The Top Five Steves

5 - George Stevens

4 - Stephen King

3 - Steve Martin

2 - Steve McQueen

1 - Steven Spielberg

This category turned out to be more difficult than I think anyone would've believed. Steve is such a common name, and - no offense to any Steves who might be reading this - apparently, it's a name meant for common achievement, more often than not. Think about it: No Presidents are named Steve, only four guys named Steve have ever won MVP awards in the NFL, NBA, or Major League Baseball...and only one of those was before 1990, and we actually had to go with Steve as a last name to fill out our Top Five.

Them's the breaks, I guess.

Here are some of the Steves that didn't make our list: Steve Buscemi, Steve Guttenberg (seriously), Stephen Soderbergh, Steve Carell, Stephen Baldwin, Steve Zahn, Stephen Tobolowski (!), Stephen Colbert, Steven Culp, Stephen Dorff (I love his golf videos...but no), and the one and only Steven Seagal.

Ouch.

So what separates these five? Well, it should be obvious. The name least known here is definitely George Stevens, our number five selection. But he directed a great many legendary films, from Giant to Shane to A Place in the Sun to The Diary of Anne Frank to The Greatest Story Ever Told. Yes sir, that's variety.

I couldn't put Stephen King much higher than number four because he hasn't done much in film. Oh sure, his contribution is enormous, but Pet Semetary, Silver Bullet, and Sleep Walkers are his only real credits as a screenwriter, outside of a few TV credits here and there. So, yeah, movies would be far different without him...but I'll take Frank Darabont's Shawshank screenplay anytime.

The top three were on just about every list we received. Steve Martin, despite what you may think of his output these days - and my opinion is very, very low - there was a good ten years there where he was making some of the best movies of any comedian in Hollywood. From The Jerk to Parenthood, with The Man with Two Brains, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, All of Me, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Roxanne sandwiched in between, he built a formidable decade.

I can't fathom what went wrong in his career, though. It's just sad now.

Steve McQueen is Steve McQueen. I don't think I need to elaborate, do I?

As for Mr. Spielberg, look, you could argue that only a handful of people at any point in history have had a bigger influence on motion pictures than the most profitable director of all time. Certainly, if we're limiting it to creative artists, that list is maybe, what, three? Maybe?

He invented the summer blockbuster, he's made tremendous popcorn movies, very serious and introspective films, and works faster and more often than just about anyone else I can think of. Even if you eliminated his five best films, he still would've directed Jaws, The Color Purple, Munich, Jurassic Park, and Minority Report. That's nothing to sneeze at.

If you think you could sneeze at it, pick any other director and chop out his or her five best movies and see what you're left with. Quentin Tarantino would only have Death Proof and Francis Coppola would lose two Godfathers plus The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and The Outsiders. Uh-huh. Thought so.