Adding a note to this: I’ve seen people misinterpret this video as being pro-Wiseau because I call him an auteur. Let me be absolutely clear: Wiseau is an auteur, and all auteurs are garbage.
“Writing. Direction. Producing. Acting. Long ago, the four roles lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Studios attacked. Only the Auteur, master of all four disciplines, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A few years passed, and Greg and Sandy discovered the new Auteur, an alien named Tommy. And although his financial skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Tommy can save Hollywood."
Thanks for the reference to our video! I personally have a lot of issues with Auteur theory but I come at more from a practical filmmaking side of things. Auteur theory's greatest weakness is that it simplifies the filmmaking process and credits (or blames) all of a film's quality on one individual. The truth is a film is the sum product of the collaboration between the director, actors, writer, cinematographer and editor. To attribute everything that happens in a Michael Bay film to Michael Bay (or even a Hitchcock film to Hitchcock) is really dismissing the work of countless people who also worked on the film that ultimately shaped the direction of the film. Auteurism wants to create a personal relationship between the Film and the director that Written novels have with their authors (language like "camera-stylo" or camera-pen is all throughout the original texts). The public and academia readily to buy into this analogy because the way in which a film ACTUALLY gets made is sort of clouded in a self perpetuated mysticism. This mysticism, as demonstrated really first by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, is *really good for business* (a lot of what Hitchcock says is hyperbole for the sake of publicity - including that cattle business). We're coming up on Awards Season so brace yourself for a lot more of this... The Room may not just be a mockery of Auteur theory - but the natural result of filmmaking guided by a blind adherence to auteur theory. But Wiseau isn't the last auteur, walk into any film festival and you will find dozens of Wiseaus. With the popularization of pop-film-criticism on RUclips that stresses auteur theory, the incredibly easy access to filmmaking tech, and the ego necessary to actually complete a film... Tommy Wiseau isn't a rarity, he just happens to be the most famous of disaster artists... for now.
Thank you so much for the insight! And you're probably right- there are plenty of Wiseaus in the world, waiting to be discovered. But after the massive cultural shift in this past year, I think Wiseau will be the last auteur that the culture at large is willing to accept.
If an author of a novel uses professional help if he or she wants to for instance use foreign language in his or her work, does that make him or her less of an author? I don't believe a director is responsible for everything and I don't think most film reviews I've read or listened to claim that but to my understand directors usually have the power to veto against ideas they don't like. In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to improvise in a scene by drinking beer from one of terminator's victims' fridge and acting like drunk. James Cameron made clear he didn't like that and you can't find that even in the deleted scenes.
sanjurosama yes directors always have veto power. But the analogy to translation doesn't describe the relationship, it really is closer to an author hiring other authors to write scenes. Really the best analogy is the relationship is closer to a conductor of a symphony. The conductor does not create the music, but the conductor does craft the performance.
I didn't mean a translator but for instances where more than one language is used and the author wants to convey some level of authencity. I do think that some directors hold more creative power than others, not just because they have the money. Someone like Akira Kurosawa earned his places as a director first by being an assistant director and a screenwriter, before making his own movies. I know it's unfair but when I like or dislike a movie, I usually credit, whoever I think has the most power in the production, which is usually either the director or the producer. There are many cases, where directors don't follow the script, either when shooting or editing, edit or replace the credited composer's work, edit or dub actor's performance and so on. Besides, I can't really blame child actors, because it's the higher up's responsibility to cast well and give good direction. Sometimes individual actors might override the director's "vision" like in the case of Fist of Fury, where Bruce Lee took over the action scenes, which is what the movie is known for or Drunken Master II, which was taken over by Jackie Chan, when filming was taken to Hong Kong.
Filmmaker IQ I feel like the analogy of a conductor to musicians doesnt work well. The conductor didnt necessarily write the piece, and doesnt get much leeway in terms of how heorshe feels like a well known song should be performed based on their own ideals. A conductor just has to keep everyone in step and on the same page. A director gets to tweak every little nuance if they choose. It is those tweaks that a director consistantly does that sets them apart from others.
"Repetition without development is decline." YESSSSSSSSSSSS. I am going to cut open my chest, crack open my ribcage like an egg and etch that sentence onto my heart with an argon laser.
Great Eyewarp Such words have never rang more true. What came to my mind when that was said were authors Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King, and Jodi Picclout.
What about Refinement? Nuance? Subtly? Just because a director uses a shot a lot doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. It could become a shorthand; A piece of that directors language in their dialogue with the viewer. You think it's lazy, but if a director has the luxury of having a career consisting of multiple movies then I would expect to see a style consisting of shorthand and personal flourish develop. Directors who "experiment" or don't nail down a style of their own. To paraphrase H.P. Lovecraft, earlier in his career he said of his own work that he had "Poe" works and "Stoker" or "Shelley" works but he'd yet to have a "Lovecraft" work. Anyone can mug someone else, and one can take aesthetics or aspects from others, but having a discernible style makes a person distinct. It makes you memorable.
I've thought about this in the context of Zach Snyder's films. There's plot points in his work that are clearly copied from earlier works, his own or from adaptations, but he tends to imitate them shallowly and not capture what they originally meant. In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan is accused of being a menace, leaves humanity to wander, and grows more and more disinterested in the notion of life until he is moved to return by the beauty of life's randomness. In Batman v. Superman, Superman is accused of being a menace, leaves humanity to wander... and then suddenly returns the instant his girlfriend's in danger.
So, we kept making the same day dream over and over in our media. And when a mysterious man came and did the same we couldn't do much but to laugh at what he reflected about ourselves.
My other problem with auteur theory is how it disregards all other contributions to the film. The Room would not have been made without Sestero's companionship and Sandy's co-direction. It would not have been finished without Eric Chase's editing (that poor unfortunate soul). Vertigo would have been a very different movie without James Stewart, and the final scene of Psycho was imposed by the studio (for better or for worse). Film is a collaborative medium. Encouraging directors to ignore the masters of craft who surround them is detrimental to the process.
"We've all felt the need to perform, to show ourselves as funny, and charming, and vibrant, and loved, even if we're only pretending to be" Damn, Kyle, why are you calling me out like that? Lol
I feel you. I have no idea whether my art is good or not, and I've sometimes told myself "An artist is one who creates and finishes their work" to make myself feel more confident. I may not be doing what I want as well as I want, but even a mediocre person who sees a project out to the end is more successful than a talented person who quits halfway. That's why I'm hesitant to criticise Tommy Wiseau. I mean, "The Room" is not a very good movie, but it's also one more movie than I've made in my life. I wouldn't even know where to start making one.
M. Wayne Wiseau tried, but failed. Lots of people die without even doing the former. I know this sucks as a fucking pep talk, but hey, do the art you want to do. The world needs more art.
Finishing anything is where art comes from, in my opinion. I had aspirations to be a writer at one time, but I've regressed from awful fanfic garbage to being unable to string the simplest plot together anymore. Don't be me. Put something out there. That's my pep talk :D
Those Kael quotes are great, but her using Hitchcock is a bad example. He didn't just repeat himself he refined his limited approach to a point. I love Reed as well both ways of working are valid.
Yeah, to me he's a good example of her earlier point of repetition but with development and refinement. Not perfection, necessarily, but change and alterations.
I really like videos like these, it's a big reason why I'm a fan of Lindsay Ellis: I like hearing about how even "bad" and "shallow" media can have value. Is The Room good? Of course not, but it still reflects a certain mindset, certain attitudes, certain aspects of the society it was made in. I'll have to check out that Pauline Kael video. She sounds totally savage.
read some Adam Cadre if you're ever interested: adamcadre.ac/calendar. he does a lot of film analysis that tries to reflect it in the history and theory it's based in, and he probably led me directly to Lindsay and Kyle's more analytical videos.
Richard Brody film critic, author, BEARD EXPERT I often go through life in awe of great beards, and the unworthy humans blessed with the good fortune to be chosen by them. In my line of work, I meet many such great beards, and I do my best to pay proper tribute to each and every one.
Thank you Mr K, for all of your bleeding bullets onto blank doc files, and hard labour in the editing software. You've delivered some of the most fascinating, challenging, and hilarious entries in the 'what the hell does video essay mean' canon. I hope that you and all your loved ones have the best possible Christmas time, whatever form that takes.
You mention Welles, which I find interesting. Because Welles was, while initially quite "auteur-ish" later very open about how much Gregg Toland, "Citizen Kane's" cinematographer, shaped the aesthetic of the film.
Noah Blank Welles is an interesting example, because he comes off as someone who has long realized how much of a joke auteur theory is, and is just playing along and giving zero fucks about his still-oblivious audience. He was larger than life (literally) and he owned it. Compare that with Hitchcock, whose films and personality always come off to me like he's believing his own auteur hype. He's so full of himself. It's like Film Class 101, it's so unbelievably straight. I have a hard time watching Hitchcock, personally, and I don't know why.
