I've always thought writers, cinematographers, and the lead actors themselves had a bigger part in the quality of the finished product. What do you guys think? Granted, I don't know much of the details about the filmmaking process, so I could be totally wrong in my assumptions, but uh...yeah, discuss.

Personally I find directors to be undercredited and lead actors to often be overcredited.

Director's are pretty fucking important. The rest of the people are like specialized tools to be used. The Director of Photography may have more technical knowledge but it is ultimately the director's vision. This argument has been made before though.

watch a movie with a shitty, by the book director (like anything david schwimmer has done) and youll realize the importance of the director to the film...

Personally I find directors to be undercredited and lead actors to often be overcredited.

Yes..

Cinematographers def deserve more credit than they get, a director shows a storyboard or tells how he wants a shot to look and the cinematographer is most times the one who gets the shot, frames it and translates the directors vision to the camera.
Without a good director though, a great property can be turned to shit. Put Uwe Boll on Dark Knight instead of Nolan and i guarantee that film would tank.

I had some pretentious and verbose response typed out but while going over it in my head I realized the "answer" was simple; I don't know.

Auteurs like Wilder and Tarantino wrote as well directed a number of their films, but they were also fond of using the same actors as well (Jack Lennon, Fred MacMurray and Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel respectively) because they were great for their style of film-making.

People have been arguing back-and-forth about this for decades and so far no one's found the correct "answer". It's all a matter of personal opinion (and god damn do film critics have opinions) and how you gauge the work put into a film.

I would say hell yea. I have seen all of Mel Brooks' and Peter Jackson's movies and liked them all and I don't think that is a coincidence.

I had some pretentious and verbose response typed out but while going over it in my head I realized the "answer" was simple; I don't know.

Auteurs like Wilder and Tarantino wrote as well directed a number of their films, but they were also fond of using the same actors as well (Jack Lennon, Fred MacMurray and Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel respectively) because they were great for their style of film-making.

People have been arguing back-and-forth about this for decades and so far no one's found the correct "answer". It's all a matter of personal opinion (and god damn do film critics have opinions) and how you gauge the work put into a film.

Yeah, that's why I gave the little disclaimer at the end of my post. :p

I mean, obviously directors have a large role (somebody's vision would end up getting to the screen, whether there was an official director or not), but I always felt like they might be getting too much credit when the movie is regarded as "theirs". Then again, it surely depends on the director, the cast, and the actual movie being made. If you were directing Robert De Niro in his hey-day, I would expect that you would mostly let him do his own thing.

Shrug.

it's sorta like, football coaches get a lot of credit if they win and blame if they lose, they are the head of the snake. it's definitely a collaborative effort but no one is more important and in more control than the director.

Put Uwe Boll on Dark Knight instead of Nolan and i guarantee that film would tank.

Put any director on that movie and a billion people would still see it because holyshit dead actor.

I'm the boring "the answer is somewhere in between" person. A director definitely puts their own stamp on a film and has to come up with some ideas and solutions (if they're any good). They should have a lot of work to do.. If they didn't do the shit then someone else would have to. But yeah they are not usually the most important part of the process or even anywhere close, atleast to the viewer's eyes. Cinematography is overlooked, and writing to a lesser extent.

Every organized situation needs a "that guy". In the US Government, the President is that guy, in film the director is that guy. Everyone loves to talk about that guy and overlook the other guys that really make the thing run.

Writers deserve a lot more credit, without them there would be no film to start with, not even an idea for a film.

directors get enough credit i reckon. they have to turn their imagination into reality.

Depends. There is a difference between a auteur and just a technician. A auteur takes a script and then, in the film making process, adds something (a theme, a motif, a principle, a style) that wasn't there to begin with. A technician director will just reproduce a script into film. Therefore they cannot take a mediocre script and turn it into an excellent film. An auteur can do this. A technician is a cog in a machine that understands the nuts and bolts of shooting and producing film. They will often know what a studio requests of them and reproduce it on budget and on schedule.
An auteur will bring their own vision with them, adds an artistic element. The first auteurs were the likes of Howard Hawks, Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Orsen Welles, etc. There were recognized by cashue de cinema as the first great film makers that over came the studio system to add their own aesthetics.
Modern auteurs would be the likes of Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson (Paul W.S Anderson is the perfect example of a technician director) and Clint Eastwood.

However what must be realised that all directors (no matter what level) work ridiculously hard often working 18 hour days for a few months but also get huge amounts of credit within the film community. Critically, only auteurs are seriously looked at, but from a studio point of view, a technician is just as valuable if they can bring in a film on budget, on time and will make a profit. Directors don't care if people talk about actors more than them. Within the film community they are infinitely more respected. To the public only the actors are.

