Who is the coolest director?

Hmmmmmmm........I'm not a real fan of "coolest" in anything - usually I just go "best"....coolness takes care of itself.......certainly not "cool" actors which I think of as like "people who win all the time" ....Tom Cruise or something - ie he wasn't ever - EVER - cool to me ......it's essentially the Punk Rock mindset .......I like fnckups ...in every thing....

Now I love Hitchcock - but he was so hemmed in by his era(s) that for a looooooooong time he now seems corny.... he isn't corny - he broke the mold....... but he's The Beatles of what he did .........The Beatles aren't the "coolest" band (love them too):

EVERY suspense scene - every SCENE takes some element from Hitchcock in some way (music, camera angles, how he builds suspense, some unique touch) whether it intentionally means too or not (the same way you follow a Beatles formula for a hit Pop/Rock song .......whether you realize it, or care, or not)......that makes both influential.......but "cool" (and best) is Polanski

After a certain point he realized as a director he had the ability to push audiences into this "cool" grey area and mess with them a lot - where he could use sex much more overtly than anyone had prior (because he was allowed to in the 60s), psychology - he didn't invent this but put it in English language films big time - and tie it into written narratives of suspense with violence and horror in a way no one had - he claimed this "new" territory.

Part of that is because he worked often with a great collaborator Gerard Brach his version of Hitchcock's wife Alma - who pushed this idea into his head about how far could he actually go? - ie "Roman, if we show this, what will the audience think and where can we take them then?"

The Hitchcock arguments are always too simple:

That his films "hold up" because of his limitations - ie "less was more" ......I say that's not really true often times (sometimes it was though) - he wanted to go further - where "more is more"

Hitchcock would never do this scene - never - I'm not sure he'd even understand why it exists - who is the hero? who is the villain? .....and while that's fine, different eras after all - there's no scene at all that Polanski couldn't do or find some way to make it appear "cooler" in its aesthetics......he's the best........ and the coolest because he's the best.....

Well....... I'm sure Melville and Godard can both be interpreted as cool, so cool definitely can equate to best.   Where, I'm not sure if you can call Bergman cool, but he had those very gloomy European settings with his brooding contemplations of death and the best cinematographer working with him, so whatever he did obviously worked in his own way.

Yes, I believe Polanski must've been pretty cool in the late 60s and early 70s.   Cinema was changing, I guess.   Different ideas and standards.

And yeah.... Hitchcock's era had inherent limitations.   I don't know if you can call him breaking the mold, but he was obviously doing some really cool stuff at the time which is central to my thread.   Hollywood had the usual romantic comedies and Christian themed films, and Hitchcock obviously was pretty cool compared to those so obviously his appeal is pretty apparent.   The Beatles seem mostly like simple pop tunes to me but obviously considered pretty alternative at the time.   Did The Beatles create a revolution?   Clearly.

MsMovieStar - Good call with Bunuel.   The Phantom of Liberty and The Discreet Charm are definitely pretty cool - the stuff that he was doing was not attempted or even known how to be done by many people during his time so I think his coolness definitely stands out.

Directors aren't cool, so I choose the one who fucked, with consent, more beautiful women.-
That aren't of course Adult Film Directors.-

Sam Peckinpah

John Carpenter
Paul Verhoeven
William Friedkin

Wong Kar-wai.

John Huston seemed pretty cool just as an individual,  though "cool" seems a pretty nebulous and subjective descriptor for any director.

Seijun Suzuki is my definition of the word "cool".

Edit: Hal Ashby and Guy Maddin also come to mind.  Altman in the 70s too.

No one has mentioned Takashi Miike yet. I mean he is one of the few filmmakers I can think of that always gets big budgets (for the standards of the Japanese industry anyway) and is allowed to do whatever the fuck he likes with them. Who else can claim that? Also, I also don't think that any other director trolls his audience as effectively and imperviously as he does (just look at Gozu or Yakuza Apocalypse for instance). His films don't always work, but he doesn't give a fuck about what the industry, critics or audiences think, he just does whatever he feels like doing. Very cool director if you ask me.