If you haven't already, check out Terry Gilliam's "Lost in La Mancha," a documentary about the making of a film that never got made. It's an amazing look into his uphill battle to try and make his Don Quixote film. There are many unfortunately funny moments (like the flooding of an outdoor shoot) and it really gives an intimate look at Gilliam's career.

ANY director and I do mean ANY (including Hitchcock and Spielberg) are only as good as the crew that supports them. Sure it starts with the writer, but the actors/actress job is to deliver the lines with THEIR charisma. The director does nothing more than help them focus. The Production Designer, the DP and Gaffer, hell even Crafty are part of an intricate system. Each one supports the other in some form. Its a symbiotic realtionship really. The director no matter how demanding, still relies upon the decisions of their crewmembers daily. You can see the simularities in FF. Most sets are run like the military. The AD is the boss. The buck stops with him/her. Their job is to help the director and the crew deliver the picture. I have been on more sets where the Assistant Director has saved the film, not the Director or the Producers, but that's not the point. Its all about team work. It's all about the trenches.

FYI writers do get a ton of recognition, but the media (i.e. news programming and the like) can not make celebs out of them. No one sees them, unless they write/direct or are as talented as Joss.

I garuntee that any good script movie that seems bad had a terrible time during production. Littered with problems that even the best contingency plans could not settle.

I think that TV's got it (the credit order down well). The show's creators are in the opening credits, then in the individual episode credits, the order is producers, writer, director.

Then, the exec. producers are at the end before the other end credits.

That seems to be a fairly good way to do it. :-)

Without the writer, everyone else is just sitting around waiting for stories. Sikkukut is right. A director can make a good script bad, but nobody can fix a bad script. You can't make material out of thin air. Much respect to directors, but the story, the whole reason the movie exists, comes from the writer. And they get so little respect in the credits.

Did you know that only three credits can be given for a screenplay? So if enough people contribute a rewrite, the original writer of the material can actually be written off the screen. It's kind of disgusting. Much of the time, they're not even invited to cast readings, and sometimes, they are shut out of their own premiere. They do free rewrites constantly, often to be told they're being replaced after they've done tons of work.

This is how the backbone of Hollywood is treated because the director is given all the credit for the movie's success.

Independent films are their own animal, I much prefer a good director with a bad script. Alien3, Ali, Matrix Revolutions, heck, even Van Helsing are examples I swear by. A good director can make the film almost watchable... I don't work in Hollywood, but I'd like to stick by the theory that even with an awful producer, a director can still make the most of what s/he has.

A bad director, though... examples abound. Specific examples aside, though (I could argue this from now till doomsday), the producer is important but not the creative one. Remember 'Shakespeare in Love?' --"Who are you?" --"I'm... the money." --"Then you may watch, but stay over there and keep quiet."

Or something like that. Costumes, Make-up, Line Producer... all important jobs, and maybe they all deserve to be in the opening credits... but if I'm trying to figure out if a movie is going to be good or not, I look at the director first, screenwriter second.

If they've failed me before, then the actors and producers are completely academic.

A good director will have a hard time making a lousy script into a great film.

A bad director can probably manage to make a great script into a terrible film.

Either of them is going to have serious trouble getting anything done without a competent producer.

Personally, I think it's fair that the director receives top billing, and the producer is up there even if most people don't actually know what they do... But then the writing credit is often deeply buried, and that's not fair.

I think "written by" should be in the top 5 production credits you hear about for a movie, and it almost never is. When it is, it's always an art film, because the big studio productions have been through so many rewrites and suggestions and studio interference that nobody really knows who wrote the thing.

This is a needlessly cynical view of the whole thing, but I'm an independent screenwriter and producer in a needlessly cynical mood.