DellDuckfan313 I love Hitchcock as a director, personally. I still have trouble sleeping because of "Psycho." But he was, admittedly, a terrible, terrible person.
Noah Blank I never quite found the line that connected auteurs to being bad automatically. Auteur-ism is bad because some cherry picked examples are...perverts maybe? And having sexuality expressed on film is bad because...racism? I felt like this video came down to a few interesting arguments against auteur worship. Worship. Because the lady seemed to be dissing the audience and critics more than the filmmakers from the few lines Kyle showed us and the other half of the video was Kyle apologizing for being a straight, white guy interested in film. Apology accepted?
Thanatos388 See, I felt Kyle was attacking the dictatorial power structure behind auteurship more. Let's give all creative decisions to some white guy to whom everyone else must budge. If you squint it's a bit like Great Man Theory. Tommy shows us that in practice, this can lead to a director bullying his cast and crew (and himself, which is something Kyle didn't mention) in order to fulfill some kind of demented vision. It's also related to abuse of power (Weinsteinian or otherwise) and discrimination. At least that's what I got from it. I'm not sure what Kyle wants, exactly. More movies made by committee?
I honestly never got that reference to Rebel Without A Cause until The Disaster Artist. It’s been forever since I’ve watched Rebel, and that line never stuck out to me.
Another thing that neither Kyle or Pauline Kael bring up is that film is inherently a collaborative medium. Auteur theory could be argued about artforms like painting, sculpture, literature and (sometimes) music that's usually the creation of just one person, but applying it to film undermines the contributions of everyone else who worked on it. Sure, the director has control over how certain things go, but in the end the actors, editor, cinematographer, screenwriter, costume designer, set designer, special effects artist, composer are all integral to making a movie the way it is. There are plenty of "auteurs" who owe their style to certain collaborators. Would Martin Scorsese be the same without the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker? Would the Coen Brothers' movies look the same without the DP work of Roger Deakins? Would Tim Burton's movies sound the same without the scores of Danny Elfman? Hell, think of all the set designers, sound engineers, puppeteers and special effects artists that made Star Wars so iconic, and yet it's George Lucas who gets all the credit. The point is, auteur theory doesn't apply to film because movies aren't just some magic force born out of thin air from the unbridled creative energy of one guy, unless that one guy did literally everything himself.
The whole point of auteur theory was to argue that film had a main voice like those other things, because otherwise film could not be art as people at the time understood it. The cahires du cinema critics created auteur theory specifically for movies and the repetition was used as example for a director's influence from one project to another. Those other things (besides music) didn't need auteur theory to begin with and it doesn't apply to them. That whole point about all the set designers and editors? That's talked about and how it compares to the role of the director and if you want to talk auteur theory you should probably start with those publications. It's like responding to an argument about whether morality requires a god figure to exist meaningfully with "well we don't know god is real", that subject is a lot of books earlier.
I don’t think I fully agree with this idea. While I can see how the auteur theory can be limiting and dangerous, I don’t think it’s reasonable to outright say that all that comes out of it is trash. I’m not a fan of giving the director full credit for the film, but I think at times a driving vision, personality, or leadership can definitely add to a film. I think it just depends on a case by case study where’re some films like the Wizard of Oz or Casablanca really shine from collaboration, while the 400 Blows or the Love Witch wouldn’t be the same without that driving individual. Overall this brings up a good argument and I’d love to hear what other people think.
I agree with most of what you said: a director conceived as an artist represents a driving force behind an idea on cinema, it is, after all, the vision upon which a visual and sonorous image is displayed on a cinematic experience. Of course, one can (and more often than not does) give credit to musicians, actors, set and costume designers, etc.: it is quite rare if not impossible to find a filmmaker who has created a piece all by himself (in this respect, as many others have stablished, films are a collaborative effort indeed). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Weine, although not yet considered an auteur piece, can serve as an example of such necessity of credit beyond the director. Just to point at one element, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. It was actually designed by artists (prominently by Hermann Warm) with a heavy influence of the german expressionist movement, which printed a surprisingly effective aura of mystery and horror to the film (if you haven´t seen it, I urge you to look for images on google and imagine what the movie is like). This aesthetic was, in my opinion, largely responsible for the success of the director´s idea, and thus should be noted as an important contributor of the project as a whole. Another example is that of actor Klaus Kinski, who was famous for undermining, even ridiculizing, the decisions of pretty much every director he worked with. Of course, the fact that, despite his infamous temper, he was still a very sought after artist speaks volumes on his talent as an actor, and thus, it could be said, his importance in the movies he appeared on. Now, the last example gives way to what I am intending to add to the conversation: that the "cinéma de auteur" is often misunderstood or quite frankly misinterpreted as a "limiting" or even offensive concept. Klaus Kinski was, in my humble opinion, an actor who pretty much deserved the recognition that he gave to his own work: "monumental", at times even sublime. Yet, there is a reason why, when one sees Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, or Aguirre: The Wrath of God, one is compeled to experience it as a Werner Herzog film. And that is because, ultimately, it is HIS vision as an artist that which is being realised right there, in the cinematic experience; it is HIS idea on cinema which is moving in front of the spectator. Of course this doesn´t necessarily mean that the audience or even the cast and crew are being alienated from the cinematic experience. In fact, as Marcel Duchamp eloquently put it, I firmly believe that the artistic experience in general is conformed by three: the artist, the piece itself and the posterity, or audience. Now, accepting this distinction would mean one has to recognise, as you put it, the "driving vision" behind the project. And really the "cinéma de auteur" is precisely that: acknowledging the filmmaker as that driving vision; the cosmology, the ideas, the images, the sounds, the themes that can be ultimately traced back to the artist´s mind as an origin. So, rather than thinking the notion of auteur as a limiting concept, I prefer to see it as the liberty of the filmmaker to realise his vision without compromises (historically, this is the original meaning and relevance of the cinéma de auteur in opposition to the Hays Code or the impositions of the producers´agendas in Hollywood or under regimes such as Hitler´s, Mussolini´s or Stalin´s). It is, after all, the realisation of freedom through and by cinema. This is beautifully represented by Werner Herzog´s vision and decisions driving Kinski´s temper towards an outstanding performance for his films. Sorry for the long post, I hope it is at least interesting to the handful who choose to read it.
FWIW I don't think even most proponents of Auteur theory (at least not in it's more modern and nuanced forms) would really argue that all directors should get full credit for a film, but rather that certain directors clearly wield greater influence over a work than others and thus can stake a firmer claim to true authorship. There are offshoots of Auteur theory that are even formally willing to extend the concept of authorship to individuals other than the director in certain circumstances (the producer in classical Hollywood Cinema for example). Film may be a collaborative art form, but from my perspective, there clearly are times when people are reduced to technicians laboring in service of someone else's artistic vision.
i think there's a legitimate (if temporary) value to auteur theory: it lets us use our old language of art with film (and video games). the film is the first piece of art that is not primarily designed by a single person. even plays had their playwrights, great works of architecture their architect, but who do we point to as the creator of a film? obviously we can't. too many people share the big decisions. so the development of auteur theory kind of makes sense because it lets us figure out film using background from other mediums (questions it prompts: how is the auteur like/unlike the visual artist? the author? the playwright?). auteur theory isn't accurate but it can still be useful
Praise for this amazing video aside, I think someone like Tommy Wiseau exposes the dangers of the auteur theory (and its descendants) rather than the complete failure of this theory. This idea of auterism as a fantasy, while true, doesn't explain auteurs who came before the theory (the ones the Nouvelle Vague so highly praised), or female auteurs like Agnès Varda or Chantal Akerman, who have very distinct styles and don't operate under this male fantasy. Besides, Sarris himself defends in his Notes on the Auteur Theory that it was a political move (like many others in film history) designed to provoke and stimulate new perspectives in film criticism, even though some critics and directors were radical auterists anyway. The problem with auteurism is more in its perception by others than in its meaning itself, I think; reducing auteurism to what some male directors do with it can't be entirely correct. It's about a person directing, but it's also about their vision of the world, of film history and of themselves.
"Auteur Theory... was... designed to provoke and stimulate new perspectives in film criticism, even though some critics and directors were radical auterists anyway." Exactly. So if the new perspectives are no longer new, and directors can act according to it without intentionally being a part of it, what good does it do? Why is/was an auteur held in high regard by the common people? What purpose auteurs serve in a time when every RUclipsr is an auteur? Isn't the general low quality of RUclips a direct outcome of Auteur Theory? Shouldn't it be therefore seen as an undesirable state, or at least, a call to caution?
