What makes this person so great?

I'm always amused when I hear actors talking about movie directors. They fall all over themselves trying to describe how great they are, how great their vision was and how easy they are to work with. Mostly, these directors are over rated. When I worked on the set of Ask The Dust, the director, Robert Towne, seemed like a complete toss.

He sat around all day smoking cigars, walking around with his crutch, and just being lazy. He would get up to move to his next position, and just leave his briefcase and everything where it was. It was expected, and known, that someone else would carry it for him. I don't care how rich you are, how respected you are, but you should always have a degree of decency and manners. Never once did I see him say thanks to anyone for carrying his stuff. What a tool.

All the other people on the set were great, except for the lighting guy who seemed to think that he was God's gift to the film industry. Hell, even Colin Farrell was pretty chilled out, if he had his smokes and coffee.

Now onto the topic, Annie Leibovitz(Photo above), described in the August-September 2004 GQ as "One of the greatest portrait photographers of our time" Now I am in no way a photography expert, but what is the difference between her photos and another top photographers? Do we not sometimes get caught up in the hype of these people? Do they not themselves turn into celebrities? I have seen some of Annie Leibovitz's work, and yeah I suppose it is good, but I still don't see the hype. Often such hype is created by these people, we fell the need to honour them, but we don't know exactly why.

Martin Scorsese is looking for an Oscar win this year for The Departed. Sure, he is probably a good director, but more so than anyone else? I don't believe so. It's just that such hype has been created about him for not winning an Oscar, that actors feel they need to praise him heavily because they know that sooner or later, in Hollywood, he will win. Maybe that's why they want to work with him, because they know he is always working ultra hard at making an Oscar winner, and maybe they want to be part of the Oscar phenomenon, rather than the Martin Scorsese phenomenon.

Same goes for artists. In the GQ of January/February 2007, under "50 things a man does not have to do before he dies" is a piece on the Mona Lisa. They say that the painting is unremarkable. And they say if you had not heard the hype about it, you would not be in the slightest way impressed by it. As they say:

Sure, her eyes follow you around the room, but then so do those of the prostitutes on Sea Point Main Road.

The point is, the hype about these people often consumes us, and we are like a bunch of sheep who just follow each other saying "Shit, that person is good"

But if we stop and ask ourselves "What exactly makes this person so good at what they do?" We may be stuck for an answer because we don't exactly know.

But we can always just say "Because GQ said so..."