Francis Ford Coppola – “The Conversation” (1974) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979)
We’ve mentioned a few filmmakers here who have two Best Picture wins behind them, and most had one disappointing follow-up and one good one, to greater or lesser extents. Only Francis Ford Coppola blew it out of the park both times, and that’s because his two Best Picture wins landed in the middle of maybe the greatest run an American filmmaker has ever had. First Coppola made “The Godfather,” the industry-changing mob movie that took Best Picture at the beginning of 1973. That was followed by “The Conversation,” his astonishing, paranoid thriller about a surveillance expert losing his mind, featuring a performance by Gene Hackman that’s close to a career high, and some of the most immaculate filmmaking the director ever pulled off. The same year (the same year!), he released a sequel to “The Godfather,” and like the original, that went on and won Best Picture (with “The Conversation” nominated alongside it). Coppola took a little while to follow it up, thanks to the torturous production of his next movie, but came out alive (just), with “Apocalypse Now,” his defining Vietnam War epic, with Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando re-enacting Conrad. The director’s never matched this run, or anything in it, but then to do so might be impossible.
James L. Brooks – “Broadcast News” (1987)
“Terms Of Endearment” was undoubtedly something of an unlikely Best Picture winner — a directorial debut that could be defined as almost like an old-fashioned women’s picture, against something that might be seen as more Academy friendly like “The Right Stuff.” But win it did, and if Brooks risked being criticized as a fluke, he dismissed it four years later with a far superior follow-up, “Broadcast News.” One of the best movies ever made about the media as well as an all-timer of romantic comedy, the film follows TV news producer Jane (a literally perfect Holly Hunter), journalist Aaron (Albert Brooks), who’s in love with her, and handsome, unqualified anchorman Tom (William Hurt), who’s also in love with her. Sharp, sad and often breathlessly funny, this even more than its predecessor saw Brooks more or less patent a genre mined more recently by Judd Apatow, using certain rom-com conventions but playing by the rules of real life, where the guy doesn’t always get the girl, and professional complications can get in the way of romance. The script is killer, the cast couldn’t be better suited to their roles (fascinatingly, Hunter replaced Debra Winger at the last minute), and it even has bonus, uncredited Jack Nicholson. Quite rightly, it was Best Picture nominated again.
Clint Eastwood – “A Perfect World” (1993)
Whatever you think of his most recent movies, whether you believe they’re great works by Hollywood’s last classicist, or whether you believe they’re turgid, half-assed production-line output, you couldn’t disagree that Clint Eastwood has had a most extraordinary career as director, with two Best Picture winners among multiple nominees, the last as recently as last year. Eastwood followed the second of his winners, 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby,” with his ambitious war-from-both-sides double-bill “Flags Of Our Father” and “Letters From Iwo Jiwa” (the superior latter film was also a Best Picture nominee), but Eastwood’s better Oscar-related one-two punch came when the year after “Unforgiven” won, he released the deeply underrated “A Perfect World.” Based on a script by John Lee Hancock (later director of “The Blind Side”), it sees escaped con Kevin Costner taking an 8-year-old child as a hostage in 1960s Texas, while being pursued by Texas Ranger Clint. With a mood falling somewhere between “To Kill A Mockingbird” and “Night Of The Hunter,” it’s a beautifully drawn film, one of a complexity that belies the simplicity of its story, and anchored by a performance by Costner that’s by a head and shoulders his best acting performance, making his character sympathetic without ever nullifying the threat he poses. To our mind, it’s not just a great follow-up, it’s better than either of the director’s Best Picture winners.
Anthony Minghella – “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999)
Miramax’s first great Oscar triumph became a byword for a certain kind of stodgy, starry literary adaptation that Harvey Weinstein’s copied many times to varying degrees of awards success. And that’s unfair, because Anthony Minghella’s film is kind of great: big and moving and simply telling a great story. His follow-up, while it didn’t have the same awards impact, is unquestionably better, though. Adapting Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, it sees Matt Damon play the author’s mercurial sociopath, who heads to Italy under false pretexes to befriend the wealthy Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) and his girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow). Different, but just as strong as, Clement’s 1960 adaptation “Purple Noon,” Minghella turns out something quite distinct from his previous picture, making a gripping and absolutely dark thriller with pretty people in picturesque environments, with outstanding work from Damon, Law, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Damon in particular is utterly fearless, gradually showing Ripley’s monstrousness (and, unlike Delon, embracing the bisexuality of the character), while never quite letting your sympathies get away. The film confirmed Minghella as a major talent, and makes it doubly sad that we lost him so early.
Kathryn Bigelow – “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012)
As the first female director of a Best Picture winner (and, of course, the first female Best Director winner too), Kathryn Bigelow probably and unfairly had higher stakes than most when it came to her follow-up. And as far as we’re concerned, she nailed it — “Zero Dark Thirty” remains divisive to this day on its treatment of certain elements of its subject matter, but we’d call it a superior film to “The Hurt Locker” any day of the week. Reteaming Bigelow with screenwriter Mark Boal, the film was originally intended to tell the story of a failed attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves, only for President Obama and Seal Team Six to go and actually kill him just as they were gearing up to shoot. Boal hastily rewrote, and the result is a fascinating procedural look at the war on terror through the eyes of one CIA agent (the spectacular Jessica Chastain). Wilful misreads of the movie called it pro-torture (spoiler: representation doesn’t equal endorsement, and the movie is about the price a nation paid in their soul in a search for vengeance), helping to stop a second win for Bigelow, but the film will last longer: it’s an utterly gripping, textured, and phenomenally directed picture, and still Hollywood’s defining movie about the post 9/11 age.
As always, we couldn’t make room for everything we considered. Would you have included Carol Reed’s “Flap,’ Victor Fleming’s “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde,” Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” or Tom Hooper’s “Les Miserables” on the worst list? Or Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent,” Norman Jewison’s “The Thomas Crown Affair,” Sam Mendes’ “The Road To Perdition” or James Cameron’s “Avatar” on the best? Let us know your thoughts below. (and FYI, we excluded David Lean following Best Picture winner “The Bridge On The River Kwai” with Best Picture winner “Lawrence Of Arabia,” and William Wyler following Best Picture winner “Mrs. Miniver” with Best Picture winner “The Best Years Of Our Lives,” as it felt like cheating.)
