director v. writer

I always assumed the reason "X-Men 3" sucked so hard was that Brett Ratner is a terrible director. In fact when any movie is bad I tend to blame it primarily on the director, and when a movie is great, I want to find out who the writer is, tout de suite.

Of course, it's not that easy. The guy who wrote the abominable "X-Men 3" is responsible for other bad films, but he also wrote "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," which I loved. But did I love the movie for the story and dialogue, or because Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have amazing chemistry? How many rewrites, and by whom, did each of these scripts go through? What did the director add and what did he cut? These are critical questions and sometimes it's hard to tell whose work is shining and whose is lackluster because the film medium is so, SO collaborative.

Television, in this respect, is far different because the writers are also the showrunners and producers. They exercise great amounts of creative control and you can tell, over the course of the season, or a series, what the writers are doing and what everyone else is doing.

Still, would "How I Met Your Mother" still be on the air if Barney had been cast differently? Would "Friends" have lasted as long had someone other than Matthew Perry been cast as Chandler? Would television be a far lesser place without the likes of Jeremy Podeswa, Rodrigo Garcia and Jack Bender? Most certainly.

That's it. Just thinking out loud.