Micha Shagrir lived a few doors down from Eichmann and all you got was this lousy documentary

Directors are not heroes. In fact, they're closer to Hitler and Eichmann, in terms of career choice, than anyone else. What directors basically do is force a vision of the world onto a series of people they need, and who need them reciprocally, to make a film. That vision is that the pending film will be provocative, artistic, "have a message," and above all, be profitable. Films are generally a terrible investment, and the people who do drop money into them are either hardened chess-players with a taste for human flesh or misguided millionaires who want cultural currency and also to be lied to. Of course, getting money out of the latter is basically like conning grandparents out of their pension. Directors [of every echelon, no matter what they say,] start their vampirism here, and then begin planning the film. No one -- actors, designers, crew, sound, f/x, underlings -- care about the film. they'll do a good job, but they'll also take their money and go home when the guild says they're done. No, instead, they care about themselves, their careers, which are ego-driven and in a constant state of flux. So what a director does is split up his plan for the film and convince each group to do not only what is expected of them, but as much more as possible. This is hard at first, squeezing blood from a stone, but then the fangs grow. The days are 20 hours long, you are alone with your script and your vision, and you soon realize that you have to do whatever works just to get through each painful step of the procedure -- whatever it takes. You lie, you cajole, you manipulate, you threaten, you overrule, so long as the dailies are tolerable and the studio ignores you. When it's all over and you're watching the final edit in a room that smells half like death and half like your body odor, it's a complete anticlimax, and you'll either never do it again or get a little hollower and start over.

What kind of moral or ethical high ground can a director take? It's like being an actor, but 100 times more disingenuous. You make films about persecution to make yourself famous, not to raise "people's awareness" or whatever the fuck. Films don't raise awareness. They are condoms. They kill ardor, dulling it like morphine. They feel so you don't have to -- or, more accurately, so you feel for an hour and then go on with your life. Maybe you would observe that Shagrir is more of a producer than a director? Mmm, that means he does all of the above, but just less of the actual work, and more of the actual money-amassing -- this time, from the German guilt market. I'm not impressed. This "no killings" rigamarole just lets him sleep a little easier at night, on top of his piles of money.