4. Sir David Lean (Liked Dragging His Cast And Crew Out To The Middle Of Nowhere)
What is it with film directors and far distant locations? It seems like film history is full of great filmmakers who delighted in taking their cast and crew to the harshest places on Earth, and demanding that they perform miracles. David Lean was no exception. Moving up from editor to director in the 1940s, David Lean produced some of Britain's most acclaimed films, adaptations of classic Dickens novels or intimate dramas set in modern England. Then in the late 1950s producer Sam Spiegel asked Lean to helm The Bridge on the River Kwai, to be shot largely on location in Burma; and from that point on, it seems as though Sir David developed a veritable fever for working on difficult locations. Undoubtedly the most famous of all Lean's filmmaking ventures was the production of his masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia. Shot mostly in Jordan, with a move near the end of the schedule to Spain, Lawrence of Arabia's shoot stretched out over one full year, in absolutely blistering heat and the harshest possible conditions. The only person not completely miserable? Lean himself - according to some members of the crew, Lean so fell in love with the desert locations that if producer Spiegel hadn't more or less pulled the plug on the budget, they'd probably
still be out in the Jordan desert shooting Lawrence of Arabia. Of course, Lean was hardly the first person to insist upon shooting on location...