Filmmaking is a collaborative effort, but the director is the one person who can be said to have a hand in every part of the creative process. Cinematographers, writers, actors, set designers, lighting technicians, etc all certainly have some influence, but it is the director who ties all these disparate elements together and ultimately has the final say on any given aspect of a film. His role has been increasingly restricted in commercial film over the past quarter-century, but he still runs the show.

zumtream's post is accurate (although I wouldn't consider Spielberg an auteur in the same sense as the other directors you listed) and I agree with the distinction between auteurs and "technician directors", the latter being much more prevalent in both early film history and current Hollywood. As his post touches upon, directors weren't considered very important until the Cahiers du Cinema writers of the '50s (who included Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, and other important French New Wave auteurs) began looking at certain American films as being more the expression of a director's personal vision rather than simply a product of the Hollywood assembly line.

I think actors generally are only as good as their director, except when you have a director who relies heavily on improvisation (i.e. Robert Altman, Mike Leigh, John Cassavetes). Look at Dennis Hopper for example, who usually plays villains. He's been in a million Hollywood films with mediocre directors and 9 times out of 10 just ended up giving a run-of-the-mill bad guy performance. Then look at Blue Velvet where he was directed by the great David Lynch -- one of the most memorable villain roles in film history. Ask any film buff to name their top 10 villains and Frank Booth will appear somewhere on the list. Dennis Hopper is a talented guy (as proven by the films he directed himself, namely Easy Rider and Out of the Blue, in both of which he gave amazing performances) but he sucks when he's restricted and typecast by crappy "technician directors."

Writers are overrated. The vast majority of scripts are necessarily bare-bones -- they have to allow the director and cinematographers room for interpretation. Notice how most book adaptations end up sucking -- and it's not just because people have high expectations for adaptations of books they love, since usually the best adaptations are the ones that veer the farthest from the source material. Film is of course first and foremost a visual form -- scenes in scripts and novels do not easily translate to the screen. A great script can be restrictive and oppressive, giving directors and actors a preconceived idea of what a film is supposed to be, killing spontaneity and genuine emotion.

Cinematographers are definitely important, and I think they're totally underrated by most moviegoers. But again, the cinematographer is usually subservient to the director. A cinematographer has control over technique, but his technique is usually based on what the director wants. There's of course a lot of variation in terms of how much say the cinematographer has in the camera work -- Stanley Kubrick, for example, was a total control freak and manipulated nearly every single aspect of how his films were shot, while other directors like Altman and Wong Kar-wai worked with the same cinematographer repeatedly and allowed them a lot of creative control.

Sorry for the long-winded post, I drank a pot of coffee after dinner

Filmmaking is a collaborative effort

I haven't delved too far into the art form of moving picture, but as far as I can judge, it has many similiarties to any art form. I write, sing, produce, whatever....in regarding to music.

What I know is that a one man project and somethin that leans toward the vision of one person, usually doesnt carry the granduer and exptional qualities of somethin that is 1/4, 1/16 1/24 whatever of one person coupled with all others involved. I think some art forms are more personal than others but my opinion as regards to directors and moving pictures is like any other...if you have the right energys the right chemistry with everyone involved, it will turn out great.

Just like a beautiful friendship that clicks, someone you just met, but you feel like you've known them for a long time. The energy is there, it meshes.

"Do Directors Deserve As Much Credit As They Deserve"?...I think your seeing it the wrong way, to be cutting and chopping up the various qualities of a beautiful enjoyable piece of art and assigning those parts to different people and grading how much praise each one deserves...really deafeats the purpose doesnt it?

What really deserves credit is the final outcome, the beauty that comes out of all the hard work of everyone included...just enjoy it. In the end isn't that what any true artist would want us to do?

I haven't delved too far into the art form of moving picture, but as far as I can judge, it has many similiarties to any art form. I write, sing, produce, whatever....in regarding to music.

Yeah it's very similar to other art forms, and largely because it contains and combines other forms. That's partly why I think film is the most important modern art form. Music, literature, painting, etc. all coalesce within film -- you (usually) have the narrative aspect (prose literature), you have the shot composition (painting/other visual art), you have the sound production (music), you have oblique metaphor (poetry), and it's all melded together.


What I know is that a one man project and somethin that leans toward the vision of one person, usually doesnt carry the granduer and exptional qualities of somethin that is 1/4, 1/16 1/24 whatever of one person coupled with all others involved.

