> There's this Illusion in public that what the public sees is the directors initial vision. But largely it's the work of hundreds of people, morphing over time to try and find what will be right.
Critics can have this illusion, too: Auteur theory posits that films have an author, that author being the director, and you can see that director's style manifest in the films they make. Sometimes, sure, this is obvious: Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino... they all made or make films with a distinctive stamp on them.
Where this theory runs aground is where your comment comes in, filmmaking as a collaborative process. Citizen Kane was, for example, definitely a collaboration among at least three people: Welles, Mankiewicz, and Toland, the director, screenwriter, and cinematographer, respectively. They each contributed to the film as a finished product, a thing of words and images.
And then there's the failure of the auteur: Ed Wood, Tommy Wiseau, people who had creative control through working outside the Hollywood system and, frankly, blew it. Plan 9 From Outer Space might be the Citizen Kane of laughably bad science fiction films, but it's not the Citizen Kane of films. To make a baseball analogy, Wood tried hard, had plenty of heart, got up there, swung for the fences... and spun around like a top a few times before landing flat on his face, never even whiffing the ball. There's a reason Burton made a sensitive film about him and his efforts.
I think one of the most noticeable examples of this is the original Star Wars trilogy versus the prequels. With the original trilogy, people were constantly telling George Lucas that an idea was dumb, or that he should tweak or change something, remove characters, etc. Marcia Lucas, his now ex-wife, won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing in the 70s, and edited the original Star Wars trilogies.
However, twenty years later when the legendary Lucas walked out on set with the script for Episode 1, he was met with raucous applause, after all this was THE George Lucas, he could do no wrong. Not having anyone to point out that your ideas aren’t good is what gets us the Star Wars prequels and their ponderous, meandering political plot lines and lameness.
Hey, I thought Episode 1 was good. It was the only prequel that could stand on its own as a complete story. The others were "Oops, I forgot to plan this out better so let's just add a ton of fighting and action to hide that fact".
I really enjoyed Episode 1 when it came out, but it has some seriously... err.. controversial things, starting with the whole midichlorian thing and finishing with the over choreographed lightsaber fights[0].
The "Lucas can do no wrong" feels pretty present there too.
I forget where I read this but... A lot of mediocre or even actively bad filmmaking out there involves people mostly going through the motions for a check. Wood, by all accounts, was genuinely passionate about making movies. He and his cast of associates just were really bad at it.
Critics can have this illusion, too: Auteur theory posits that films have an author, that author being the director, and you can see that director's style manifest in the films they make. Sometimes, sure, this is obvious: Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino... they all made or make films with a distinctive stamp on them.
Where this theory runs aground is where your comment comes in, filmmaking as a collaborative process. Citizen Kane was, for example, definitely a collaboration among at least three people: Welles, Mankiewicz, and Toland, the director, screenwriter, and cinematographer, respectively. They each contributed to the film as a finished product, a thing of words and images.
And then there's the failure of the auteur: Ed Wood, Tommy Wiseau, people who had creative control through working outside the Hollywood system and, frankly, blew it. Plan 9 From Outer Space might be the Citizen Kane of laughably bad science fiction films, but it's not the Citizen Kane of films. To make a baseball analogy, Wood tried hard, had plenty of heart, got up there, swung for the fences... and spun around like a top a few times before landing flat on his face, never even whiffing the ball. There's a reason Burton made a sensitive film about him and his efforts.