A Fistful of Dollars

Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre. Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His movies include The Last Days of Pompeii, The Colossus of Rhodes, the Dollars... Trilogy , Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America. Born in Rome, Leone was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone and the silent film actress Edvige Valcarenghi . During his schooldays, Leone was a classmate of his later musical collaborator Ennio Morricone for a time. After watching his father work on film sets, Leone began his own career in the film industry at the age of 18 after dropping out of law studies at the university. Working in Italian cinematography, he began as an assistant to Vittorio de Sica during the movie Bicycle Thieves in 1948.
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Monte Hellman is an American film director, producer, and film editor. Hellman is among a group of directing talent mentored by Roger Corman, who produced several of the director's early films. Hellman's most critically acclaimed film to date has been Two-Lane Blacktop , a road movie that was a... box office failure at the time of its initial release but has subsequently turned into a perennial cult favorite. Hellman's two acid westerns starring Jack Nicholson, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting, both shot in 1965 and released directly to television in 1968, have also developed cult followings, particularly the latter. A third western, China 9, Liberty 37 , was far less successful critically, although it too has its admirers, as do Cockfighter and Iguana . In 1989 he directed the straight-to-video slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!. Monte Hellman other credits: He was the dialogue director for Corman's The St. Valentine's Day Massacre .
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