Playing Against Type / Film Directing

• It's hard to believe the Robert Rodriguez from Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City and Planet Terror is the same Robert Rodriguez from Spy Kids, Shorts, and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
• Andrew Davis, known for his action films such as Under Siege and The Fugitive as well as lesser-known action films like Ahnold's Collateral Damage, directed the family film Holes that was Shia LaBeouf's feature film debut, and was based on a childrens' book.
• Tim Burton is well-known as a director of movies which cross the horror genre over with another, such as the macabre musicals The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride or the comedy Beetlejuice. So when compared to his usual body of work, these four films really stand out.
  • Planet of the Apes (2001) is a conventional science fiction action film, a remake no less, with almost none of his Signature Style.
  • Big Fish, which avoids Johnny Depp, has only two moments which involve the supernatural both of which turn out to be made up and is otherwise a generally bright and cheery film.
  • Big Eyes is a biographical drama with no supernatural elements. It uses uncharacteristically bright colors, in contrast to Burton's more darker and gloomy colors in his previous films. Plus, the film also doesn't feature any of his usual actors.
  • And then there's the live-action Dumbo (2019) remake.
• Paris Barclay - best known for directing episodes of TV dramas such as In Treatment, Sons of Anarchy, and NYPD Blue - directed the Wayans Brothers comedy film Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.
• Stanley Kramer was a director best known for dramas regarding social issues (Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, etc.) It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World? Not so much.
• David Lynch, known for directing surreal and nightmarish films, made The Straight Story: the simple and heartwarming story of an old man, who takes a cross-country trip on a lawnmower to visit his brother. Up until that point, his most straight-forward film was about The Elephant Man!
• Wes Craven joked that he went from "violence" to "violins" when he directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar nomination in Music of the Heart.
• Yoshiyuki Tomino is an odd case. Fans who love his darker and more serious works like Zeta Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon (which earned him the nickname "Kill 'Em All Tomino") are often shocked or put off by his lighter fare like Gundam ZZ and Xabungle. In this case, Tomino tends to let his current mood affect his writing, and his darker works were done during periods of Creator Breakdown while his lighter shows come during periods where he's doing better. Ever since 1999's ∀ Gundam he seems to have gotten completely over his darker side and acknowledges his flaws, culminating in an Alternate Continuity movie version of Zeta with a happier ending.
• Hideaki Anno. Neon Genesis Evangelion. Cutey Honey.
• Jay Roach, director of the Austin Powers movies and Meet the Parents also directed the TV movie Recount, a political drama about the events of the United States presidential election in 2000.
• Zack Snyder, director of ultra-violent thrillers such as Watchmen, 300, and Sucker Punch directed the family film Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole.
• George Miller, director of Mad Max, later directed family movies about cute pigs and penguins, before returning to action 30 years later in spectacular style.
  • And in between the original Mad Max trilogy and family movies, he directed the somber medical drama Lorenzo’s Oil, based on the true story of two parents trying to Find the Cure! for their son’s rare terminal illness.
• Edward Zwick, best known for historical war epics and the like (including Glory, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond) made his directorial debut with the romantic comedy About Last Night..., and took a break from the Oscar bait with his latest film Love and Other Drugs, a sex comedy about a Viagra salesman.
  • And prior to his epic film work, he was well known for producing television dramedies, most notably thirtysomething and My So-Called Life.
• Sergio Leone is probably best known for his spaghetti Westerns, several of which involved actors being cast against type. His last film was Once Upon a Time in America, a story about gangsters.
  • When Sergio Leone finished The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he originally wanted to direct against type by making Once Upon a Time in America, but gave into popular demand and made Once Upon a Time in the West, which was the start of a new trilogy that would end with Once Upon a Time in America.
  • Apparently, Sergio Leone—known for having something of a hard-on for America, or at least American history—had also planned to make a film about the siege of Leningrad during World War II. Sadly, he died before it got very far.
• Sam Peckinpah's reputation for making hyperviolent films was established with such movies as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs (1971). However, he also made The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner, two non-violent character studies about people trying to adjust to life in the changing world of the New Old West.
• Roland Emmerich, best known for large-scale disaster movies such as 2012, Independence Day, and The Day After Tomorrow, tackled Anonymous, a historical mystery-thriller addressing the age-old question: "who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare"?