I'm not sure why you say this, and I disagree. I tend to be more moved by things which are more the product of someone's personal vision, and when you have the conflicting visions of multiple people, things tend to get diluted and muddled. Like I said, it's a collaborative process, but the director ties things together so that they align with his vision.


I think some art forms are more personal than others but my opinion as regards to directors and moving pictures is like any other...if you have the right energys the right chemistry with everyone involved, it will turn out great.

Is it really like any other? What about creative writing? Rarely do people collaborate on novels or poems, and when they do (i.e. Kerouac/Burroughs "And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks") it's between two people who are already very close, and in filmmaking this is almost never the case. And I'm really just saying that in most of my favorite films there's a sense of authorship, of personal expression. What would happen if you took it to an extreme and everyone had equal say in every aspect of a film, with no director? The assistant cameraman directing the actors on the side, the catering team doctoring the script. That might be interesting, but the final product would be an incoherent mess. There has to be someone helming the cockpit.


"Do Directors Deserve As Much Credit As They Deserve"?...I think your seeing it the wrong way, to be cutting and chopping up the various qualities of a beautiful enjoyable piece of art and assigning those parts to different people and grading how much praise each one deserves...really deafeats the purpose doesnt it?

That's not what I'm trying to do. In the second half of the post, I was just giving my take on DerDrache's opinion: "I've always thought writers, cinematographers, and the lead actors themselves had a bigger part in the quality of the finished product."


What really deserves credit is the final outcome, the beauty that comes out of all the hard work of everyone included...just enjoy it. In the end isn't that what any true artist would want us to do?

Oh, I agree. Robert Altman, who was known for being a very loose, uncontrolling director and once equated making films to building a sandcastle with a bunch of friends, would agree with you as well. But I don't see any contradiction between this and the auteurist approach -- filmmaking may be like building a sandcastle in many ways, but the term "director", as it applies to film, literally means someone who directs the actions of everyone else. Someone might build a turret and someone else might build a moat based on where the turret is and so on, but there has to be some kind of architect, a trusted party who has the big picture in mind, lending form and structure to these different elements. I kind of fucked up that analogy, but hopefully you can see what I'm getting at.

I'm not sure why you say this, and I disagree. I tend to be more moved by things which are more the product of someone's personal vision, and when you have the conflicting visions of multiple people, things tend to get diluted and muddled. Like I said, it's a collaborative process, but the director ties things together so that they align with his vision.

I respect what your saying but as goes with personal taste, people will always disagree...which reflects well what I'm trying to say. I'm more moved by things which are created when you have the conflicts and the disagreements....that leads to tension, but if that tension is balanced and everyone is able to handle it in a mature manner, you get ideas which evolve into beautiful things, many times surpassing the original vision...and thus reaching more people in a more powerful way, does the director play a vital role? Of course, just like when you create music, you will need the production in the end, arrangement...direction, but what is that direction without the other band members? and vice versa. So I guess we agree and diagree, like you said also, it's a collaborative process. What bothers me is when the focus starts to steer towards giving "credit" to someone, instead of just enjoying it as a whole.

There isn't anything wrong with discussing the various awe inspiring parts to a finished piece, and who or what was involved. But when that becomes the focus, it tends to defeat the whole purpose of it, the purpose of creating art isn't to get praise

Is it really like any other? What about creative writing? Rarely do people collaborate on novels or poems, and when they do (i.e. Kerouac/Burroughs "And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks") it's between two people who are already very close, and in filmmaking this is almost never the case. And I'm really just saying that in most of my favorite films there's a sense of authorship, of personal expression. What would happen if you took it to an extreme and everyone had equal say in every aspect of a film, with no director? The assistant cameraman directing the actors on the side, the catering team doctoring the script. That might be interesting, but the final product would be an incoherent mess. There has to be someone helming the cockpit.

Again, I agree and disagree. Yes, there has to be someone "helming the cockpit", and as I said before, some art forms are more personal than others.
In music there are also "novels" or "poems", I like to see those as solo projects, one person recording and playing all instruments, doing the final production and so forth. Even then...there are others to help him or her. My point is, nothing is original, we all take ideas from anyone or anything. We might like to believe sometimes that we came up with something all by ourselves, but that is far from the truth.

That's not what I'm trying to do. In the second half of the post, I was just giving my take on DerDrache's opinion: "I've always thought writers, cinematographers, and the lead actors themselves had a bigger part in the quality of the finished product."

