Even top Hollywood directors feel like outsiders

LOS ANGELES - When six A-list directors -- Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker"); James Cameron ("Avatar"); Lee Daniels ("Precious"); Peter Jackson ("The Lovely Bones"); Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air"); and Quentin Tarantino ("Inglourious Basterds") -- gathered recently for a candid discussion of filmmaking, hilarity ensued immediately as they swapped war stories.

DO YOU GUYS CONSIDER YOURSELVES OUTSIDERS OR INSIDERS?

Jason Reitman: Dead silence. (Laughs.)

James Cameron: If we're all outsiders, who's on the inside?

Quentin Tarantino: Well, actually, that's a very interesting question to start off with because I did my first movie in '92, so this was the year I actually counted how long I've been in the business. Officially as a director, that's 17 years, and I think for the first 10 years I did consider myself an outsider. But if you last this long and you're not just doing marginal work -- which could be great work -- but you're not just doing marginal work for the people who like your stuff at film festivals, then I guess you actually kind of are in the inside. I remember going to the Governors Ball dinner and actually feeling like I was part of the room -- that these are my people.

Peter Jackson: I guess I'm the guy with the geographical situation, living in New Zealand. So I definitely feel like an outsider. Like, in New Zealand, we don't film ourselves having breakfast. It just never happens.

Reitman: I've done this every day of my entire life. (Laughs.) My father set up a camera.

Jackson: To me, this is an alien culture. Hollywood is the other side of the world and it's another planet.

EVEN THOUGH YOU DIRECTED ONE OF THE MOST WELL-RECEIVED TRILOGIES IN FILM HISTORY.

Jackson: I'm not really thinking about filmmaking as such. I'm thinking about the culture of Hollywood and the business. We're so far removed from it, which I like. I'll be staying down there, having my breakfast in peace and quiet.

Cameron: I'd like to answer his question for him. You're an outsider by process but you're an insider by the types of films that you make. You love the big spectacle films.

Jackson: Yeah, sure I do.

Cameron: And I think I'm probably the same in the sense that I like to make films for the mainstream, for the global audience. I'm not interested in making a film for film-festival crowds. I'd just as soon not meet people and talk about the movie. And I don't mean that in some disdainful way, it's just the movie should be the movie. But I don't consider myself a Hollywood insider in the sense that, well, first of all, I didn't have an agent for 15 years and don't have a manager, don't have a publicist, I just like to live quietly and stay out of the public view as much as possible. I don't go to parties, don't do lunches, don't do dinners, I just like to hang with the fam when I have free time. So I guess that's an outsider by process and insider by result, maybe.

Lee Daniels: I feel like an outsider, and even the films I've produced have been done in Harlem and I only come here to cast. I never felt embraced.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE STRONG RESPONSE IN HOLLYWOOD TO "PRECIOUS?"

Daniels: It's really nice. Now I feel sort of embraced. I feel this weird, sort of, "Am I part of (Hollywood)? Oh my God, I guess I am. I don't know.

KATHRYN, YOU'VE SEEN FILMMAKING FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM, CORRECT?

Kathryn Bigelow: Actually, all my films have been independent. So even though some people think they're studio films, they were only studio at the end of the day when we had a distributor.