The Life Cycle of Filmmakers

David Galenson, Univeristy of Chicago economist and author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses, has studied the creative output of painters, writers, musicians, and poets. And he's boiled down the life cycles of these artists into the two archetypes in his book's title. Wired did a nice job summarizing the distinction in its 2006 profile of Galenson:

What he has found is that genius - whether in art or architecture or even business - is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. "Conceptual innovators," as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there's a second character type, someone who's just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group "experimental innovators." Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality - conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus - is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

Now, along with Joshua Kotin, also of the U of C, Galenson has turned his attention to filmmakers.

Let's see if you can pick out which director is which type. Below, shown alphabetically by last name, are the 10 directors Galenson and Kotin examine. Decide whether each director is a Conceptual or Experimental innovator. Answers are below.

1. Woody Allen
2. Robert Altman
3. John Cassavetes
4. Francis Ford Coppola
5. Clint Eastwood
6. Jean-Luc Godard
7. Stanley Kubrick
8. Steven Spielberg
9. Martin Scorsese
10. Francois Truffaut

Answers: 1) E, 2) E, 3) E, 4) C, 5) E, 6) C, 7) C, 8) C, 9) E, 10) C

The table below shows the responses of hundreds of film critics asked to list the 10 best movies ever made by the British Film Institute in 2002. Two things are obvious from the table: 1) The age when a conceptual director made his best work, as cited by the film critics, is younger on average than the average age of an experimental director when he made his best work. 2) The films of conceptual directors are more highly regarded than those of experimental directors.

Does that mean conceptual artists are better than experimental ones? Galenson and Kotin don't think so. It's more likely that we have failed to properly value the work of those who strive to refine their craft later on in life.