I think it boils down to a couple things: 1. It's a form of brand recognition. If people identify an artist with a specific overriding style that speaks to them, it's comforting to know what they're likely to get when they go to see a new work by that artist. 2. It's a reaction to the mainstream Hollywood product. At a time when the big commercial releases that dominate cinema are generally seen as cynical attempts to soak audiences for the price of a ticket and build franchises and cross platform media tie ins, people feel the need to rally around anyone who's seen from some sort of genuine artistic drive. When people feel like all vestiges of art are being driven out of the marketplace, even a low quality attempt will assume an aura of respectability.
Tuckerscreator Thought the same thing when I saw that other guy comment that shit (If your comment was directed at me and not the other person, that wasn't the intention of my comment. I was just pointing out how lots of people in Hollywood turn out to be creeps)
my point was john waters made a career out of being a creep (without ever being predatory) and he now a more stand up individuals then people who made far less creepy/disturbing films
Dylan B. When I said "the other guy" in my comment, I was speaking of someone who said "It's better than not being remembered by history" or some shit like that, but I think their comment got deleted. Sorry abt the misunderstanding. I don't know if the Tuckerscreator guy was responding to you, or the "remembered by history" guy, but I think it was probably the latter. Again, just a simple misunderstanding.
auteur theory has its jump-the-shark moments, but to dismiss it as promoting "trash" is a fundamental flaw even from the perspective you seem to espouse in your videos, namely, the fact that the types of stories being told in cinema would be different if the industry were more inclusive with regard to women, minorities, LGBT community, etc. To assume that the stories being told and the techniques being used to tell them would be different based upon the identity (sexual, racial, or otherwise) of the primary creative force in the film is EXACTLY one of the major tenets of auteur theory. so, yeah, you can't have your cake and eat it too here.
I’m not sure the argument was that auteur theory was bad because it focuses too much on the individual that directs the film more so that the theory in practice tends to overlook these marginalized groups because it focuses on a body of work which people who aren’t a straight white men tend to have less access too. So the outcome tends to be “auteurs are the most brilliant filmmakers” and these auteurs tend to be of a certain demographic solidifying them as “better” filmmakers thus giving them more opportunities at the expense of their counterparts and repeating the cycle. Does that make sense?
Sam Hall I think I get what you’re saying. I don’t think we should be as flippant about auteur theory either but I think Kyle’s criticisms are still valid even though it’s not conclusive.
I'm sure Mr. Wiseau wouldn't like to be seen as an auteur. He'd probably prefer "a singular artist who controls all aspects of a collaborative creative work, a person equivalent to the author of a novel or a play". Call him an auteur and he'll probably tackle you.
The Greatest generation meets the Silent Generation. Something about people from that era made them manifest the smartest and most self aware culture America ever produced.
I felt your implication that a person taking on the role of a predominate creative voice in a work automatically leads to mediocre navel-gazing films and turns artists into narcissists and sexual predators was a bit of a logical leap. Can't one still view the director as the author of a film while still admiring and appreciating the creative contributions of actors, production designers, cinematographers, etc?
I am sorry to say this kyle, I love your work but I need to say that I am not sure all this hangs together as well as it seems. I am in the majority of your twitter poll when I say an auteur is someone with extraordinary control over a filmmaking project. This makes the auteur unique in this sense because it collapses what is a collaborative enterprise to a personal one. So as we as an audience view the final result the ideal goal should be to be a personal experience between the auteur and the audience beyond that is the impersonality of a committee-made film. The fact that this image seems to be associated to the "strong decisive man" does not seem to me to be the central flaw in the paradigm, as strong decisive action, regardless of the gender of the one who executes it, seems to be the main force that propels an auteur-like work. If anything, the hilarious failure of The Room doesn't necessarily show the death of the auteur theory in itself, or even its final conclusion, it just seems to clarify in the most obvious terms the immediate pitfall of having total control of a project: if you can't make it work, no one can. so to me it seems that the real "moral" of The Room is not the death of the auteur, but just the idea that sometimes, you need to let someone help out with a passion to make it work.
Merry Christmas everyone! Kyle; just a quick note, you made me want to become a director and scriptwriter through your film theory and analysis. And this video is no exception, showing something that is fascinating, confusing but all around brilliant while discussing Auteur theory. Kudos!
The DISPARITY between the things Kyle says about auteur theory and the things that are put up on the screen is probably my favorite part. I feel a bit confused, still, though. Perhaps this one went just a shade 2deep4me. Is Kyle attacking auteur filmmaking as a whole, or is he just going after the hacks that turn their films into Gary Stu fanfics? If it's the latter, more power to him. If the former? ...personally, I've always thought of Spielberg as an auteur, even as mainstream as his movies are, and I can't think of a single movie of his that I do not like. Speaking of, Kyle, a Spielberg video someday would be lovely. Like...Love Witch "OH MY GOD WE'RE IN A CAKE" lovely. ^_^ Happy Holidays, Mr. Kallgren.
Sadly Harvey Weinstein won't be harrassing them anymore. Julie Taymor's Frida wouldn't have as much nudity, if it wasn't for him. Bong Joon-ho sure made the wrong choice, when he didn't let him cut Snowpiercer.
Mr. Kallgren, I wonder if you've had any thoughts about Pauleen Kael as a critic. I was troubled when I read her film books. I know she was considered a heroine when she supported Bonnie and Clyde against the attacks of Bosley Crowther (who hated the film mostly because it violated his sense of morality). And I know she lost prestige when she spent a weekend during the shooting of Nashville and raved about how wonderful it was...long before the film was finished or released. Whereas you express your ideas with clarity, even explaining some things such as auteur theory so even a chimpanzee like me can understand them, Kael always read as if she was Professor Kingsfield of The Paper Chase, expecting her readers to know what she was talking about, and hating them to the point of assassination if we didn't. Hope that you'll give your thoughts about Kael sometime in the future.
*raises hand* While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, didn't you say earlier that Love Witch was also a good example of Auteur theory gone right? If so, than by that extension, wouldn't that make Mr. Wiseau not the last Auteur? Or is it because Ms. Billar didn't star in it that it doesn't apply to the same degree as Mr.Wiseau?
Getting to this late, but I think what Kyle means (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that Wiseau is not *literally* the last auteur, but is the *culmination* of the Auteur Theory taken to its logical conclusion. A talentless fool with complete control of his film, who subjects everyone else to his whims and vision-- even if everything that comes from it is dreck.
I was once at a Room screening where we got to ask questions to Tommy and I asked him "Describe your use of Mise en Scène as an auteur in the film medium" and everyone booed me off.
So... how far back in etymology do we have to go before something counts as a French word? Like, fiancée is bad bc it has an accent(?) but future (which also comes from French) is fine because it was adopted long enough ago that the pronunciation changed?
If it's not currently a French word then Tommy doesn't have a problem with it. The book claims he lived in France but grew to hate it because he was badly mistreated there. And his last name is derived from the French word for bird, "oiseau".
Auteur implies the director has a body of work as you stated but Tommy has only directed one film. There isn't a consistency to his form only a single instance, he's not an auteur.
One of the most toxic ideas that I see a lot going along with auteur theory is often how it's used to justify bad behaviour and disrespect. The idea that true artists always abuse people, that true artists always treat other people like dirt, that true artists are arrogant, self-absorbed, and cruel. This idea is toxic because not only does it justify abuse and cruelty by hiding it behind a veil of artistry and genius and not only because it teaches people that, if you act arrogant, self-absorbed, and treat other people like dirt, then you are a great auteur, but that it also creates an atmosphere where other geniuses, geniuses who are not arrogant, self-absorbed, and don't treat people like dirt are unable to survive. For every genius who revolutionizes the media while being a complete and utter jerk, there are at least five who could do what that person does and better who aren't complete jerks that will never get their work taken seriously. And, of course, those geniuses are often people of colour, LGBT, women and non-binary, neuroatypical, etc. In the end, what really makes genius jerks flourish isn't their talent, but their cruelty, their lack of concern for other people, and their willingness to step on other people, and that toxic idea of the genius jerk only creates an environment where that's the only way to get to the top. I think if there's one thing that I've seen in modern cinema, especially in 2017 and coming in 2018, it's that it has shown that, when given the chance to show what they can do, all those people who never would have gotten a second look by the industry can revolutionize their medias and their fields and change entire genres and tell stories that no one has seen before and becoming hugely successful for it, but they have to be given a chance and a fair chance at that. I think that I'm one of those people who wants nothing more than to create beautiful things and tell stories which change the world, but someone who can't survive in a cruel, dog-eat-dog world, but hopefully I'll be given my chance someday soon. If nothing else, this year and the coming year make me hopefully. Hopefully, one day, people will see my work in bookstores and up on the big screen, that's all I've ever dreamed of.
