Runners Who Became Film Directors

There are many ways to break into the film industry. And for each successful career, there is a different route. And here are some humble runners who became film directors despite their humble beginnings.

Guy Ritchie

Guy Ritchie started off as a runner, making tea for the director Peter Levelle (The guy who did the classic Ferrero Rocher ads) and learnt the ropes before making Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.

Barbra Streisand

While searching for stage roles, Streisand worked as an usher for The Sound of Music on Broadway in early 1960. She auditioned to sing in the show, but the director turned her down. He encouraged her to pursue her singing talent as well as acting.

After a successful career as singer and actress, Streisand took to directing her debut feature, Yentl.

James Cameron

In fact, prior to taking the leap into filmmaking, Cameron was a truck driver who finessed his way into the movie business after using USC film students’ papers to teach himself how to direct.

He finally got his first movie made: Piranha 2

Ava de Vernay

DuVernay did not pick up a camera until age 32. DuVernay’s first interest was in journalism, a choice influenced by an internship with CBS News. She was assigned to help cover the O.J. Simpson murder trial. DuVernay became disillusioned with journalism, however, and decided to move into public relations, working as a junior publicist at 20th Century Fox, Savoy Pictures, and a few other PR agencies. She opened her own public relations firm, The DuVernay Agency, also known as DVAPR, in 1999.

In 2005, over the Christmas holiday, DuVernay decided to take $6,000 and make her first film, a short called Saturday Night Life. The rest, they say, is history. She is currently directing ‘Caste’; a Netflix adaptation of acclaimed Isabel Wilkerson’s best seller.

Martin Scorcese

After high school, Scorcese  initially desired to become a priest, attending a preparatory seminary but failed after the first year. This gave way to cinema and consequently Scorsese enrolled in NYU’s Washington Square College (now known as the College of Arts and Science), where he earned a B.A. in English in 1964.  He went on to earn his MA from New York University’s School of Education (now the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development) in 1968, a year after the school was founded.

He made several shorts and then launched his amazing career with Whos That Knocking At My Door in 1967

Agnes Varda

Varda intended to become a museum curator, and studied art history at the École du Louvre, but decided to study photography at the Vaugirard School of Photography instead. She began her career as a still photographer taking family shots of weddings. before becoming one of the major voices of the Left Bank Cinema and the French New Wave.

Her first feature, La Pointe Courte is widely regarded as the start of the French New Wave.

Quentin Tarantino

Tarantino dropped out of school at the age of 15. He then worked as an usher at an adult movie theater in Torrance, called the Pussycat Theater. Later, Tarantino attended acting classes at the James Best Theatre Company, where he met several of his eventual collaborators.

Throughout the 1980s, Tarantino had a number of jobs. He spent time as a recruiter in the aerospace industry, and for five years he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California.

His debut feature, reservoir Dogs is often called the greatest independent movie of all time.

Chloe Zhao

Chinese national Zhao was still learning English when her parents sent her to Brighton College, a British private boarding school at the age of 15. She later moved to Los Angeles by herself, living in a Koreatown apartment in 2000, and attended Los Angeles High School. She next attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she majored in politics and minored in film studies, graduating in 2005. Bartending and working odd jobs after graduating helped her realize that she enjoyed meeting people and hearing about their lives and histories, giving her the push to attend film school. A Vulture article reported that “Four years was enough to turn her off of politics…she found herself drawn more to people than to policy”. Following up on her undergraduate film minor, she next joined the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television Graduate F

Here first short is, The Atlas Mountains (2009), and her second short, Daughters, launched her career when she won First Place Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International Short Fest and Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival

By Elliot Grove raindance.org