  • He also directed The Patriot (2000), a war epic that's quite infamous for its historical innacuracy; nevertheless, it's his most critically acclaimed film.
  • Stonewall is a historical drama focused on the eponymous riots for gay rights.
• The Coen Brothers did a rewrite of the screenplay for Intolerable Cruelty, and it was originally set to be directed by either Ron Howard or Jonathan Demme before the studio offered the Coens the option to direct it. They were initially reluctant because they didn't think it fit their sensibilities, which confused the studio since they wrote it.
  • The Coens are also known for making Black Comedy films. No Country for Old Men, however, is not a comedic film at all.
• Kenneth Branagh, best known for directing adaptations of Shakespeare, directed Thor, a big budget special effects laden movie based on a comic book character, though it might not be such a stretch when you see how much ham was required for Thor, and how both Brannagh and Anthony Hopkins likened the work to Shakespeare.
  • He also directed Cinderella (2015), a big budget special effects laden movie based on a Disney classic.
• Alfred Hitchcock, known to film history for directing suspense thrillers and crime dramas, often with explicit violence, took some time in 1941 to direct a Screwball Comedy called Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) starring Carole Lombard.
• John Landis mainly directed comedies like Animal House, The Blues Brothers, and ¡Three Amigos! but he has also directed the critically acclaimed horror films An American Werewolf in London and Twilight Zone: The Movie.
• Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker are best known as masters of Rapid-Fire Comedy as seen in Airplane! and The Naked Gun.
  • David Zucker produced the suspense film Phone Booth
  • Jim Abrahams directed the made-for-TV drama film ...First Do No Harm
  • Jerry Zucker directed Ghost (1990) and First Knight.
• Not directing, but rather producing: Mel Brooks was a primary producer for both David Lynch's The Elephant Man and David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986). In order to keep anyone from thinking that either of these movies was a comedy, he insisted that he be completely uncredited.
• David R. Ellis the man behind such thrillers as Snakes on a Plane, Final Destination 2, The Final Destination, and Cellular began his career directing the family film Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco.
• David Gordon Green was well known for making critically acclaimed, dramatic indie films like George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow, and Snow Angels. Then, as his father put it, he went "from the Arthouse to the Outhouse" by making raunchy comedies like Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter, and a major creative voice on shows like Eastbound & Down and Good Vibes. As of late, he's gone back to drama with movies like Joe, Prince Avalanche, and Stronger...followed by a foray into horror with Halloween (2018), and having a hand in making Vice Principals. It's gotten to the point where it can argued that he doesn't have a type.
• Ralph Bakshi is known for street-based dramas and comedies with over the top violence, sex, and nudity (Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, and Hey Good Lookin') and fantasy films (Wizards, The Lord of the Rings, and Fire & Ice). But he also directed the realistically grounded drama American Pop, which is more down to earth than his street films and fairly realistic in its portrayal of violence and mild in its sexuality.
• Ang Lee, a director best known for dramas and period pieces such as Eat Drink Man Woman, directed the first Hulk film. Unfortunately his style did not lend itself well to the unfamiliar genre, and the sequel "rebooted" it.
• Francis Ford Coppola is known for directing drama films like The Godfather series, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, he also directed the family comedy-drama Jack about a young boy played by Robin Williams who psychically ages several decades at an accelerated rate.
• Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director responsible for Mind Screw films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain made a kid´s movie called Tusk, which didn´t have any of the strange symbolism and violence of his other movies. He disowned the film.
• Francis Lawrence, the director from Constantine and I Am Legend also directed Water for Elephants, a romantic drama based on the book of the same name.
• Adult film director Paul Norman directed the horror film Ice Cream Man.
• Tom Schulman, the Academy Award winning writer of Dead Poets Society, made his directorial debut with the Black Comedy 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag. Carpe diem, indeed.
• Peter Berg, an actor turned director best known for action films such as Hancock and Battleship, made his directorial debut with the Black Comedy Very Bad Things (of which its premise may be more familiar to audiences as the later film The Hangover). He's also gone against type as a producer, being one of the producers of the romantic comedy Lars and the Real Girl.
• Gore Verbinski, director of dark action flicks like The Ring, Rango and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, also directed the slapstick comedy MouseHunt.
• George A. Romero, best known for his Dead zombie movies, has among his directorial credits the 1971 romantic comedy There's Always Vanilla.
