MY FIRST MOVIE

It's a great idea: Round up 20 established directors and grill them on just how inexperienced and insanely lucky they were on their first film. For the most part, Lowenstein, a sometime film maker of shorts, works the premise well. He gets Ang Lee to open up about how Pushing Hands grew out of a Taiwanese-government-sponsored script contest (first prize: $16,000), which a friend happened to see advertised in Paris, of all places. Joel and Ethan Coen confess they spent so much time milking small-time Minneapolis investors to fund Blood Simple that it inspired them to fictionalize the type in Fargo. There's dish galore from Kevin Smith, Oliver Stone, and Anthony Minghella, too, and if the Q&A follow-up is sometimes scattershot, the best tales are don't-miss stuff. B+