happening in some form, as THR says that the two are indeed collaborating for a remake of The Five Obstructions. For those of you who don’t know that film pictured to the right, it had von Trier challenging Leth to remake The Perfect Human five different times, and each time with a new “obstruction” (hence the title). They included not being allowed to have any shots be more than 12 frames,...
But it looks like it’ll be happening in some form, as THR says that the two are indeed collaborating for a remake of The Five Obstructions. For those of you who don’t know that film pictured to the right, it had von Trier challenging Leth to remake The Perfect Human five different times, and each time with a new “obstruction” (hence the title). They included not being allowed to have any shots be more than 12 frames,...
- 5/13/2011
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Last February I reported on an astonishing news piece that came out of the trades proclaiming that the twisted Lars Von Trier had ‘challenged’ the legendary film director Martin Scorsese to remake his 70′s psychological classic Taxi Driver (re-released in the U.K. with a new print from today, but more on that later), but under five strict stipulations.
It’s actually something Von Trier has done before to another guy – his Danish mentor Jorgen Leth eight years ago, who was challenged to remake his own 1967 short The Perfect Human over and over again with more difficult and quite frankly impossible presets. Poor Leth was put through the ringer, some of challenges involving adapting his short into animation form and another where no shot lasted longer than 12 frames but still answered questions posed in the original production.
The whole saga is chronicled in The Five Obstructions and it was a...
It’s actually something Von Trier has done before to another guy – his Danish mentor Jorgen Leth eight years ago, who was challenged to remake his own 1967 short The Perfect Human over and over again with more difficult and quite frankly impossible presets. Poor Leth was put through the ringer, some of challenges involving adapting his short into animation form and another where no shot lasted longer than 12 frames but still answered questions posed in the original production.
The whole saga is chronicled in The Five Obstructions and it was a...
- 5/13/2011
- by Matt Holmes
- Obsessed with Film
Filed under: Movie News
Some big (and weird) news just dropped in Cannes, folks!
Lars von Trier ('Dancer in the Dark,' 'Melancholia') and Martin Scorsese will collaborate on a sequel to the Danish director's documentary 'The Five Obstructions,' in which von Trier had director Jorgen Leth remake his short film 'The Perfect Human' in five different ways to document the filmmaking process. While there's been no word on what Scorsese will remake, the Hollywood Reporter speculates it could be an early Scorsese short -- perhaps 'The Big Shave' (1968) or 1963's 'What's a Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?' -- or a well-known scene from one of his classic films.
In the original 'Five Obstructions,' von Trier gave Leth strict rules (i.e., obstructions ... get it?) that the director had to follow when remaking his short film. In one take,...
Some big (and weird) news just dropped in Cannes, folks!
Lars von Trier ('Dancer in the Dark,' 'Melancholia') and Martin Scorsese will collaborate on a sequel to the Danish director's documentary 'The Five Obstructions,' in which von Trier had director Jorgen Leth remake his short film 'The Perfect Human' in five different ways to document the filmmaking process. While there's been no word on what Scorsese will remake, the Hollywood Reporter speculates it could be an early Scorsese short -- perhaps 'The Big Shave' (1968) or 1963's 'What's a Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?' -- or a well-known scene from one of his classic films.
In the original 'Five Obstructions,' von Trier gave Leth strict rules (i.e., obstructions ... get it?) that the director had to follow when remaking his short film. In one take,...
- 5/13/2011
- by John Mitchell
- Moviefone
Embedded above is a five-minute clip from Craig Smith‘s underground movie classic, Psychedelic Glue Sniffin’ Hillbillies, which screened way back at the first ever Chicago Underground Film Festival in 1994. This clip truly has everything you could want: Cheap, junky Jesus art held as proudly as if it were the Mona Lisa; drunken basement ramblings with karate chops; beer-drinkin’, Martian mask-wearin’ good ol’ boys, roadkill, dancing old folks and more. Whew!
Back when I first discovered and posted up the lineup for the 1994 Cuff last month, I went in search of whatever happened to many of the films that screened, primarily looking to see if any were released on DVD. Not many, but some have been.
Psychedelic Glue Sniffin’ Hillbillies is being self-released by director Smith and you can buy a copy at the film’s official website. The DVD comes with director commentary, out-takes, other short films and more.
Back when I first discovered and posted up the lineup for the 1994 Cuff last month, I went in search of whatever happened to many of the films that screened, primarily looking to see if any were released on DVD. Not many, but some have been.
Psychedelic Glue Sniffin’ Hillbillies is being self-released by director Smith and you can buy a copy at the film’s official website. The DVD comes with director commentary, out-takes, other short films and more.
- 1/6/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Just before the Christmas rush, HeyUGuys had the great pleasure of attending 2010’s final Alfred Dunhill BAFTA ‘A Life in Pictures’ which celebrated the sensational and enduring cinematic works of one of film history’s greatest figures, Martin Scorsese. The event was hosted by BAFTA at their lustrous Piccadilly headquarters where whiskey cocktails, champagne and movie-loving company flowed ever so freely. HeyUGuys arrived promptly in order to secure a prime seat and I was drawn like a moth to a flame to a chair which claimed to be ‘endowed by George Clooney’ – lucky chair. Broadcaster and critic Francine Stock took centre stage to introduce the eagerly anticipated film-maker and proved to be a most elegant presenter and succinct interviewer over the course of their comprehensive discussion. Scorsese made his entrance to rapturous applause which he humbly diminished with a gentle wave of his hand. When one considers he stands at...
- 1/3/2011
- by Rebecca-Jane Joseph
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
As Scorsese's new film, Shutter Island, opens, our critic picks the great man's 10 best scenes
Mean Streets (1973) 'What's a mook?'
Scorsese's uncanny ear for dialogue was evident from his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, which is set in the heart of Little Italy among debt collectors and small-time hoods. Characters were called by names such as Johnny Boy, Joey Clams and Giovanni Cappa. In one classic pool-hall scene, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and David Proval start a fight - over the jukebox sounds of Please Mr Postman - after a barman calls one of them "a mook".
Goodfellas (1990) Tracking shot entrance to the Copacabana
Ray Liotta's Henry Hill takes new girlfriend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to dinner. They enter the Copa via the back door, go through the kitchen and are led onto the dancefloor and to the best table in the house. In one unbroken three-and-a-half minutes' shot,...
Mean Streets (1973) 'What's a mook?'
Scorsese's uncanny ear for dialogue was evident from his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, which is set in the heart of Little Italy among debt collectors and small-time hoods. Characters were called by names such as Johnny Boy, Joey Clams and Giovanni Cappa. In one classic pool-hall scene, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and David Proval start a fight - over the jukebox sounds of Please Mr Postman - after a barman calls one of them "a mook".
Goodfellas (1990) Tracking shot entrance to the Copacabana
Ray Liotta's Henry Hill takes new girlfriend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to dinner. They enter the Copa via the back door, go through the kitchen and are led onto the dancefloor and to the best table in the house. In one unbroken three-and-a-half minutes' shot,...
- 3/7/2010
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
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