I agree with you. What I'm saying is that to be focusing on giving away credit is a bit silly sometimes, and it seems to creep it's way into many people...I think especially for something like film, which involves so many artists and art forms, it's more enjoyable not dissecting who deserves what credit and just enjoy it.(Of course there is the aspect of royalties and monitary gain, but I'm not an accountant, I just want to watch the movie).

Oh, I agree. Robert Altman, who was known for being a very loose, uncontrolling director and once equated making films to building a sandcastle with a bunch of friends, would agree with you as well. But I don't see any contradiction between this and the auteurist approach -- filmmaking may be like building a sandcastle in many ways, but the term "director", as it applies to film, literally means someone who directs the actions of everyone else. Someone might build a turret and someone else might build a moat based on where the turret is and so on, but there has to be some kind of architect, a trusted party who has the big picture in mind, lending form and structure to these different elements. I kind of fucked up that analogy, but hopefully you can see what I'm getting at.

I see what your saying, and I agree with you on that point. ("there has to be some kind of architect, a trusted party who has the big picture in mind, lending form and structure to these different elements").
I do see what you mean about the "directs actions of everyone else", the director has the final say on the outcome of the film, but wouldn't you agree that everyone else is also directing his actions? Weather a director admits it or not, everyone and everything is influencing him in a certain way. So I think that Robert Altman's analogy to making a sandcastle is a pretty accurate discription. In the end, yes of course....director, cinematographer, actor, everyone deserves recognition, as to how much and who that will go to? They can decide that for themselves, I much rather focus on the art.

Yeah, I agree it shouldn't be the focus. I think we're basically on the same page, with a few differences in our perception of what makes a film. I too think that the art itself should be the focus -- my first and foremost concern when seeing a film is being moved, stimulated, or at least entertained. But I suppose the self-conscious criticality that I developed during college and my brief time in grad school kind of ruined my ability to take art and entertainment at face value (except for music). So I enjoy viewing things somewhat analytically, and tend to look at what the director's doing more than any other technical aspect of a film.

Even if this makes films slightly less immediate and visceral, it can deepen your viewing experience. Take an egomaniacal, perfectionistic director like Kubrick or Terrence Malick. You know that every single aspect of their films is totally intentional, every detail in every scene serves a purpose and has been through a billion takes and lighting adjustments and so on. If you watch, say, 2001 without an eye for this, it can seem pretty boring and confusing. But if you go, "What's he doing here? Why are the human characters so emotionless? Why is the camera work so cold and clinical? Why does the bone turn into a spaceship?" Or in Malick's Days of Heaven -- "Why doesn't he let anyone finish a thought? Why is some of the dialogue inaudible? Why is it called Days of Heaven when it's depressing as hell and largely about betrayal, deception, and people who are doomed?"

Of course there are many cases where there are no questions that matter and you should just sit back and stuff your face with popcorn, but for true auteurs it's just like reading a strange, multi-layered novel -- nobody ever got anything out of Notes from Underground without this kind of mentality, because otherwise you're just reading about some fucked up neurotic asshole and there's not much to learn from that.

That's pretty much why I support the auteurist approach to film. In the majority of "serious" (i.e. not strictly commercial) films, it's the director who makes these sorts of creative decisions. Again, I agree that it would be nothing without the rest of the crew, and the ultimate focus should be on appreciating the work as a whole, but that doesn't mean that it devalues the film to pursue such specific lines of inquiry. If you look through any auteur's oeuvre, you will find the same themes and metaphors and situations cropping up again and again -- from Herzog's quixotic outsiders and bleak absurdity, to Cronenberg's venereal horror and biological determinism, to Bunuel's surrealist satires of religion and the middle class -- and to me it's much more enriching to view things this way.

zumtream's post is accurate (although I wouldn't consider Spielberg an auteur in the same sense as the other directors you listed) and I agree with the distinction between auteurs and "technician directors", the latter being much more prevalent in both early film history and current Hollywood. As his post touches upon, directors weren't considered very important until the Cahiers du Cinema writers of the '50s (who included Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, and other important French New Wave auteurs) began looking at certain American films as being more the expression of a director's personal vision rather than simply a product of the Hollywood assembly line.

I'd certainly consider Spielberg one of the great modern auteurs. He is like Hitchcock, in the way that he quite easily works with a large studio but because of his previous success and reliability to turn in a profit he can lend his personal artistic expressions and themes to even the biggest blockbusters.

