10 Insane Ways Directors Appeared In Their Own Movies

Sergio Leone spaghetti western For A Few Dollars More (AKA the movie that turned bounty hunter from the scuzziest of lowlifes into one of the all-time cool movie jobs) opens in classic Leone fashion.

There's an extreme wide-angle static long shot which holds for around a minute on the landscape of the Texan desert (actually shot just outside Almería in southern Spain). From the distance the tiny figure of a rider on horseback slowly approaches. We hear the sounds of whistling and the cocking of a gun. Then - bang! - a shot rings out, the distant rider drops dead and the title credits roll.

The movie was made without recording dialogue, it was all dubbed in later given the international nature of the cast, but Leone had composer Ennio Morricone write much of the film's score in advance, so that he could shoot the movie to fit with it.

Morricone's score make repeated use of the motif of ominous whistling, so of course Leone had to make sure that opening whistle was just how he wanted it. That's why the whistling sounds come from none other than the director himself.

Sure, other directors have hidden themselves within their own movies by just giving off-screen voiceover. It takes something extra, though to begin your film with a minute of your own sinister whistling and a largely static long shot.