Highlights and Links to the Best Director Blogs on the Web!
With the advent of inexpensive bandwidth, blogs have proliferated throughout the net, enabling just about anyone to publish their thoughts for the world to see.
Hollywood directors have increasingly embraced blogging as a tool to promote their projects, interact with fans and sometimes even hit back at critics. Here’s a short list of some of the more interesting director blogs available on the net.
Iron Man director Jon Favreau maintains a detailed MySpace page where he enthusiastically welcomes ideas and advice from fans, soliciting input on everything from costume designs to casting decisions.
Favreau talks about his excitement for the film, his thoughts on the history of the comic and even his personal life. His son Max even contribued a design for Iron Man!
Indie director Kevin Smith uses his View Askew website as sounding board for his often irreverent point of view. The site also features tons of clips, a message board, and a store full of worthless junk (a description Smith himself has often admitted to).
Over the years, Smith has commented on a wide variety of subjects both related to his career and not related at all. The director hit back at the network when he felt his Cartoon version of Clerks got the shaft. Years back, the director unwittingly commented on his distaste for the movie Magnolia, only to incite a virtual web riot between Paul Thomas Anderson fans and Smith cronies.
Most recently, Good Morning America’s film critic Joel Siegel stormed out of a screening for Clerks II this summer. Smith called him out on his blog, referring to Siegel as “the guy who stole his mustachioed critic shtick from Gene Shalit years ago, and still refuses to give it back.”
Garden State director Zach Braff is a prolific blogger, riffing on just about everything from musical theater to Tourette’s Syndrome on his official website.
Braff is also quite the pop music aficionado, as evidenced by Garden State’s critically-acclaimed soundtrack. His site features “What I’m listening to,” a compilation of artists and songs that are currently on his playlist.
Rob Zombie, the heavy metal frontman-turned low-budget horror director, updates his MySpace blog surprisingly frequently. He gives everything from updates on his film and musical career to favorite Halloween movies.
His profile boasts over 300,000 friends, and I’ve never met any of them.
Fans of the highly-anticipated Transformers movie can track director Michael Bay’s progress, explosion by explosion, on his news blog.
Bay comments on all the rumors surrounding the hotly anticipated project, such as the surprising reveal this summer that leaked images of the characters on the net were, in fact, real.
Though he doesn’t have an official website, Singer did post regular video blogs from the set of his most recent project, Superman Returns. There are a whopping 27 entries in all.
These kinds of director blogs based around specific movie projects are popping up all around the net. Earlier this summer, Richard Linklater and his producers posted on A Scanner Darkly blog. Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) and the rest of the filmmakers behind 300 have been posting on Warner Bros.' fascinating 300 Official Movie Site since production began in 2005.
We’ll continue to update these lists as new sites pop up. If you’ve seen other blogs or web sites by directors you believe we should mention, send your picks to Tom (tleupp@reelzchannel.com) or Jeff (Jotto@reelzchannel.com).