I think actors generally are only as good as their director, except when you have a director who relies heavily on improvisation (i.e. Robert Altman, Mike Leigh, John Cassavetes). Look at Dennis Hopper for example, who usually plays villains. He's been in a million Hollywood films with mediocre directors and 9 times out of 10 just ended up giving a run-of-the-mill bad guy performance. Then look at Blue Velvet where he was directed by the great David Lynch -- one of the most memorable villain roles in film history. Ask any film buff to name their top 10 villains and Frank Booth will appear somewhere on the list. Dennis Hopper is a talented guy (as proven by the films he directed himself, namely Easy Rider and Out of the Blue, in both of which he gave amazing performances) but he sucks when he's restricted and typecast by crappy "technician directors."

What about someone like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean? Gore Verbrinski (sp?) is a useless hack that created a film that rolls along with nothing of great interest apart from Depp's amazing performance.

Writers are overrated. The vast majority of scripts are necessarily bare-bones -- they have to allow the director and cinematographers room for interpretation. Notice how most book adaptations end up sucking -- and it's not just because people have high expectations for adaptations of books they love, since usually the best adaptations are the ones that veer the farthest from the source material. Film is of course first and foremost a visual form -- scenes in scripts and novels do not easily translate to the screen. A great script can be restrictive and oppressive, giving directors and actors a preconceived idea of what a film is supposed to be, killing spontaneity and genuine emotion.

I disagree. Writers are pretty much completely ignored everywhere and get almost no recognition at all. They are often fucked over on projects (their script is redone just enough so they don't get credit on the final film) and it's one of the most ruthlessly competitive parts of the movie industry.
When it comes to scripts only 10-100 are brought by any production company. And only 1 of those chosen are actually made into films (the rest just sit on a shelf somewhere, perhaps being made in 5 years, 10 years or never). With odds like that a lot of script writers conform to easy, plot based, step by step genre scripts to avoid rejection. However sometimes a great script can rise above everything else and produce a excellent film. Take a movie like Tremors for example. Ron Underwood does have a particularly great C.V when it comes to direction but that film was so enjoyable because the script got all the elements of buddy comedy, horror thriller right and put it into a fast paced, funny, well organized script. The same could go for a film Like Lethal Weapon.
While European directors like Godard and Wim Wenders (who says that he hardly had a script for Paris, Texas) wont lay much importance on scripts and just shoot at the hip, a lot of great Hollywood films are made by having a fantastic script.

First of all, I take back saying "Writers are overrated" and leaving it at that. I don't think they are, I just personally don't place as much importance on them as the director and other roles in terms of the final product. I tend to be more into things like form, structure, style, etc. I think screenwriters -- as well as actors -- only overrated as far the general moviegoing public is concerned... they will often focus exclusively on the narrative and how it's executed, ignoring everything else. The narrative is only one small aspect of a film, even in Hollywood films.

I'd certainly consider Spielberg one of the great modern auteurs. He is like Hitchcock, in the way that he quite easily works with a large studio but because of his previous success and reliability to turn in a profit he can lend his personal artistic expressions and themes to even the biggest blockbusters.

Spielberg blatantly panders to commercial interests and a superficial populist mentality; Hollywood basically owns him. When was the last time he made a film that did anything remotely provocative or challenging or risky, or anything at all that differs from what we see in the average Hollywood movie? I suppose he can be considered an auteur in the sense that you can see the same stuff reappearing time and time again throughout his body of work, i.e. the difficulties of parenthood, his obsession with children/childlike people, naive optimism, Disney-esque sentimentality, etc. and there is a definite "Spielberg vibe."

But I think the total creative control that he seems to have is an illusion -- he's pressured to produce megahits and he always follows through, because he has to. He never takes risks for the sake of his own personal artistic vision. Look at everything he's done since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even his interpretation of Kubrick's A.I. turned into basically the same shit -- starting out creepy and thought-provoking, and then you end up with a shitty sci-fi children's story. And Minority Report, although visually stunning and one of his better productions, also sunk into a cliche snoozefest, emphasizing action and special effects over Philip K. Dick's explorations of free will. He couldn't bear to create something that didn't pull in hundreds of millions. His films have no depth and not much sense of being personal artistic expressions.

There are popular modern filmmakers who can be considered auteurs -- i.e. Coen Brothers -- but Spielberg is not one of them as far as I can see.


What about someone like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean? Gore Verbrinski (sp?) is a useless hack that created a film that rolls along with nothing of great interest apart from Depp's amazing performance.

I don't really like that particular performance, but that's a good point -- I admit there are certain actors who are just so incredibly talented that they can save an otherwise shitty movie and steal every scene they're in. Depp is a good example, he's usually great.


I disagree. Writers are pretty much completely ignored everywhere and get almost no recognition at all. They are often fucked over on projects (their script is redone just enough so they don't get credit on the final film) and it's one of the most ruthlessly competitive parts of the movie industry.