This a million times. Along with that horrible quote, "pain is temporary, film is forever" being used to justify putting people in dangerous positions. It's tough - you have to hustle. You have to endure what others won't... but that's not reason to treat people like crap.
I never knew these great directors who would be crappy human beings based on the fact about how they treat their actors like garbage, just to get their positions right!
Wouldn't making Tommy Wiseau an auteur also mean that Ed Wood is also an auteur? Would it mean that Anna Biller is also can autuer? (in the caste of Anna Biller, I'd say yes and I'd love her to direct a reboot of the TV series _Tales Of The Unexpected_ but only if they keep the original iconic British theme tune and at least a recreation of the British title sequence) All I can think of is that his hatred of the French language reveals him coming from a Francophone country where his work was *REALLY* rejected and that caused him to come to America. He probably has some work in French that predates The Room that might actually be better than The Room, but we may never know as all that work is most likely lost.
This is exactly why video games don't need a celebrity culture. John Romero ran himself into the ground in the 90s, Hideo Kojima was a big name, but I think it's clear that much of his style did not pass the test of time, and David Cage just can't write human beings. Like film, games are a collaborative effort, and with 3D animators getting treated "like cattle" (see LA Noire), we don't need any more reinforcement for throwing people under a bus. We need our nutcases coming up with ideas (John Romero's main strong point), but we should be feeding imaginations, not egos.
While your points are excellent, I will say, there really should be a broader conception amongst film circles on who the major shaping "voice" of a piece is. Like, say, in terms of effects artists I would call Screaming Mad George and Paul Blaisdell auteurs. Ditto for William Golding as the main auteur on the Princess Bride, because so much of that piece's majesty is in his script. Tho, of course, lending credence to the industry-sexism-related issues of auteur theory, you wouldn't believe the time I had trying to find five distinctive female directors for an installment of a piece I'm planning on doing for kaiju based on the styles of certain film directors (BTW, the ones I settled on were Katheryn Bigelow, Julie Taymor, Lotte Reiniger, Sally Cruikshank and Rachel Talalay)
...Okay, I think I got a sixth entry for that now, thank you. That's the great thing about animation, the individual creators' style can come out a lot stronger. As one can see also, heck, also amongst artists of color like Milton Knight of Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog and Twisted Tales of Felix The Cat fame, and in the Bambi backgrounds of Tyrus Wong...
The story of Tommy Wiseau comes off kinda as a tragedy when put like this. A man standing tragically and buffoonishly in the ruins of his failure without being able to understand why he has failed, since, as far as he knows, he has done everything he needed to do to guarantee success.
The label "auteur" was never intended to indicate quality any more than "author" was meant to indicate great writing skill or "artist" is inherently meant to indicate particularly good painting skill. The term "vulgar auteurism" was a ridiculous misunderstanding of the term and its brief popularity on "film twitter" proves nothing outside of how low the bar has been lowered on film writing in the 21st Century. The fact that Tommy Wiseau took himself too seriously does not make him an auteur. Had he established his inept style over multiple movies that might have made him one, but that still would have proven nothing about the term as it was never meant as an indication of quality.
The thing is you have only to surf about this comment page to see a lot of people who conflate "auteur" and genius. As always, the meaning of words, when it flows out of its original use is uncontrollable.
My biggest gripe with auteur theory and similar theories in criticism is how it makes the jump from being descriptive to being normative too quickly. It's one thing to say "There is such a thing as an auteur." It's quite another, as Pauline Kael clearly described, to then also say "And auteurs stand for quality." Also, if you think Wiseau is the last auteur you haven't seen my main man Neil Breen yet. Because oh baby, ohhhh baby!
Thank you so much for gifting the ignorants amongst us (me, for example) with Pauline Kael. I listened to the whole thing and looked up some of her reviews. While some of her points are debatable, she's just perfect. The pinched, old-fashioned announcer voice delivering one burn after the other in a reasonable 'just saying' tone is amazing. She's the Violet Crawley of critics and I feel like writing an entire novel about her, now.
Auteur theory always seemed ridiculous to me purely on the level that it downplays the contributions of the HUNDREDS of other people who work on a film prepro, during production, and post
I wonder if calling The Room a death knell for auteur theory is too...erm... vulgar? To think of a director as exclusively an auteur is certainly a bad idea in a collaborative medium, but it's not like auteurism has yielded explicitly bad results. Tracy's "Vulgar Auteurism" is an attack on the limitations of relying upon individuals to always communicate a story in its proper essence through film. In particular, Tracy calls out Mann's Public Enemies for treating its subject (Dillinger) as the same, tight-laced protagonist just as any other of Mann's heroes, when that is exactly opposed to Dillinger's grandstanding nature. The stamp of the auteur thus undermines the integrity of the film as a whole. Wiseau also clearly uses his own authority to make absolute garbage. Contrast the above with, say, Stanley Kubrick. While he certainly has an identifiable directorial stamp, the style of Barry Lyndon, Dr. Strangelove, and 2001: A Space Odyssey each exemplify their subject matter very well. Meanwhile, Kubrick was known to have direct control of each and every frame, taking time to rewrite scripts mid-shoot and taking as many takes as he felt were necessary: definitely the mark of a self-conscious auteur. Kubrick also, I believe, breaks from your example of abusing his role to aggrandize and realize his sexual fantasies. Dr. Strangelove openly mocks men's preoccupation with sex to the point that it outright destroys the world. A movie like Eyes Wide Shut, on the other hand, if indeed that is a realization of Kubrick's own fantasies, it hardly paints him as "funny, charming, vibrant, and loved," but rather acts as an exploration of the dark underbelly of sexual fantasy and its abuses by those with power and wealth (enough to host the movie's simply charming orgy). Maybe Wiseau is simply the most hilariously egregious (probably not the worst) example of abusing and neglecting the responsibilities of being in control, especially on a creative project involving the input of so many craftspeople, actors, and actresses.
Thank you for putting into words what I could not. I kept thinking "But what about Kubrick?" throughout the entire video, and you specifically nail down my exact thoughts. It also should be noted that Kael hated Kubrick's work, so I wonder if that plays a part as to why Kyle ignores the single biggest name in auteur theory in his auteur video. For my single self, I'm reluctant to put movie critics on too high of a pedestal. In the end, Kael spent most of her career simply getting paid to write her opinion. Not exactly the same as serious critique of the art form.
Thanks for pointing out Kael's dislike of Kubrick! I went out and read a few of her reviews of Kubrick's work as soon as you mentioned it. They certainly put my claim that his movies "exemplify their subject matter" up for grabs (or, honestly, sent them straight to Hell), as Kael explicitly argues that they simply do not. Kubrick opts instead for a cold, slow, and ultimately Kubrickian aesthetic. That said, Kubrick's style is still one that I really appreciate. I would sooner fault Stephen King's novel than I would the movie that it was adapted into (and King himself did not much appreciate the movie, which matters not at all to me). I would say the same of A Clockwork Orange, a book that Anthony Burgess himself didn't much care for in his own oeuvre, though he also disliked what changes Kubrick made (specifically that Alex returns to his old self). I'm shifting goal posts here, but I do enjoy and prefer the liberties that Kubrick takes with his sources than were he passively adhering to them; these liberties were exactly what I and Tracy were faulting Michael Mann for in my original post. So, let me retcon my way out of this hole. Mann's biopic of Dillinger seems more beholden to its historical source. Dillinger was verifiably different than Mann's portrayal of him in Public Enemies. Compound that with the the fact that glorifying a gangster is not exactly something I can get behind. Kubrick's take on the Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, on the other hand, uses its setting effectively AND for an anti-war message that's more palatable to my tastes. tl;dr- I like Kubrick anyway, #notallauteurs
To be honest it is kinda hard to 100% defend Kubrick's actions after he drove Shelley Duval to tears on the set of The Shining. Is driving someone to THAT level really the best way to create "great art"?
One thing I wonder, is how many auteurs actually called themselves auteurs? Or subscribed to the theory? I mean, of course the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers promoted auteur theory, but did Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kurosawa etc etc consider themselves auteurs? The one time I heard a director talk about auteur theory, it was George Lucas during the making of The Phantom Menace and... yeah we all know how that turned out. How much of auteurism is something we ascribe to directors ourselves? Other forms of art, like painting or writing, often involve very few people and are usually attributed to one person. Maybe our brains can't understand that what we're looking at is not the creation of a single person, but a large collective.
I don't know did Kurosawa ever use the word auteur, but besides directing, he also co-wrote/wrote most of his movies and edited most of them and didn't like studio interference. When he directed the scene in Dreams featuring Martin Scorsese playing Vincent Van Gogh, at first he let him act any way he wanted, then he pulled him back and told exactly, line by line how to act.
