Film's great directors circled up and talked about their craft

Everyone has probably imagined a fictional conversation between history's greatest leaders, thinkers, or artists. It's a classic hypothetical situation, but unless you're in a science fiction story, you can't assemble centuries of historical figures together. Film is still a young medium, though, and many of the greatest filmmakers are still active. That meeting-of-the-minds can actually happen, and The Hollywood Reporter did it.

In the above video, THR's Stephen Galloway presides over an hour-long roundtable discussion with some of the best working directors, including Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino. Their conversation zigzags across tons of issues in film, from working within studios to the lowest points in their careers. Perhaps the most interesting point of discussion is what Alejandro González Iñárritu calls the disappearance of "middle-class films" that sit halfway between micro-budget indies and blockbusters.

It certainly helped that all these filmmakers had films with skin in the awards circuit, but gathering them for an hour to muse on the state of the film industry is an absolute treat.