I know they get fucked over sometimes, but that doesn't contradict my point that scripts are generally not that important to the final product. Why do scripts get doctored? Largely because directors need to change shit so that it works on film. Scripts provide a vague outline... look at any given script, for 90% it's mostly dialogue, minimal description, very open to interpretation. A director may like the basic story and some of the dialogue, but like I said, what appears on the page doesn't necessarily translate well to the screen, for any number of reasons depending on the particular script and film. And when you sell a script to a studio, it's out of your hands -- you get paid, and they get to do whatever they want with it to make it into the kind of movie they want.


When it comes to scripts only 10-100 are brought by any production company. And only 1 of those chosen are actually made into films (the rest just sit on a shelf somewhere, perhaps being made in 5 years, 10 years or never). With odds like that a lot of script writers conform to easy, plot based, step by step genre scripts to avoid rejection.

Yeah, Hollywood is fucked like that. I certainly don't blame poor screenwriters for writing obvious crap so they can pay the bills, but I'm not going to give them accolades for that. It just fuels the current bullshit Hollywood system.


However sometimes a great script can rise above everything else and produce a excellent film.
Take a movie like Tremors for example. Ron Underwood does have a particularly great C.V when it comes to direction but that film was so enjoyable because the script got all the elements of buddy comedy, horror thriller right and put it into a fast paced, funny, well organized script. The same could go for a film Like Lethal Weapon.

Of course there are exceptions, I'm just speaking generally here. Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver would be an example of a script that really went above and beyond -- a great work of art in its own right -- and also a script to which the director remained faithful. But how often does this happen?


While European directors like Godard and Wim Wenders (who says that he hardly had a script for Paris, Texas) wont lay much importance on scripts and just shoot at the hip, a lot of great Hollywood films are made by having a fantastic script.

Yet there are also an incredible amount of shitty Hollywood films, especially over the past 20-30 years. If the writer plays an essential role as you claim, what does this say about the talent and value of screenwriters? I would say that there have been many scripts which are neither great nor shitty (I read a lot of them and it's rare to find one that's compelling on its own), and it's the director who either makes a great movie out of it or fucks it up completely.

Spielberg blatantly panders to commercial interests and a superficial populist mentality; Hollywood basically owns him. When was the last time he made a film that did anything remotely provocative or challenging or risky, or anything at all that differs from what we see in the average Hollywood movie? I suppose he can be considered an auteur in the sense that you can see the same stuff reappearing time and time again throughout his body of work, i.e. the difficulties of parenthood, his obsession with children/childlike people, naive optimism, Disney-esque sentimentality, etc. and there is a definite "Spielberg vibe."

But I think the total creative control that he seems to have is an illusion -- he's pressured to produce megahits and he always follows through, because he has to. He never takes risks for the sake of his own personal artistic vision. Look at everything he's done since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even his interpretation of Kubrick's A.I. turned into basically the same shit -- starting out creepy and thought-provoking, and then you end up with a shitty sci-fi children's story. And Minority Report, although visually stunning and one of his better productions, also sunk into a cliche snoozefest, emphasizing action and special effects over Philip K. Dick's explorations of free will. He couldn't bear to create something that didn't pull in hundreds of millions. His films have no depth and not much sense of being personal artistic expressions.

There are popular modern filmmakers who can be considered auteurs -- i.e. Coen Brothers -- but Spielberg is not one of them as far as I can see.


Although it's all two easy to lump the work of Spielberg in two types I'm going to do it anyway (with possible room for a third). First are the ones that you state as his trademark of characters with childlike naivety, family disorientation and father issues (Close Encounters, Indiana Jones series, Jurassic Park, ET, etc). Then there are his more serious, adult orientated works (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan and Munich). And a third could be said that has happened more recently when he tried to mix these two film making techniques and generally got lesser results (A.I, War of the Worlds, Minority Report).
However the fact that he can show this diversity and constancy of great work puts him a cut above most directors of the past 35 years. You say that his creative control is an illusion but he had to fight all the way to get Schindler's List made and that was because it was a very personal story for him and something he truly wanted to do. In that film he put his artistic vision on the line, shooting a story that isn't considered bubbly or "Disneyeque" as you would say and isn't an easy sell for audiences. And at that time no one at the Universal believed it would amount to anything. They allowed him a huge amount of freedom because of its (relative) small budget and because he was also making them the super hit that was Jurassic Park as well. He's a director that knows how to work within large studios but also have his vision shine through.