• Michael Bay, best known for his Transformers Film Series films and Armageddon (1998), went against type with the true crime action/comedy Pain & Gain.
  • Pearl Harbor was a serious attempt at a historical drama/romance that lacked most of the traits common in his action films.
• Ridley Scott usually does grim action films. Twice in the 2000s he made comedies, Matchstick Men (which still had some adventure content as it deals with con men) and A Good Year (a straight-up romantic comedy, mostly to shoot near his French home).
  • Scott was also one of the executive producers of The A-Team.
• John Huston, well known for Film Noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo and The Asphalt Jungle, also did the family musical Annie.
• After a career of only directing comedies with, admittedly, little camera movement, Kevin Smith went against type with a horror/action/thriller movie Red State. This movie was also atypical for him as a writer.
• Sidney Lumet, known for gritty New York dramas such as 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network, also did the family musical The Wiz. Murder on the Orient Express (1974) took him out of New York entirely, instead being a European-set mystery film.
• Think Sam Raimi and you think fantasy/horror/adventure movies — The Evil Dead (1981), Darkman, Spider-Man and so on. You probably don't think Westerns (The Quick and the Dead), dramas about found money (A Simple Plan) or romantic dramas (For Love of the Game).
• Jean-Pierre Jeunet did this with Amélie, a lighthearted romantic comedy completely in contrast to his darker and more violent films.
• Darren Aronofsky would be the last person you would suspect to make a big budget religious film like Noah, especially considering his other works like Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream.
  • Though, to be fair, the end result is entirely recognizable as an Aronofsky film.
• Disney is the last company that you would expect to produce and air a remake of the 1971 classic Brian's Song. Very serious adult-level tearjerker dramas are not what Disney is known for. There was no Disneyfication. The only thing Disneyesque they did was inject a political correctness that isn't exactly accurate to the period setting (but that's mostly limited to omitting the racist terms that were thrown around in the original and to elevating the role of female characters). They also made the characters Darker and Edgier and left out the humor of the original (specifically, James Caan originally played Brian as a snarky extrovert while in the remake, he is more of a Jerkass). And this was shown on The Wonderful World of Disney.
• Rob Marshall is known for his musical films (Chicago, Nine (Musical), Into the Woods), but also directed Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
• The Russo Brothers were known for directing television comedy episodes for shows like Community and Arrested Development, when they got the job to direct the big-budget Superhero Conspiracy Thriller blockbuster, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is now regarded as a contender for the best movie entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They managed to go above and beyond all expectations with Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, and followed those up with Cherry (2021), an extremely grim drama about a Shell-Shocked Veteran addicted to heroin.
• Carol Reed was known for his gritty dramatic works (the most famous being The Third Man), but he won his lone Oscar for 1968's Oliver! — a musical. His next film, 1970's Flap, also falls under this since it's a comedy.
• Martin Scorsese has helmed films about gangsters, psychopaths, and affable jerks, as well as movies like Hugo, a children's film about the early days of cinema.
• Sam Mendes basically followed James Mangold's footsteps. He also believes that doing a film of a different genre is the perfect way to challenge himself as a filmmaker. Because of this mindset, he went out of his way to make a modern-day suburban drama (American Beauty), a gangster film (Road to Perdition), two war films with drastically different styles and narratives (Jarhead/1917), a period suburban drama (Revolutionary Road), an indie comedy-drama (Away We Go) and two big-budget franchise espionage films (Skyfall/Spectre).
• Eli Roth, known for directing some infamously violent and sadistic cinematic contributions, directed a PG-rated family dark fantasy film that would fit nicely alongside '80s classics from its production company, and based on a YA novel to boot: The House With a Clock in Its Walls.
• Guillermo del Toro, known for numerous dark fantasy and action films, also helmed Nightmare Alley (2021), a Film Noir psychological crime thriller based on a crime novel that has been previously adapted to film to boot. Unusually for a del Toro film, it has no supernatural elements beyond staged carnival tricks and mentalism.
• Todd Phillips is mostly known for comedies such as Starsky & Hutch and the The Hangover-trilogy. Few expected him to be behind Joker (2019), a thriller-drama inspired by Martin Scorsese-movies such as Taxi Driver, based on the DC-Character of the same name. He even co-wrote the movie.

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