Match Cut Director Consensus - George Roy Hill

[Ezee E]

http://tedstrong.com/graphics/capt1041017050.jpg

He may never have been discussed on Match Cut, but we've all seen a few of his movies. Time to rate George Roy Hill.

Funny Farm -
The Little Drummer Girl -
The World According to Garp -
A Little Romance -
Slap Shot -
The Great Waldo Pepper -
The Sting -
Slaughterhouse-Five -
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -
Thoroughly Modern Millie -
Hawaii -
The World of Henry Orient -
Toys in the Attic -
Period of Adjustment -

[Boner M]

The Sting - 5

[Pop Trash]

Funny Farm -6
The World According to Garp -9
Slaughterhouse-Five -8

[Spinal]

Period of Adjustment - 8
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 8
Slaughterhouse-Five - been too long
The Sting - 8.5
Slap Shot - 5.5
The World According to Garp - been too long

[Raiders]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) 7.0
The Sting (1973) 7.0

[Ezee E]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 7
The Sting - 7.5

[dreamdead]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 7.5
Slaughterhouse-Five - 5.5
The Sting - 9.5

[thefourthwall]

Funny Farm - 6.5
The World According to Garp - 8
A Little Romance - 8
The Sting - 9.5
Slaughterhouse-Five - 6.5
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 10
Thoroughly Modern Millie - 7.5
Hawaii - 8
The World of Henry Orient - 8

I wrote an entry on him for Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia, which deals with the major themes of his work; if you're interested, it's spoiled below.

I'd like to plug A Little Romance, which is available on instant view; it has an aging Laurence Olivier helping a young French boy get a girl just like in the movies that he watches and loves. Lots of fun American movie references. Nine years before Cinema Paradisio, which deals with some of the same issues.

Though no one would argue for him as an overt auteur, with his fourteen feature films representing nearly as many genres, George Roy Hill’s films show his remarkable talent for deftly telling stories that uniformly explore the complexity of characters on the outskirts of mainstream society and the close relationships they form. The Oscar-winning director was himself on the edge of Hollywood culture and an intensely private man. Hill was forty when he directed his first film, coming to Hollywood by way of military service, flying with the Marine Corps in both World War II and the Korean War; academia, earning a BA in music from Yale and a B. Litt from Trinity University in Dublin; working with television, where he won Emmy nominations for both writing and directing; and directing on Broadway. One of these plays, Period of Adjustment by Tennessee Williams, became the first film that Hill would direct in 1962. His second film Toys in the Attic (1963) is also based on a stage play.


Hill’s third film The World of Henry Orient (1964) concentrates on the lives of two fourteen year-old girls, Gil and Val, who seek adventures in New York City, particularly by following modern concert pianist Henry Orient. Even in this early film, Hill’s attention is focused on the disconnected individuals—the girls, who are on the verge of entering the messy relational world of adults and both come from families broken in some regard. Together Gil and Val dedicate themselves to the “world of Henry Orient” with whom Val has fallen in love; Orient, however, is a fraud as an exotic artist, and the world the girls actually hunger for is that of love, community, and acceptance. Hill later returns to these themes in A Little Romance (1979), in which thirteen year-olds, an American girl and a Parisian boy (who amusingly is a devotee of American films, chiefly including Hill’s own), fall in love and attempt to solidify their love for eternity by kissing under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice at sunset. The two must enlist the help of aging con artist Julius because, like the girls in Henry Orient, they both have troubled families who do not support them.


Most successful, both critically and commercially, of Hill’s films are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). Though the former is a Western and the latter a historical heist film, both focus on the friendship of two men outside of polite, legal society: outlaws and conmen. These films are perfect examples of their genres, while simultaneously subverting them. Starring in both, Paul Newman and Robert Redford portray old-fashioned men committed to a dying way of life that favors partnership over individual accumulation of wealth. Just as the characters find themselves at odds with their contemporary societies, so too does Hill darkly twist the genres to be critiques not celebrations of American culture. Music was significant in setting the tone of these films from the pointed minimalism in the three montages of Butch Cassidy to the reworking of Scott Joplin’s piano music in The Sting. Redford and Newman each worked again, individually with Hill respectively in The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) about a barnstorming flying ace and Slap Shot (1977) about a losing hockey team. While these films don’t have the same impact and success as Butch Cassidy and The Sting, they still explore similar issues.


Though he had a number of box-office hits, Hill never made films that only sought to reach the lowest common denominator of filmgoers; his projects always appealed to the intelligence of his audience. To this end, Hill adapted two challenging modernist novels into films that focus on the individual in history: Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) based on Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s book and The World According to Garp (1982) based on John Irving’s. Like Hill’s other films, Hawaii (1966), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), and Funny Farm (1988) also contend with fish-out-of-water stories with characters that seek to find meaningful connections with those around them.


Rarely credited for work on the composition of his films’ screenplays, Hill often worked with the writers, having a substantial impact on the stories, and was able to artfully use visuals to advance a narrative. Collectively, his films interrogate American society and what it takes to be successful in life and relationships there, often shown through the failure or disintegration of character though this is always done with a smile.

[B-side]

I've got nothin'.

[Mysterious Dude]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 10
Slaughterhouse-Five - 7.5
The Sting - 6.5
A Little Romance - 5.5

[Grouchy]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 6
The Sting - 7

[Yxklyx]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 7
Slaughterhouse Five - 8
The Sting - 9
The World According to Garp - 9

[Qrazy]

# Slap Shot (1977) - 6.5
# The Sting (1973) - 7.5
# Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) - 6
# Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) - 9
# The World of Henry Orient (1964) - 7

I like him quite a bit, been meaning to see more for a while.

[soitgoes...]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) - 8.0
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) - 7.5
The Sting (1973) - 7.0
Funny Farm (1988) - 5.5

[origami_mustache]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 7

[Lazlo]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 9
The Sting - 9.5

[Ezee E]

Apologies about this. I'll get to it when I get home this afternoon.

[Ezee E]

RESULTS:
1)Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 7.95 (12)
2)The Sting - 7.79 (12)
3)Slaughterhouse Five - 7.0 (7)