I wished somebody made this man talk about: Alphaville + Tetsuo: The Iron Man + Christmas in Mars and how they use similar artistic choices to approach the same themes; like using their architecture to represent a future.
Oh my god - I'd never read Circles and Squares. I feel like trying to describe my feelings about it would do both it and them a disservice. But it's everything a popular critical essay should be. Thanks, Kyle, for directing me to it.
Question: what's the difference between this video where you celebrate the death of auturism in film and all of the other videos where you go into extensive backstories about and deeply analyze the styles, aesthetics and tastes of the directors of movies you like?
No argument here. So in your past episodes, when you gush over a directors work, it's less "How are we lucky enough to have this person??" and more "Wow, they are REALLY freaking good at their job!" Is that right?
About auteur theory: Is Kubrick an auteur? He displays constant growth and change and variety and yet it is somewhat clear in every one of his films that it is a Kubrick film. Same with Paul Thomas Anderson, they both display change and growth, but I would (maybe I'm completely wrong) consider them auteurs
I notice a conspicuous minimum of Kubrick in all this Auteur theory bashing, which is funny because I feel like Kubrick represents the zenith of what auteurism has the potential to be. And what it has meant to me personally. I would compare a director with a distinctive style similar to something like a Van Gough painting. Instantly recognizable and identifiable with the particular artist. I get your argument against the dangers of self indulgent tomfoolery, but I think you ignore the very real artistic achievement that comes from being able to set yourself apart with a look and aesthetic. I've always hated the million forgettable movies that grace the screen every year. Even something as ridiculous as The Room, which I wouldn't call good art btw, has a personality to it. People remember The Room. Also, I'm disappointed in your apparent acclaim for Pauline Kael. Kael was and is a self-indulgent hack of the worst kind. I find that I agree with Renata Adler when she said the Kael's writings on cinema were "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless."
If we can call Hannibal or Montgomery great generals, then auteur theory is valid. Auteurs have the power to command their army to produce the outcome they want. It has no bearing on whether the final outcome is successful. There are good auteurs and bad auteurs, just as there are good generals and bad generals.
I don’t think a director having a style is a bad thing. Wes Anderson and, dare I say, Baz Lurhman are some of my favorite directors that stick to a style. When you watch one of their movies though they’re never just the last one. Directing is like writing with a paintbrush, or a lense. Some writers write books with the same style but the story’s new so it doesn’t really matter because the way it was written wasn’t the point. I can say, while directing works with the story, it’s the same. I think people like Anderson write personal stories about people, so his directing tends to stay very close and intimate. He’s also perfected a color palette, so he likes to use it, albeit in different ways each time and sticking to different colors. Baz...that could take a whole twenty minutes so let’s just leave his pretty lunacy alone at he moment. The point is that having a style doesn’t mean your inferior to someone without one and visa versa. There is no one way you have to be, make your vision with the strokes you envision, even if you’ve used those stokes before.
Wait a minute, what about Anna Biller? I don't think I saw her in the directors' pictures.....And I distinctly remember that Kyle said she was "one of the best cases ever made for the auteur theory"......
Well, yeah, but what comes next? Does the theory just have to evolve? Does our culture have to evolve? Does this fix itself by just having more voices in the room? What's the solution? I don't want it to be death of the author, I'm out of a job if it's death of the author. Name recognition can build a career. It can be the fulcrum upon which the success of a property is weighed. In the same way it's good practice to sign your paintings and your books and your video essays, it has to be good practice to sign your movies. Maybe I'm wrong about this and my frustration is the same egoism that drove Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks and Klan guy to go start UA, but, you know, it is stupid not to have your name on the poster. I want to go into television one day. I want to make movies. I'm studying to do that and I'm good at it. I want my shot. I want to get nominated for an award. I think that I can. I don't think auteurism should die, it just needs to evolve. It needs to become more cohesive. It needs to focus on collaborative practice and developing your own ideas. If we can't hold our artists to the same standards of self-improvement that we expect from the rest of our culture and that we futilely strive for as mere mortals, than what the fuck are we doing! Maybe this is an entirely new school of thought I'm proposing, but there's a reason we get excited about the NEXT Fincher project. Maybe the change we need to be is to see ourselves in the middle of history. Imagining what film can be. Once we've done that, it turns the artistic process into a journey of self discovery. The questions in interviews shouldn't be about the past, it should be about what's around the corner. Maybe this is utopian, and I'm rambley and unfocused and full of shit but I don't think Wiseau SHOULD be the last auteur. If Griffith's on your list, there's nowhere to go but up!
That's kind of a tricky question. Auteur theory might be a bit more applicable to art forms like paintings, sculpture, books and (sometimes) music, but when it comes to collaborative art forms like film, claiming that the director is the singular voice robs credit from everyone else who made the movie what it is (actors, cinematographers, editors, set designers, costume designers, special effects artists, composers etc.).
very fascinating take. I would argue that the appeal and the beauty of auteurship is not that they reveal any truths about the world or about film itself, its that they, through the extreme personal nature of their work, unintentionally or intentionally reveal things about human nature. When we watch tarantino we see how a vulgar frat guy convinced of his own artistry views his ideal world. his literal or metaphorical fantasies. The audience often doesnt share that fantasy and thats where the potential for a deep dive into the psyche of a type of person we cannot relate to is. We can see the world thrpough the eyes of another person, in wes andersons case through the mind of a child. He is not a child obviously, but his ideal world is seen through that lens. That in turn allows us to explore that identity through the auteur. After all its not just frat boys who love the gory action of kill bill. The reason it is elevated above other action films is because of its use of style to allow us to view the world through an unfamiliar lens.
the style of an auteur is their psychological art. They play mind games with us to force us to see the world like they do. We feel the mystery in a hitchcock film because he has convinced us that a world where things like that can happen.
While I follow your hypothesis, though I don't agree with it, I really did like your break down of the auteur. I mean you had an idea and went through with it to a concise point. I have no idea why Google suggested this video for me, but I am glad I watch it. Good job on the video. It is great to hear hot takes like this. I would have liked you to go a bit more into the financial and producer side of it and why the idea of the auteur has been in decline, or as you said Tommy may be the last, and I would recommend a Entertainment Weekly piece that tackles this same idea with massive corporations churning out these mega-blockbusters and reducing what the director intends. That's why I take every small indie movie that makes it big and has a superb sense of style as a small victory against these conglomerates. It would also be interesting if you looked into how films like La La Land use the same outdated ideals, like the room, and place mediocre actors and a basic musical theme to entertain Hollywood elites in search of glory and being respected in Hollywood as the old school Auteur would be. One last thing! The works of Carol Reed is so underappreciated when it comes to his filmography!
Really, isn't literally anyone with a significant body of work in which they're creatively invested considered an 'auteur'? Isn't repetition - with improvement and variation, ideally - an inherent part of artistic development? It's harder to see in this medium, but it's there. You have to build on past failure. Do it again, try it differently, and find the best way. I can't imagine many artists start with a clean slate going into every project. tl;dr: Auteur theory seems to me just a very complicated way of saying filmmakers are artists, written by people who aren't artists and don't understand that journey.
Beginning: I think Kyle doesn't like Auteurs... Ending: Jesus Christ, that hate boner is gigantic! Seriously though, a good Auteur _can_ brake through common clichés by disregarding what is "marketable" and doing his own thing, thus creating a new style. On the other hand we see lots of Directors who get high on snorting their own farts, and we can't even blame them because everyone keeps telling them how _unique_ their style is. In this regard Kyle's critique of Auteur Theory is _more_ than valid.
I do think there are some issues with the auteur theory, as someone already said the general public and particularly the academia buys it in order to create a personal relationship between director and film akin to that of author and novel, but film being a collaborative art can't be seen as the work of one single person. That being said, there are technic, aesthetic, thematic and generic trends that can be found in some directors' body of work, what would qualify them as an auteur. I agree that "repetition without development is decline", and that certainly applies to directors like Tarantino and Wes Anderson (I do like them both), but there are other directors like Kubrick, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Fellini, Scorsese, etc. that do show development in their ideas and techniques even while repeating certain tropes. I believe that the main characteristic of an auteur is that his work is idiosyncratic, but that doesn't make him necessarily a better director than a more versatile one. I think that's the issue in this debate: auteurs tend to be glorified and mystified, especially here on RUclips, and their trademarks are taken like synonyms for quality, ignoring the fact that there just as many bad auteurs (like Wiseau, Michael Bay or Shymalan) as there are good genre directors (Spielberg, Scott, Cameron). So to sum up, I believe Kael is being rather harsh on the auteur theory itself, instead of recognizing that the problem lies with the academia for automatically elevating the status of any film or director that subscribes to this theory as high art.
