20 directors who hate their own films Highball – Noah Baumbach

Noah Baumbach is now a beloved indie filmmaker (thanks to The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha, and The Meyerowitz Stories). Yet he was not always an acclaimed director. Baumbach despised his second film, Highball, so much that his directing credit was changed to Ernie Fusco and his writer’s one to Jesse Carter. “It was just too ambitious,” he said of the film, which concerns a newly married couple who end up inviting too many people to their Brooklyn flat for a party. “We didn't have enough time, we didn't finish it, it didn't look good, it was just a whole ... mess. We couldn't get it done, and I had a falling out with the producer. He abandoned it, and I had no money to finish it, to go back and maybe get two more days or something. Then later, it was put out on DVD without my approval.”