Twitch-O-Meter: Todd’s MEGA-ToM! (Twitch-O-Meter turns 50, part two)

For the purposes of this list I’m hitting the five directors that have proven most influential to me over the years.  In alphabetical order they are:


Terry Gilliam

The former Python turned auteur is arguably more responsible for my film obsession and particular tastes than any other man on the face of the planet.  A Python fan from very early on Gilliam and co did serious, lasting damage to my sense of humor from an early age and though it’s been years since I’ve actually watched any of it I can still quote extended stretches of the Python TV shows and films verbatim.  Just thinking about the fish slapping dance is generally enough to get me giggling to this day.  A chance encounter with the butchered for television version of Gilliam’s Brazil when I happened to be on a dystopic literature kick turned me on to Gilliam as a serious film maker and when an open minded English teacher agreed that screen writers should be considered equivalent to playwrights and allowed me to do my independent study on the transplanted Yank, a full on obsession was born.  Yes, there are a couple duds in his filmography - I’ve never cared for Jabberwocky and likely never will - but I consider Gilliam to be, without a doubt, one of the truly great film makers of his generation and a huge influence upon my own.


David Lynch

If Gilliam taught me to dip my toes into the waters of absurdity and surrealism then it was Lynch who pushed me in to the deep end of the pool.  I came to Lynch relatively late, via a rental of the original Twin Peaks VHS release brought home fortuitously the day before coming down with a truly viscous stomach virus.  Laid up in bed with what I consider to be one of the absolute best television series to ever grace the airwaves, my sickness was forgotten in enormous, obsessive patches, as I ran through the entire series in just a couple days.  I’ve been a Lynch junkie ever since and credit him for teaching me that film needs to be felt at least as much as understood.


Sam Raimi

This one’s simple.  Army of Darkness is quite possibly the most compulsively quotable film ever made and Evil Dead 2 arguably the best horror-comedy ever put on film, living proof that there isn’t a film on earth that couldn’t be improved by simply adding more blood.  Darkman and The Quick and The Dead both stand as personal favorites and while he may be a big time Hollywood player now Raimi will always be beloved as the man who brought me Bruce.


Lars von Trier

Ah, Lars ... all the bad stuff that everybody says about this man is absolutely true.  He’s neurotic, difficult to work with, abrasive, confrontational and fond enough of himself that he added the ‘von’ to his own name during film school to make himself appear more important.  He’s so difficult to work with that Bjork famously ate her own shirt on the set of Dancer in the Dark to put an end to a running feud with the director over costuming.  Agreed, this says as much about Bjork as it does about Lars, but still ... On the flip side, however, von Trier has got the goods to back the attitude up.  Arguably the most important European director over the past decade his influence on world cinema cannot be overstated, if only for the lasting effects of the Dogme movement he co-founded partly on a drunken dare, partly to contain his own obsessive, neurotic need for perfection.  Von Trier is a man unafraid to lay his own obsession, neuroses and fears on the big screen, unafraid to call it like he sees it even if that means pissing people off and the world needs more people like him.


John Woo

Yes, Woo has been mired in a lengthy slump - one that will hopefully be broken by Red Cliff - but the Hong Kong director was arguably the brightest light in HK’s golden run of the 80’s with a string of credits that stand as legitimate classics.  Hard Boiled and The Killer were two of my first entry points into Hong Kong film - and thus into Asia as a whole - and both still stand as legitimate classics.  In Woo’s hands countless bullets flew and Chow Yun Fat became a god.

Related Links

• Joey's MEGA-ToM (part one)
• Ardvark's MEGA-ToM (part three)
• Collin's MEGA-ToM (part four)
• Kurt's MEGA-ToM (part five)
• Stefan's MEGA-ToM (part six)
• Timo's MEGA-ToM (part seven)
• Peter's MEGA-ToM (part eight)
• Swarez's MEGA-ToM (part nine)
• JMaruyama's MEGA-ToM Aftershock (late submission)