Not like, "who's your favorite," or that kind of thing, but just the concept in general. Whenever the term gets brought up on DiF, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter, it's almost always negative. It's like an easy blow that one can lobby against a film. I remember it getting brought up on the commentary for Terminator Salvation, for example. Someone mentioned that directors who start in music videos have a tendency to fail as feature directors because all they have to do when directing music videos is throw a bunch of random shit on screen and pretend it makes sense. And for some of these directors, there's no denying it.

I mean, David Fincher? What a hack. Spike Jonze? Get the fuck outta here. Mark Romanek? Don't even bother.

It bugs me when people make this argument, because it falls apart at the slightest provocation. Sure, the stereotypical music video is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, but not if it's made by a good director. Good music videos don't have that problem. And those directors end up making good movies. Sure, Bay and McG and all the rest of those shitty directors came from music videos, but they were still shitty directors while they were making them. Fincher and all the rest are good directors. It doesn't matter that they came from the same place as Bay, because they actually know what they're doing.

It just seems like people conveniently forget Fincher and Jonze and Romanek and Gondry and all those guys when they talk shit about "music video directors." We can just say "bad directors," because I don't think that the whole "music video" thing has much bearing on the situation. Does McG bring a music video sensibility to Terminator Salvation? Sure, you could argue that. But Fincher brings a music video sensibility to his movies, too. It's just his sensibility instead, and that's the real difference.

Sorry if this doesn't make any sense. I just wanted to put this idea out there.

Love him or hate him, there's no denying that he was a powerful, unparalleled presence in the film world. I for one loved him, and he was a huge inspiration to me. He'll be sorely missed.