I had the good fortune to study the films (made and unmade) of Stanley Kubrick for a semester in college. If ever a filmmaker embodied the hacker spirit it was Kubrick - he taught himself still photography, dropped out of high school to successfully pursue the career, hustled chess, bootstrapped his first film, licensed the rights to a book, put together a round of funding, and built a career in Hollywood. Then left Hollywood and the U.S. and took huge chances with his career to pursue his art, hack innovative tech for his films, and change the history of cinema. Many years after college, I'm still inspired by Kubrick's life. But man was Eyes Wide Shut a clunker.
Well, you're not actually describing a 'hacker' - you're describing an entrepeneur. But, yes, he was a lot more technically invested than a lot of other auteurs. I recommend the documentary 'Stanley Kubrick: a life in pictures' to anybody interested in living life on their own terms. Very inspiring.
Oh, and I find 'Eyes Wide Shut' to be a woefully mistunderstood and underated gem. I'd rate it second to 'Barry Lyndon' in the Kubrick oeuvr. A lot of his other films (Shining, 2001, Clockwork) I found to be technically marvelous but mishandled in terms of storytelling.
"Eyes Wide Shut" is a masterpiece but also a very difficult film to understand. Even at its very slow pace it is too much to understand in one viewing. I paticularly love all the incidents that tangential to the main plot: the drug overdose, encounter with a streetwalker, and costume shop daughter's perversions. Great stuff.
If a film maker could be described as a hacker, it is Kubrick without a doubt, in my view. There is just a weird multiple layered thing going on that you appreciate after multiple viewings.