And when it comes to his lighter work, he's still an auteur in the sense that he's had to battle to have things his way for his own vision. Think of Jaws. There was no blueprints for a blockbuster at that point and it was hard to get made. But Spielberg had a idea that he wanted to make; to create a film experience into a roller coaster experience. And then, as the years went by, he refined that vision in the likes of Raiders and E.T, until he realised how stale the rest of the genre he had created was (probably post The Lost Word where he had fallen into genetic tedium) and that allows him to go on to once again peruse more personal visions like Saving Private Ryan and Munich.

I know they get fucked over sometimes, but that doesn't contradict my point that scripts are generally not that important to the final product. Why do scripts get doctored? Largely because directors need to change shit so that it works on film. Scripts provide a vague outline... look at any given script, for 90% it's mostly dialogue, minimal description, very open to interpretation. A director may like the basic story and some of the dialogue, but like I said, what appears on the page doesn't necessarily translate well to the screen, for any number of reasons depending on the particular script and film. And when you sell a script to a studio, it's out of your hands -- you get paid, and they get to do whatever they want with it to make it into the kind of movie they want.



Without a script you backbone for a movie. You have no plot, no characters, no pacing, no beginning, middle or end. While directors, actors, costume designers, set designers, etc will all refine the script with their own tastes it's still all because there is a skeleton to work from. Parts of scripts will be changed as production goes along for either practical or personal tastes but without that to work from it's just a bunch of over paid people milling around with expensive equipment.
One of the most important things a script gives to a movie is a pace and that's very hard to correct else where in production. While an actor could play a actor different to what is written, it's incredible hard to start fiddling majorly with the pacing of a script. If a director, on a whim, starts adding in big chunks of character exploration at a time when the film requires a fuel injection to get the narrative rolling it's gonna frustrate people more than a badly lit scene or delivered line. The scriptwriter can focus the pacing of the film as he is writing it, which is what will often make or break a film. He's the person who's had the overall vision for the film before anyone else and without his work the whole thing is not going to work.
The scriptwriter is one of the most undervalued but important part of a films production. You're going to see more of the scriptwriters personality within the film than anyone else apart from the director and main cast.

Without a script you backbone for a movie. You have no plot, no characters, no pacing, no beginning, middle or end. While directors, actors, costume designers, set designers, etc will all refine the script with their own tastes it's still all because there is a skeleton to work from. Parts of scripts will be changed as production goes along for either practical or personal tastes but without that to work from it's just a bunch of over paid people milling around with expensive equipment. One of the most important things a script gives to a movie is a pace and that's very hard to correct else where in production. While an actor could play a actor different to what is written, it's incredible hard to start fiddling majorly with the pacing of a script. If a director, on a whim, starts adding in big chunks of character exploration at a time when the film requires a fuel injection to get the narrative rolling it's gonna frustrate people more than a badly lit scene or delivered line. The scriptwriter can focus the pacing of the film as he is writing it, which is what will often make or break a film. He's the person who's had the overall vision for the film before anyone else and without his work the whole thing is not going to work. The scriptwriter is one of the most undervalued but important part of a films production. You're going to see more of the scriptwriters personality within the film than anyone else apart from the director and main cast.

You're pretty much right actually. I don't remember why I was even arguing this point -- I concede that writers are very important. I just don't place as much importance on writers as I do the director in regards to the film as a whole -- and as far as pacing is concerned you also have to consider the director and editor, as pacing in a film involves a lot more than just narrative pacing, in the literary sense.

But as for Spielberg...


However the fact that he can show this diversity and constancy of great work puts him a cut above most directors of the past 35 years. You say that his creative control is an illusion but he had to fight all the way to get Schindler's List made and that was because it was a very personal story for him and something he truly wanted to do. In that film he put his artistic vision on the line, shooting a story that isn't considered bubbly or "Disneyeque" as you would say and isn't an easy sell for audiences. And at that time no one at the Universal believed it would amount to anything. They allowed him a huge amount of freedom because of its (relative) small budget and because he was also making them the super hit that was Jurassic Park as well. He's a director that knows how to work within large studios but also have his vision shine through.

