The 5: Short Films Before They Were Famous

This Week on The 5: Short Films By Great Directors Before They Were Famous

Everyone had to start somewhere, but great artistry can be seen even in the earliest unpolished places.  Note: most of these are ripped from ancient bootleg video sources. If you’re going to whine about the poor video quality, go watch your Bluray copy of Batman part 7 for the millionth time instead.

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• Paul Thomas Anderson. Before he achieved the greatest artistic achievement of his career, dating Fiona Apple, he made this short, “Coffee and Cigarettes”. After a professor bad mouthed Terminator 2 to his students, PTA dropped out of NYU and invested his tuition money into this short, featuring actual famous actor and cousin to George Clooney, Miguel Ferrer. Watch it here or scroll down below.
• Sam Raimi. It wasn’t always grotesque CGI spectacles for Sam. In 1978, he was a teenager from working class Michigan that got together with friends and family and made a short horror movie called Within The Woods. It became a minor local hit, and was used to attract investors and was later made into a proper feature, retitled Evil Dead. Watch it here or scroll down below.
• Quentin Tarantino. A blessing disguised as tragedy. While still a mere video store clerk in his early 20s, he scraped together enough cash to shoot his first movie. The bad news: most of it was destroyed in a fire, only half of the footage survived. The good news: it wasn’t very good. Even in 1984, Tarantino’s vision for his universe of characters was fully realized, characters and scenarios from True Romance and all the way up to 2009s Inglourious Basterds are present in this short. Watch it here or scroll down below.
• David Lynch. Before blowing up the box office with crowd pleasing favorites like Eraserhead and Wild at Heart, young David Lynch got his start making disturbing short films. Here’s a tender story about a young boy and his grandmother. Watch it here or scroll down below.
• Wes Anderson. Though shot on black and white, and looking much cheaper than the finished product, this is nearly identical to the feature debut of Wes Anderson. Legendary producer James L Brooks (Simpsons, Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore etc) saw this short and decided to finance and distribute a proper version of it. That’s how you get a bunch of Rolling Stones songs in your first movie. Watch it here or scroll down below.

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Paul Thomas Anderson

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Sam Raimi

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Quentin Tarantino

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David Lynch

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Wes Anderson

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