Catch these 3 writer-director gems before they leave Netflix in June

If you are a fan of movies by writer-directors, you might want to catch three fine examples of the form on Netflix before they leave at the end of June. All three movies exit the platform after June 30.

As a genre, writer-director movies tend to focus more heavily on story and character and perhaps a little less on spectacle and visual design. The stories are often contemporary, have limited casts, and confine themselves to a few primary locations. However, in the hands of creative artists, they can still tell very big stories.

There has been a mostly untrue narrative suggesting that writer-directors are more inclined to come from the East Coast and New York, where the influence of live theater elevates the writer’s role in a project. LA and the West Coast, it is argued, emphasize the visual above all. Screenplays exist merely to give the director a subject for his camera.

What distinguishes a writer-director?

There may be some truth to this perception. Indeed, leading writer-directors like Woody Allen, Whit Stillman, and Charlie Kaufman are Easterners. Then again, so is Martin Scorsese, who rarely takes writing credit in the movies he directs.

On the other hand, though visual stylists like Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas were educated in California, Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the leading writer-directors of the last 30 years, is also a Cali boy.

In the earliest days of film, there were few designations amongst the crew on a film production. A director did run the shoot, but he was mostly just another technician, like the cameraman. There wasn’t a screenplay as we would come to know it. The formal screenplay didn’t arrive until the era of the talkie, beginning in the late ‘20s.

The need for dialogue was only partly responsible for the advent of written screenplays. The bigger reason was the need to regulate the product more tightly. Switching to synchronized sound was a titanic expense for the industry, and it required carefully budgeted productions. Screenplays allowed for that. The looser, more improvisational days of the silents would not fly in this new era.

For about a decade, roles became highly compartmentalized. Directors directed. Writers wrote. Actors acted. There was no crossover within the assembly line. That began to change around 1940. Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane is often credited as being the movie that opened the door for the new concept of writer-director.

Welles was the first Hollywood figure to be given the green light to do it all – write, direct, star – in a movie since the days of the silents.

But because it took him a long tome to settle on the Kane project, it was a different writer – Preston Sturges – who got there first. His 1940 film, The Great McGinty, became the first major release by an American studio credited to a writer-director. The trend caught on quickly.

There is nothing inherently good or bad about a movie written and directed by the same artist. Sometimes, a single point of view can benefit a movie. Other times, collaboration can elevate the film. However, when Sight and Sound magazine conducted their latest survey of the greatest films of all time, only two of the top ten movies did not credit the director as writer or co-writer.

So, if the concept intrigues you, here are three excellent examples that you can catch on Netflix until the end of June.

Do the Right Thing, written and directed by Spike Lee (1989)

Lee grew up in Brooklyn and studied film at NYU’s Tisch School. He used New York as a setting for his debut film, She’s Gotta Have It, in 1986. A few years later, he returned to Brooklyn for his third movie, Do the Right Thing.

The film was a sensation, winning the LA Film Critics' prestigious award for best film. Lee used a large ensemble cast to tell a contemporary story of racial tensions, which slowly build and ultimately explode on a hot summer day in Bed-Stuy. Though Lee presents a clear point of view, one of his outstanding qualities as a writer is his ability to recognize the humanity in all of his characters.

Unlike many lesser films, there are no flawless heroes or one-dimensional villains. It is simply a riveting story, pumping with the wiry urban energy the writer-director knew very well.

In addition to Do the Right Thing, Netflix also has that debut, She’s Gotta Have It, and a much more recent Lee film – 2020’s Da 5 Bloods – available for viewing.

Heat, written and directed by Michael Mann (1995)

Many writer-directors are thought of as writers who happen to direct. Michael Mann is often thought of as a director who also writes. I’ve run across fans of his movies who only consider him a director. They are totally unaware that he writes most of his screenplays, so respected is his status as a visual filmmaker.

Mann does not fit the New York or LA model. He was born in Chicago and studied film in London. He cut his teeth in the business writing for television in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Many of his credits came on police procedurals like Starsky & Hutch, Police Story, and Miami Vice.

He maintained that interest when he began writing and directing movies. For Heat, his fifth feature film, he brought together the two most iconic film actors of the day – Robert De Niro and Al Pacino – the first time they had ever appeared on screen together.

The film traces the effects of crime on a cop (Pacino) and a crook (De Niro), resulting in a sprawling epic that has plenty of action, but also delivers detailed portraits of the characters involved.

Netflix is also currently showing Mann’s Oscar-nominated biopic, Ali.

Friends with Money, written and directed by Nicole Holofcener (2006)

Holofcener grew up with a first-hand look at the way the most famous writer-director of his era, Woody Allen, made his movies. Her stepfather produced many of Allen’s films. Holofcener then studied film at NYU and Columbia before launching her career with Walking and Talking in 1996.

That film starred Catherine Keener, who would go on to appear in the writer-director's first five feature films.

The third of those features was supposed to be Holofcener’s breakout. Walking and Talking and its follow-up, the excellent Lovely and Amazing, won loads of critical plaudits but did modest box office. Friends with Money starred Jennifer Aniston, at the peak of her popularity. Anniston leads an ensemble of friends in their 40s who are all confronting their form of midlife crisis.

Many of them display conspicuous wealth, but Anniston is broke and cleaning houses for a living – a point which leads to some of the conflict.

Audiences at the time were confused by the dour tone, especially coming from Anniston. She had been expanding her acting into more serious roles, but this one had all the earmarks of a comedy. In fact, Holofcener does show off a lot of incisive, cold-blooded wit, but also presents a lot of difficult characters as well.

Fortunately, her ensemble, which includes Keener, Joan Cusack, and Frances McDormand among others, has the skill to pull it off.

In addition to Friends with Money, Netflix is also showing Holofcener's two most recent features, 2018’s The Land of Steady Habits and You Hurt My Feelings (2023), starring her new favorite lead actress, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

And, just as a bonus, though he did not direct it, the Steve Zaillian-scripted Awakenings (1990) is also set to leave after June 30. Zaillian, an extraordinary screenwriter who really shines with difficult-to-dramatize premises, wrote this story about a doctor (Robin Williams) who uses new drugs to bring patients out of comas after many, many years.

Penny Marshall directed this movie, but Zaillian (an Oscar winner who has written major screenplays for the likes of Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Ridley Scott) has forged his own career as a writer-director with movies like Searching for Bobby Fisher and A Civil Action.

You can watch the outstanding 2024 series Ripley, created, written and directed by Zaillian, on Netflix in addition to Awakenings.

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