MayanExpression He and Lindsay did do a crossover together exploring the Tom Green oeuvre through the (ahem) magnificence of their “Freddy Got Fingered” crossover review. I believe Lindsay has that one on her site. It’s the best and a comedy skit to boot. EDIT: ....ah, but reading on, you already acknowledged that, still it was great, no?
yeah I still love that review, but seeing how both their channels have had a radical shift in style and content compared to the TGWTG era, it would be interesting to see what they would do this time
They have? I don't know, aside from production value I don't see a radical shift between now and the Blip.tv days as far as Kyle is concerned. Maybe fewer visual gags?
Wait, hang on, I don’t quite follow. You wish he’d embraced the fact that he’s a creepy looking foreign guy instead of pursuing his dream of playing a hero? I mean, I’m all for learning to work with your own disadvantages, but that sounds dangerously like telling someone to stick with stereotypes and never strive to be someone’s hero.
Adding a note to this: I’ve seen people misinterpret this video as being pro-Wiseau because I call him an auteur. Let me be absolutely clear: Wiseau is an auteur, and all auteurs are garbage.
“Writing. Direction. Producing. Acting. Long ago, the four
roles lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Studios attacked.
Only the Auteur, master of all four disciplines, could stop them, but when the
world needed him most, he vanished. A few years passed, and Greg and Sandy discovered
the new Auteur, an alien named Tommy. And although his financial skills are
great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Tommy
can save Hollywood."
This comment is extremely underrated.
Oh you mad genius, you!
This comment FTW
......I *hate* you for making me want to see something like this.
So, you're calling for the death of the auteur? ;P
Sensible_Chuckle.gif
The auteur will not die but the amount of trash that is coming in the future days will make him almost invisible.
Thanks for the reference to our video! I personally have a lot of issues with Auteur theory but I come at more from a practical filmmaking side of things. Auteur theory's greatest weakness is that it simplifies the filmmaking process and credits (or blames) all of a film's quality on one individual. The truth is a film is the sum product of the collaboration between the director, actors, writer, cinematographer and editor. To attribute everything that happens in a Michael Bay film to Michael Bay (or even a Hitchcock film to Hitchcock) is really dismissing the work of countless people who also worked on the film that ultimately shaped the direction of the film.
Auteurism wants to create a personal relationship between the Film and the director that Written novels have with their authors (language like "camera-stylo" or camera-pen is all throughout the original texts). The public and academia readily to buy into this analogy because the way in which a film ACTUALLY gets made is sort of clouded in a self perpetuated mysticism. This mysticism, as demonstrated really first by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, is *really good for business* (a lot of what Hitchcock says is hyperbole for the sake of publicity - including that cattle business). We're coming up on Awards Season so brace yourself for a lot more of this...
The Room may not just be a mockery of Auteur theory - but the natural result of filmmaking guided by a blind adherence to auteur theory. But Wiseau isn't the last auteur, walk into any film festival and you will find dozens of Wiseaus. With the popularization of pop-film-criticism on RUclips that stresses auteur theory, the incredibly easy access to filmmaking tech, and the ego necessary to actually complete a film... Tommy Wiseau isn't a rarity, he just happens to be the most famous of disaster artists... for now.
Thank you so much for the insight! And you're probably right- there are plenty of Wiseaus in the world, waiting to be discovered. But after the massive cultural shift in this past year, I think Wiseau will be the last auteur that the culture at large is willing to accept.
If an author of a novel uses professional help if he or she wants to for instance use foreign language in his or her work, does that make him or her less of an author? I don't believe a director is responsible for everything and I don't think most film reviews I've read or listened to claim that but to my understand directors usually have the power to veto against ideas they don't like.
In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to improvise in a scene by drinking beer from one of terminator's victims' fridge and acting like drunk. James Cameron made clear he didn't like that and you can't find that even in the deleted scenes.
sanjurosama yes directors always have veto power. But the analogy to translation doesn't describe the relationship, it really is closer to an author hiring other authors to write scenes.
Really the best analogy is the relationship is closer to a conductor of a symphony. The conductor does not create the music, but the conductor does craft the performance.
I didn't mean a translator but for instances where more than one language is used and the author wants to convey some level of authencity.
I do think that some directors hold more creative power than others, not just because they have the money. Someone like Akira Kurosawa earned his places as a director first by being an assistant director and a screenwriter, before making his own movies.
I know it's unfair but when I like or dislike a movie, I usually credit, whoever I think has the most power in the production, which is usually either the director or the producer. There are many cases, where directors don't follow the script, either when shooting or editing, edit or replace the credited composer's work, edit or dub actor's performance and so on. Besides, I can't really blame child actors, because it's the higher up's responsibility to cast well and give good direction.
Sometimes individual actors might override the director's "vision" like in the case of Fist of Fury, where Bruce Lee took over the action scenes, which is what the movie is known for or Drunken Master II, which was taken over by Jackie Chan, when filming was taken to Hong Kong.
Filmmaker IQ I feel like the analogy of a conductor to musicians doesnt work well. The conductor didnt necessarily write the piece, and doesnt get much leeway in terms of how heorshe feels like a well known song should be performed based on their own ideals. A conductor just has to keep everyone in step and on the same page. A director gets to tweak every little nuance if they choose. It is those tweaks that a director consistantly does that sets them apart from others.
"Repetition without development is decline."
YESSSSSSSSSSSS. I am going to cut open my chest, crack open my ribcage like an egg and etch that sentence onto my heart with an argon laser.
Great Eyewarp Such words have never rang more true. What came to my mind when that was said were authors Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King, and Jodi Picclout.
It could also be stagnation.
What about Refinement? Nuance? Subtly? Just because a director uses a shot a lot doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. It could become a shorthand; A piece of that directors language in their dialogue with the viewer. You think it's lazy, but if a director has the luxury of having a career consisting of multiple movies then I would expect to see a style consisting of shorthand and personal flourish develop. Directors who "experiment" or don't nail down a style of their own. To paraphrase H.P. Lovecraft, earlier in his career he said of his own work that he had "Poe" works and "Stoker" or "Shelley" works but he'd yet to have a "Lovecraft" work. Anyone can mug someone else, and one can take aesthetics or aspects from others, but having a discernible style makes a person distinct. It makes you memorable.
I've thought about this in the context of Zach Snyder's films. There's plot points in his work that are clearly copied from earlier works, his own or from adaptations, but he tends to imitate them shallowly and not capture what they originally meant. In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan is accused of being a menace, leaves humanity to wander, and grows more and more disinterested in the notion of life until he is moved to return by the beauty of life's randomness. In Batman v. Superman, Superman is accused of being a menace, leaves humanity to wander... and then suddenly returns the instant his girlfriend's in danger.
Yes, but that would, precisely, mean repetition WITH development.
I had to pause at 2:50 and reconsider the universe.
THERE’S A REASON SHE’S HIS FUTURE WIFE!!!!
Sadly Tommy can not escape the French language in English 😂 the word future is also a french word
So, we kept making the same day dream over and over in our media.
And when a mysterious man came and did the same we couldn't do much but to laugh at what he reflected about ourselves.
Damn. Too much truth in this for my day off
My other problem with auteur theory is how it disregards all other contributions to the film. The Room would not have been made without Sestero's companionship and Sandy's co-direction. It would not have been finished without Eric Chase's editing (that poor unfortunate soul). Vertigo would have been a very different movie without James Stewart, and the final scene of Psycho was imposed by the studio (for better or for worse). Film is a collaborative medium. Encouraging directors to ignore the masters of craft who surround them is detrimental to the process.
What mediums are not collaborative?
@@GagsAnimation none of them, but film is one of the most collaborative, definitely compared to novels
@@biskit8050 what about comics and novels?
"We've all felt the need to perform, to show ourselves as funny, and charming, and vibrant, and loved, even if we're only pretending to be"
Damn, Kyle, why are you calling me out like that? Lol
I feel you. I have no idea whether my art is good or not, and I've sometimes told myself "An artist is one who creates and finishes their work" to make myself feel more confident. I may not be doing what I want as well as I want, but even a mediocre person who sees a project out to the end is more successful than a talented person who quits halfway. That's why I'm hesitant to criticise Tommy Wiseau. I mean, "The Room" is not a very good movie, but it's also one more movie than I've made in my life. I wouldn't even know where to start making one.
M. Wayne
Wiseau tried, but failed. Lots of people die without even doing the former. I know this sucks as a fucking pep talk, but hey, do the art you want to do. The world needs more art.
Finishing anything is where art comes from, in my opinion. I had aspirations to be a writer at one time, but I've regressed from awful fanfic garbage to being unable to string the simplest plot together anymore. Don't be me. Put something out there. That's my pep talk :D
Film directors should be guides, not Gods.
