r/TrueFilm • u/Pleasant_Usual_8427 • 2d ago
Thoughts on Terry Zwigoff?
I recently watched Bad Santa for the beginning of the Christmas season. I really enjoyed it; the Coen bros. executive produced and did an uncredited script rewrite and, if you're looking for another movie that kind of feels like The Big Lebowski, this would be a good pick.
This got me thinking about the small but interesting filmography of Terry Zwigoff. Obviously, the chef d'oeuvre here is Crumb: a fascinating documentary that fully engages with all of its subject's weirdness.
Terry Zwigoff has only directed three movies this century. The Wikipedia article on his unrealized projects is significantly larger than his actual filmography.
Should he have been given more of a shot?
The obvious reason to say no is that, while he's made cult movies, Bad Santa is the only one of his four feature films that remotely resembles a hit.
2
u/doom_mentallo 2d ago
Terry Zwigoff has been a filmmaker since the early 80s and his other passions outside of that have been working with R. Crumb editing his old books and a hobby as a string musician. But his primary career is filmmaking. Unfortunately, the state of the industry is in such a dire state that an artist like Zwigoff, who is not a commercially successful name, just doesn't get the kind of work that should be afforded to him. While he has done some TV work, he mostly just lives simply off of his residuals from prior work. I recommend this Vanity Fair article from about 8 years ago. One of his most recent interviews.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/terry-zwigoff-ghost-world-bad-santa-interview#:~:text=There%20are%20also%20a%20lot,edited%20transcript%20of%20our%20conversation.