If tomorrow's new release Mama— in which two adopted children are beset by a malevolent creature they call Mama — sounds familiar, it may be because you first encountered the film in its original three-minute short form when it was released in 2008 (You can watch that below).
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On the strength of the three-minute version, Guillermo del Toro (of Pan's Labyrinth fame) tapped director Andres Muschietti to expand the short into a full-length film of the same name. But Muschietti is hardly the first director to cut his teeth on self-produced shorts before moving up to a big directing gig.
Here, 12 early short films by famous Hollywood directors.
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)
Directed by: Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, The Departed, Hugo)
As an NYU film student, Martin Scorsese made a series of well-received short films — including The Big Shave, a darkly satirical indictment of the Vietnam War — but the most accessible is this briskly paced short, which tells the story of a man who becomes obsessed with a picture on his wall.
Six Men Getting Sick (1966)
Directed by: David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire)
David Lynch's unsettling style, a trademark of his mature work, first made its appearance in a number of early short films — but none more so than Six Men Getting Sick, which is more or less what it sounds like.
Vincent (1982)
Directed by: Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, Frankenweenie)
Like David Lynch, Tim Burton seems to have emerged as a filmmaker fully formed in his early work. Vincent is a beautifully executed, delightfully twisted stop-motion short that gleefully pays homage to the classic horror films that has inspired so much of Burton's oeuvre.
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