Those Kael quotes are great, but her using Hitchcock is a bad example. He didn't just repeat himself he refined his limited approach to a point. I love Reed as well both ways of working are valid.
Yeah, to me he's a good example of her earlier point of repetition but with development and refinement. Not perfection, necessarily, but change and alterations.
I really like videos like these, it's a big reason why I'm a fan of Lindsay Ellis: I like hearing about how even "bad" and "shallow" media can have value. Is The Room good? Of course not, but it still reflects a certain mindset, certain attitudes, certain aspects of the society it was made in.
I'll have to check out that Pauline Kael video. She sounds totally savage.
read some Adam Cadre if you're ever interested: adamcadre.ac/calendar. he does a lot of film analysis that tries to reflect it in the history and theory it's based in, and he probably led me directly to Lindsay and Kyle's more analytical videos.
The "Kaeleesi" killed me.
Richard Brody
film critic, author, BEARD EXPERT
I often go through life in awe of great beards, and the unworthy humans blessed with the good fortune to be chosen by them. In my line of work, I meet many such great beards, and I do my best to pay proper tribute to each and every one.
Thank you Mr K, for all of your bleeding bullets onto blank doc files, and hard labour in the editing software. You've delivered some of the most fascinating, challenging, and hilarious entries in the 'what the hell does video essay mean' canon.
I hope that you and all your loved ones have the best possible Christmas time, whatever form that takes.
You mention Welles, which I find interesting. Because Welles was, while initially quite "auteur-ish" later very open about how much Gregg Toland, "Citizen Kane's" cinematographer, shaped the aesthetic of the film.
Also, just because we deify auteurs to the point of absurdity doesn't mean they didn't make great films.
Noah Blank Welles is an interesting example, because he comes off as someone who has long realized how much of a joke auteur theory is, and is just playing along and giving zero fucks about his still-oblivious audience. He was larger than life (literally) and he owned it.
Compare that with Hitchcock, whose films and personality always come off to me like he's believing his own auteur hype. He's so full of himself. It's like Film Class 101, it's so unbelievably straight. I have a hard time watching Hitchcock, personally, and I don't know why.
DellDuckfan313 I love Hitchcock as a director, personally. I still have trouble sleeping because of "Psycho." But he was, admittedly, a terrible, terrible person.
Noah Blank I never quite found the line that connected auteurs to being bad automatically. Auteur-ism is bad because some cherry picked examples are...perverts maybe? And having sexuality expressed on film is bad because...racism?
I felt like this video came down to a few interesting arguments against auteur worship. Worship. Because the lady seemed to be dissing the audience and critics more than the filmmakers from the few lines Kyle showed us and the other half of the video was Kyle apologizing for being a straight, white guy interested in film.
Apology accepted?
Thanatos388 See, I felt Kyle was attacking the dictatorial power structure behind auteurship more. Let's give all creative decisions to some white guy to whom everyone else must budge. If you squint it's a bit like Great Man Theory. Tommy shows us that in practice, this can lead to a director bullying his cast and crew (and himself, which is something Kyle didn't mention) in order to fulfill some kind of demented vision. It's also related to abuse of power (Weinsteinian or otherwise) and discrimination.
At least that's what I got from it. I'm not sure what Kyle wants, exactly. More movies made by committee?
I honestly never got that reference to Rebel Without A Cause until The Disaster Artist. It’s been forever since I’ve watched Rebel, and that line never stuck out to me.
Fun fact: Wiseau originally misquoted the line as "you're taking me apart" until he had to be reminded it's actually "you're tearing me apart".
Another thing that neither Kyle or Pauline Kael bring up is that film is inherently a collaborative medium. Auteur theory could be argued about artforms like painting, sculpture, literature and (sometimes) music that's usually the creation of just one person, but applying it to film undermines the contributions of everyone else who worked on it. Sure, the director has control over how certain things go, but in the end the actors, editor, cinematographer, screenwriter, costume designer, set designer, special effects artist, composer are all integral to making a movie the way it is. There are plenty of "auteurs" who owe their style to certain collaborators. Would Martin Scorsese be the same without the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker? Would the Coen Brothers' movies look the same without the DP work of Roger Deakins? Would Tim Burton's movies sound the same without the scores of Danny Elfman? Hell, think of all the set designers, sound engineers, puppeteers and special effects artists that made Star Wars so iconic, and yet it's George Lucas who gets all the credit. The point is, auteur theory doesn't apply to film because movies aren't just some magic force born out of thin air from the unbridled creative energy of one guy, unless that one guy did literally everything himself.
The whole point of auteur theory was to argue that film had a main voice like those other things, because otherwise film could not be art as people at the time understood it. The cahires du cinema critics created auteur theory specifically for movies and the repetition was used as example for a director's influence from one project to another. Those other things (besides music) didn't need auteur theory to begin with and it doesn't apply to them. That whole point about all the set designers and editors? That's talked about and how it compares to the role of the director and if you want to talk auteur theory you should probably start with those publications. It's like responding to an argument about whether morality requires a god figure to exist meaningfully with "well we don't know god is real", that subject is a lot of books earlier.
I don’t think I fully agree with this idea. While I can see how the auteur theory can be limiting and dangerous, I don’t think it’s reasonable to outright say that all that comes out of it is trash. I’m not a fan of giving the director full credit for the film, but I think at times a driving vision, personality, or leadership can definitely add to a film. I think it just depends on a case by case study where’re some films like the Wizard of Oz or Casablanca really shine from collaboration, while the 400 Blows or the Love Witch wouldn’t be the same without that driving individual. Overall this brings up a good argument and I’d love to hear what other people think.
I agree with most of what you said: a director conceived as an artist represents a driving force behind an idea on cinema, it is, after all, the vision upon which a visual and sonorous image is displayed on a cinematic experience. Of course, one can (and more often than not does) give credit to musicians, actors, set and costume designers, etc.: it is quite rare if not impossible to find a filmmaker who has created a piece all by himself (in this respect, as many others have stablished, films are a collaborative effort indeed).
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Weine, although not yet considered an auteur piece, can serve as an example of such necessity of credit beyond the director. Just to point at one element, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. It was actually designed by artists (prominently by Hermann Warm) with a heavy influence of the german expressionist movement, which printed a surprisingly effective aura of mystery and horror to the film (if you haven´t seen it, I urge you to look for images on google and imagine what the movie is like). This aesthetic was, in my opinion, largely responsible for the success of the director´s idea, and thus should be noted as an important contributor of the project as a whole. Another example is that of actor Klaus Kinski, who was famous for undermining, even ridiculizing, the decisions of pretty much every director he worked with. Of course, the fact that, despite his infamous temper, he was still a very sought after artist speaks volumes on his talent as an actor, and thus, it could be said, his importance in the movies he appeared on.
Now, the last example gives way to what I am intending to add to the conversation: that the "cinéma de auteur" is often misunderstood or quite frankly misinterpreted as a "limiting" or even offensive concept. Klaus Kinski was, in my humble opinion, an actor who pretty much deserved the recognition that he gave to his own work: "monumental", at times even sublime. Yet, there is a reason why, when one sees Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, or Aguirre: The Wrath of God, one is compeled to experience it as a Werner Herzog film. And that is because, ultimately, it is HIS vision as an artist that which is being realised right there, in the cinematic experience; it is HIS idea on cinema which is moving in front of the spectator.
Of course this doesn´t necessarily mean that the audience or even the cast and crew are being alienated from the cinematic experience. In fact, as Marcel Duchamp eloquently put it, I firmly believe that the artistic experience in general is conformed by three: the artist, the piece itself and the posterity, or audience. Now, accepting this distinction would mean one has to recognise, as you put it, the "driving vision" behind the project. And really the "cinéma de auteur" is precisely that: acknowledging the filmmaker as that driving vision; the cosmology, the ideas, the images, the sounds, the themes that can be ultimately traced back to the artist´s mind as an origin. So, rather than thinking the notion of auteur as a limiting concept, I prefer to see it as the liberty of the filmmaker to realise his vision without compromises (historically, this is the original meaning and relevance of the cinéma de auteur in opposition to the Hays Code or the impositions of the producers´agendas in Hollywood or under regimes such as Hitler´s, Mussolini´s or Stalin´s). It is, after all, the realisation of freedom through and by cinema. This is beautifully represented by Werner Herzog´s vision and decisions driving Kinski´s temper towards an outstanding performance for his films.
Sorry for the long post, I hope it is at least interesting to the handful who choose to read it.
FWIW I don't think even most proponents of Auteur theory (at least not in it's more modern and nuanced forms) would really argue that all directors should get full credit for a film, but rather that certain directors clearly wield greater influence over a work than others and thus can stake a firmer claim to true authorship. There are offshoots of Auteur theory that are even formally willing to extend the concept of authorship to individuals other than the director in certain circumstances (the producer in classical Hollywood Cinema for example).
