Richard LaGravenese

Screenwriter who brought us The Fisher King, The Bridges of Madison County, and crap like that.

A Decade Under the Influence (2003) -- Directed with Ted Demme. A pretty nice documentary about important movies of the 70s -- where they came from, why they were there, what made them great, and how they went away. The documentary is a nice balance that allows both film buffs and casual viewers to enjoy it. Some of the participants include Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Milos Forman, and Roger Corman (there are many more). Unfortunately, the filmmakers are often more self-congratulatory than informative (though they're that too) and the documentary doesn't cover the truly great movies of the 1970s (Werner Herzog, Paul Morrissey, David Lynch, John Waters, etc.)

Paris, Je T'aime (2006) -- Directed with Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Gérard Depardieu, Christopher Doyle, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles, Jr., Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Daniela Thomas, Tom Tykwer, Gus Van Sant. Eighteen five-minute shorts set in (and named after) different areas of Paris, all created by different directors. Most of directors apparently don't know how to deal with the short form and use the same pacing as a feature-length movie, not telling any real story in the process or setting us up for a story that we'll never get to see. The ones that stand out to me are the films by the Coen Brothers (which actually use some kinetic camerawork to wake us up), Christopher Doyle (another wake up), Alexander Payne (which is a mix of offensive and almost-touching), and Sylvain Chomet (with a mime). The rest are either average or make you say "Well, at least it was short." (See individual directors for a review of their short.)

Pigalle (2006) -- From Paris, Je T'aime, a short film starring Bob Hoskins that starts okay and then devolves into meta and worse.