Don't Forget About 'TFIOS' Director Josh Boone

Depending on how one first discovered The Fault in Our Stars , the movie is known by many different names: "the John Green movie;" "the Shailene Woodley/dude from Divergent movie;" even, to a select few film nerds, "the movie by the guys who wrote The Spectacular Now and (500) Days of Summer." Almost never, however, does anyone refer to TFIOS as "the Josh Boone movie," despite Boone being its director. Apparently, in all our excitement over seeing Green, Woodley and others help bring the beloved book to life, we've forgotten all about the guy who is perhaps most responsible of all of them for making it all happen.

Typically, when a director gets ignored in favor of his/her movie's stars (and in Fault's case, John Green could easily be considered a star), it's because the studio wants to hide his/her involvement in the film. Take 2012's After Earth, for example, a "Will Smith movie" directed by the much-maligned M. Night Shyamalan, but because of Columbia's efforts to remove the director's association with the film, many viewers didn't even realize he was involved until the credits began to roll. Yet for Fault, this is not the case; Boone, known previously for 2012's Stuck in Love, has faced no Shyamalan-like criticism in his short career, and there's no reason he shouldn't get just as much credit for making the film come to life as Woodley or Green.

Yet whenever we talk about the movie, Boone's name is hardly mentioned, save for a quick note wedged into the body of an article. The snub is not purposeful; there's no legitimate reason to ignore Boone. The only excuse is that the creator of his movie's source material and TFIOS' leading actors are simply more famous than he is, and with cult followings greater than that of practically any director, let alone one as new to the scene as Boone.

Still, ignoring Boone's contributions to the movie is doing him a huge disservice. As solid as its writing and acting are, TFIOS would not be nearly as successful as it is without the involvement of a good director. Thanks in large part to Boone, the movie achieves the impressive feat of being as satisfying as the book it's based on; it's perfectly plotted, naturally paced, and hugely moving. Credit must be given to the strength of the source material and the actors who embody Green's characters, of course, but without Boone's lead, TFIOS wouldn't even come close to being the wonderful, affecting adaptation it is.

Luckily, TFIOS' critical and financial success should propel the careers of all who were involved with its creation, especially its director. Since being announced as the movie's filmmaker, Boone has signed on to direct two more high-profile films, The Stand with Fault star Nat Wolff and Pretenders with Michael B. Jordan. While neither movie will likely achieve TFIOS-like publicity (really, can any movie do that?), they both could easily be huge in their own rights, and raise Boone's visibility as a director. Let's hope they do; TFIOS may be the "John Green movie" right now, but perhaps a few years down the line, we'll look back at June 2014 as the month when the first big Josh Boone movie finally hit theaters.