Okay, Spielberg battled with the studios and took a commercial risk for Schindler's List. Did he really take an artistic risk, though? Is there anything new or provocative being said about the Holocaust in Schindler's List? No, it's the same old tried and true Hollywood formula: sex, violence, and sentimentalism. The first two may be somewhat atypical for Spielberg (at that point in his career), but that doesn't make it a personal film nor does the fact that he's Jewish. In Schindler's List, Spielberg again oppressively prods and toys with the viewer on an emotional level (even though this isn't necessary, since the subject matter by itself is sad and fucked up enough), leaving us no room to think/feel for ourselves about what's going on. He uses ridiculous gimmicks like the red coat to achieve sympathy. The Nazis are depicted as stereotypically sadistic and even psychotic (or in the beginning, as the cold arrogant hood types from Ye Olde Hollywood wartime films) -- nothing new here, just more asshole subhumans who hate Jews and that's it... what a risk to show Nazis as monsters. There's no reflection, nothing artful besides the often gimmicky mise-en-scene and other superficial aspects (or other aspects which are utilized in a superficial manner).

With this approach, and considering the juxtaposition of sex scenes, the scenes of cruelty are to me pretty exploitive rather than sincerely disturbing depictions of Holocaust atrocities. In the end it's just, hey, the Holocaust was fucked up but there's always hope and dreams and good people like Schindler, who is depicted purely as a hero, no ambiguity there, despite his actual manipulation of his own people in real life. Historical revisionism in film is okay with me if it serves some kind of meaningful purpose, but here that purpose is nothing more than sentimentalism, fake-ass bullshit to draw out a few tears. I find it hard to believe that no one thought Schindler's List would be a hit because people always lap that kind of shit right up, films that pull the heartstrings and nothing else. The final product is all so easy and obvious, a reassuring yet false fantasy much like the ones that Guido tells his son in Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, another Holocaust film with some of the same shortcomings. In that sense, Schindler's List is basically Disney-esque, an adult Disney film with an R rating.


And when it comes to his lighter work, he's still an auteur in the sense that he's had to battle to have things his way for his own vision. Think of Jaws. There was no blueprints for a blockbuster at that point and it was hard to get made. But Spielberg had a idea that he wanted to make; to create a film experience into a roller coaster experience. And then, as the years went by, he refined that vision in the likes of Raiders and E.T, until he realised how stale the rest of the genre he had created was (probably post The Lost Word where he had fallen into genetic tedium) and that allows him to go on to once again peruse more personal visions like Saving Private Ryan and Munich.

But what's this vision that he's battling for? What lurks in the cobwebbed corners of Steven Spielberg's mind? I really have no idea because I haven't seen it on screen. I mean of course there are personal aspects, i.e. the distant father stuff rooted in his childhood, but even Paul Verhoeven's films have personal aspects, that's inevitable. I'm not saying artistic vision has to involve things like that, but his films don't really have significant substance, either in terms of form or content. He produces fantasies which dull the mind even if they're great to chew popcorn to. I love Spielberg's movies when I was a kid but I don't get anything out of them anymore except nostalgia and a vague sense of comfort in seeing good overcome evil. But it's not real shit. I believe that he produces exactly what people want to see and want to believe. Even these films that you claim as his personal visions which he battled for express basically this same shit. Why hasn't he ever made, for example, a morally ambiguous film, or something that attempts to be true to life, or something that questions the predominant values in our culture in any way? Where are the hidden meanings in his films -- are there any? Perhaps we'll see something different with his remake of Oldboy, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, I will admit that you could consider Spielberg an auteur in the sense that you can ascribe some kind of unity to his body of work. But I still think of him as more of an artisan than an artist, and I don't see any reason to acknowledge him as part of the great auteur tradition. To use a literal "auteur" comparison: to me the difference between Spielberg and an auteur like Sergio Leone is somewhat like the difference between Tom Clancy and Cormac McCarthy -- they both write bestselling novels, they each have their own style, you can see the unity in their work, etc., but the former is pretty much a commercial hack entertainer with not much below the surface, while the latter is a true, hardcore artist with something deeply personal to express and who just happened to succeed commercially after awhile. McCarthy started off with absolutely crazy, beyond fucked stuff like Child of God and ended up with an Oscar-winning film adaptation under his belt and another adaptation in the works, while Clancy just pandered to his audience, something which is not contradicted by the fact that his works might contain some genuine emotion or personal vision or whatever and that he may have had to battle his publishers at some point.

In art you have to make distinctions and that's partly what I'm trying to get at with this Spielberg thing.
Good convo by the way. You should post here more often.

Hey man. It's Boxing day and I'm drunk and full of food and other things. I'm gonna reread what you wrote in that last post when sober, give Schindler's List another watch with that stuff in mind, have a think about Spielberg as an auteur and then get back to you.

Good chat.

If anything the producer is overrated. I hate those fucks.

Writers, especially tvserie writers deserve way more credit then they get.

Also, i dont think Directors is overcredited, but the problem is that there is just tunnelvision on the director and the lead actor/other famous actors in the film. There is alot more to it then those people