It’s fun to think about the path not travelled, and with so many of our guests agonising over their choice of filmmaker, we decided to ask them who they might have chosen if circumstances were different. In some cases, it’s their second choice, and in others it’s a first choice that someone else got to before them. Here, in chronological order (and mostly complete) is what Hell Is for Hyphenates might have looked like in an alternate universe:
Thomas Caldwell: David Lynch
Tim Egan: Terry Gilliam
Shannon Marinko: Milos Forman
Richard Gray (filmmaker): Coen Bros
Rochelle Siemienowicz: Gillian Armstrong
Luke Buckmaster: Alfred Hitchcock
Tara Judah: Claude Chabrol
Rob Ruminski: Carlos Reygadas
Josh Nelson: Martin Scorsese
Kate McCurdy: Werner Herzog
Sarah Ward: Wes Anderson
Anthony Morris: David Mamet
Guy Davis: Abel Ferrara
Simon Miraudo: Dario Argento
Sue Maslin: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Christos Tsiolkas: Claude Chabrol
Glenn Dunks: Derek Jarman
Jon Hewitt: Brian De Palma
Myke Bartlett: Billy Wilder
Richard Gray (critic): Woody Allen
Melanie Coombs: Chris Meledandri
Marc Fennell: Wes Anderson
Jon Bennett: Russ Meyer
Cerise Howard: Guy Maddin
C Robert Cargill: Tony Scott
John Richards: Terry Gilliam
Alice Tynan: Wes Anderson
Perri Cummings: Lars von Trier
Mathieu Ravier: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Geraldine Quinn: The Maysles Brothers
Richard Haridy: Brian De Palma
George Viscas: Ken Russell
Victoria Thaine: Stephen Frears
Cate Wolfe: Bernado Bertulucci
Jeremy Smith: Walter Hill
Brian Trenchard-Smith: Alfred Hitchcock
Angela Meyer: Wes Anderson
Kristy Best: Clint Eastwood
Giles Hardie: Baz Luhrmann
Tegan Higginbotham: Richard Curtis
Chris Taylor: Peter Weir
Julia Zemiro: Susanne Bier
Mel Campbell: James Cameron
Ian Barr: The Dardenne Brothers
Stephanie Bendixsen: Tim Burton
Zak Hepburn: Ken Russell
Drew McWeeny: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Sarah Caldwell: Fritz Lang
Michael Altman: Steven Spielberg
Lexi Alexander: Rod Lurie
Joe Swanberg: Elaine May
Lynn Shelton: Hal Ashby
Hayley Inch: Bong Joon-ho
Mark Hartley: Michael Winner
Richard Watts: Derek Jarman
Jess Lomas: Busby Berkeley
Desiree Akhavan: Catherine Breillat
Pollyanna McIntosh: Sidney Lumet
Sophie Hyde: Spike Jonze
Mark Protosevich: John Frankenheimer
Thomas Caldwell: Stanley Kubrick
Philippa Hawker: David Cronenberg
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas: Abel Ferrara
Paul Anthony Nelson: Stanley Kubrick
Blake Howard: Abbas Kiarostami
Tom Clift: Christopher Nolan
Garth Franklin: Xavier Dolan
Laura Mulvey: Rakshan Bani-Etemad
Martyn Pedler: Kathryn Bigelow
Alice Lowe: David Lynch
Maria Lewis: Wes Craven
Rebecca Harkins-Cross: Catherine Breillat
Kriv Stenders: George Miller
Alicia Malone: David Fincher
Rhys Muldoon: Coen Bros
Jocelyn Moorhouse: Robert Altman
Rohan Spong: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Rebecca O’Brien: Stanley Kubrick
Tina Hassannia: Maren Ade
Jennifer Reeder: Kelly Reichardt
Scott Weinberg: Guillermo Del Toro
Neil Marshall: John Carpenter
C Robert Cargill: Lorene Scafaria
Britt Hayes: Sofia Coppola
Michael Ian Black: Coen Bros
Adam Elliot: Jan Svankmajer
Emma Westwood: Roger Vadim
Eloise Ross: Dorothy Arzner
Andrew Kevin Walker: Michael Mann
Noah Segan: John Sayles
Ming-Zhu Hii: Michael Haneke
Abe Forsythe: Peter Jackson
Alex Ross Perry: Michael Mann
Corrie Chen: Sarah Polley
Daina Reid: Kathryn Bigelow
Greg McLean: Steven Spielberg
Scott Derrickson: Akira Kurosawa
Briony Kidd: Jennifer Lynch
Cassandra Magrath: Tom Ford
Stephen A Russell: Celine Sciamma
David Caesar: Zhang Yimou
Rhys Graham: Claire Denis
Nicole Holofcener: Martin Ritt