Film may be a collaborative art form, but from my perspective, there clearly are times when people are reduced to technicians laboring in service of someone else's artistic vision.
i think there's a legitimate (if temporary) value to auteur theory: it lets us use our old language of art with film (and video games). the film is the first piece of art that is not primarily designed by a single person. even plays had their playwrights, great works of architecture their architect, but who do we point to as the creator of a film? obviously we can't. too many people share the big decisions. so the development of auteur theory kind of makes sense because it lets us figure out film using background from other mediums (questions it prompts: how is the auteur like/unlike the visual artist? the author? the playwright?). auteur theory isn't accurate but it can still be useful
Praise for this amazing video aside, I think someone like Tommy Wiseau exposes the dangers of the auteur theory (and its descendants) rather than the complete failure of this theory. This idea of auterism as a fantasy, while true, doesn't explain auteurs who came before the theory (the ones the Nouvelle Vague so highly praised), or female auteurs like Agnès Varda or Chantal Akerman, who have very distinct styles and don't operate under this male fantasy. Besides, Sarris himself defends in his Notes on the Auteur Theory that it was a political move (like many others in film history) designed to provoke and stimulate new perspectives in film criticism, even though some critics and directors were radical auterists anyway. The problem with auteurism is more in its perception by others than in its meaning itself, I think; reducing auteurism to what some male directors do with it can't be entirely correct. It's about a person directing, but it's also about their vision of the world, of film history and of themselves.
"Auteur Theory... was... designed to provoke and stimulate new perspectives in film criticism, even though some critics and directors were radical auterists anyway."
Exactly. So if the new perspectives are no longer new, and directors can act according to it without intentionally being a part of it, what good does it do? Why is/was an auteur held in high regard by the common people? What purpose auteurs serve in a time when every RUclipsr is an auteur? Isn't the general low quality of RUclips a direct outcome of Auteur Theory? Shouldn't it be therefore seen as an undesirable state, or at least, a call to caution?
I think it boils down to a couple things:
1. It's a form of brand recognition. If people identify an artist with a specific overriding style that speaks to them, it's comforting to know what they're likely to get when they go to see a new work by that artist.
2. It's a reaction to the mainstream Hollywood product. At a time when the big commercial releases that dominate cinema are generally seen as cynical attempts to soak audiences for the price of a ticket and build franchises and cross platform media tie ins, people feel the need to rally around anyone who's seen from some sort of genuine artistic drive. When people feel like all vestiges of art are being driven out of the marketplace, even a low quality attempt will assume an aura of respectability.
6:44-6:53
"You either die as a beloved auteur, or live long enough to see yourself trending on Twitter for being a repulsive predator"
:P
Tell that to John Waters
It is better to be nobody than it is to make another person suffer through your sexual abuse so you can get a trophy.
Tuckerscreator
Thought the same thing when I saw that other guy comment that shit (If your comment was directed at me and not the other person, that wasn't the intention of my comment. I was just pointing out how lots of people in Hollywood turn out to be creeps)
my point was john waters made a career out of being a creep (without ever being predatory) and he now a more stand up individuals then people who made far less creepy/disturbing films
Dylan B.
When I said "the other guy" in my comment, I was speaking of someone who said "It's better than not being remembered by history" or some shit like that, but I think their comment got deleted. Sorry abt the misunderstanding. I don't know if the Tuckerscreator guy was responding to you, or the "remembered by history" guy, but I think it was probably the latter. Again, just a simple misunderstanding.
auteur theory has its jump-the-shark moments, but to dismiss it as promoting "trash" is a fundamental flaw even from the perspective you seem to espouse in your videos, namely, the fact that the types of stories being told in cinema would be different if the industry were more inclusive with regard to women, minorities, LGBT community, etc. To assume that the stories being told and the techniques being used to tell them would be different based upon the identity (sexual, racial, or otherwise) of the primary creative force in the film is EXACTLY one of the major tenets of auteur theory. so, yeah, you can't have your cake and eat it too here.
I’m not sure the argument was that auteur theory was bad because it focuses too much on the individual that directs the film more so that the theory in practice tends to overlook these marginalized groups because it focuses on a body of work which people who aren’t a straight white men tend to have less access too. So the outcome tends to be “auteurs are the most brilliant filmmakers” and these auteurs tend to be of a certain demographic solidifying them as “better” filmmakers thus giving them more opportunities at the expense of their counterparts and repeating the cycle. Does that make sense?
Sam Hall I think I get what you’re saying. I don’t think we should be as flippant about auteur theory either but I think Kyle’s criticisms are still valid even though it’s not conclusive.
Kyle's argument in this video can be summarized as this:
"These directors shouldn't make movies the way they do, because wamen!".
What a tragic misunderstanding on your part.
@@alexgaggio2957 That makes perfect sense, frankly.
I'm sure Mr. Wiseau wouldn't like to be seen as an auteur. He'd probably prefer "a singular artist who controls all aspects of a collaborative creative work, a person equivalent to the author of a novel or a play". Call him an auteur and he'll probably tackle you.
Haha...what a video Kyle! 😎
Bunny in the Box by the way how is your sex Life..!😁😎
Fûck A cheap
God, I fucking love Pauline Kael
erin h Pauline GODDAMN Karl
The Greatest generation meets the Silent Generation. Something about people from that era made them manifest the smartest and most self aware culture America ever produced.
I KNOW RIGHT??? She was literally one of the most influential voices in cinema critique and some film buffs don't even know her...
erin h I'd never heard of her before but she seems really fascinating.
I find myself often not agreeing with her reviews, but I still find her work to be worth the time.
I felt your implication that a person taking on the role of a predominate creative voice in a work automatically leads to mediocre navel-gazing films and turns artists into narcissists and sexual predators was a bit of a logical leap. Can't one still view the director as the author of a film while still admiring and appreciating the creative contributions of actors, production designers, cinematographers, etc?
I am sorry to say this kyle, I love your work but I need to say that I am not sure all this hangs together as well as it seems. I am in the majority of your twitter poll when I say an auteur is someone with extraordinary control over a filmmaking project. This makes the auteur unique in this sense because it collapses what is a collaborative enterprise to a personal one. So as we as an audience view the final result the ideal goal should be to be a personal experience between the auteur and the audience beyond that is the impersonality of a committee-made film. The fact that this image seems to be associated to the "strong decisive man" does not seem to me to be the central flaw in the paradigm, as strong decisive action, regardless of the gender of the one who executes it, seems to be the main force that propels an auteur-like work. If anything, the hilarious failure of The Room doesn't necessarily show the death of the auteur theory in itself, or even its final conclusion, it just seems to clarify in the most obvious terms the immediate pitfall of having total control of a project: if you can't make it work, no one can. so to me it seems that the real "moral" of The Room is not the death of the auteur, but just the idea that sometimes, you need to let someone help out with a passion to make it work.
Oh hi Kyle...
Merry Christmas everyone! Kyle; just a quick note, you made me want to become a director and scriptwriter through your film theory and analysis. And this video is no exception, showing something that is fascinating, confusing but all around brilliant while discussing Auteur theory. Kudos!
The DISPARITY between the things Kyle says about auteur theory and the things that are put up on the screen is probably my favorite part.
I feel a bit confused, still, though. Perhaps this one went just a shade 2deep4me. Is Kyle attacking auteur filmmaking as a whole, or is he just going after the hacks that turn their films into Gary Stu fanfics? If it's the latter, more power to him. If the former?
...personally, I've always thought of Spielberg as an auteur, even as mainstream as his movies are, and I can't think of a single movie of his that I do not like. Speaking of, Kyle, a Spielberg video someday would be lovely. Like...Love Witch "OH MY GOD WE'RE IN A CAKE" lovely. ^_^
Happy Holidays, Mr. Kallgren.
The comment section is daily full with auteurs
"Aut-" something alright...
Definitely not autism (this is coming from an autistic film fan)
Sadly Harvey Weinstein won't be harrassing them anymore. Julie Taymor's Frida wouldn't have as much nudity, if it wasn't for him. Bong Joon-ho sure made the wrong choice, when he didn't let him cut Snowpiercer.
Mr. Kallgren, I wonder if you've had any thoughts about Pauleen Kael as a critic. I was troubled when I read her film books. I know she was considered a heroine when she supported Bonnie and Clyde against the attacks of Bosley Crowther (who hated the film mostly because it violated his sense of morality). And I know she lost prestige when she spent a weekend during the shooting of Nashville and raved about how wonderful it was...long before the film was finished or released. Whereas you express your ideas with clarity, even explaining some things such as auteur theory so even a chimpanzee like me can understand them, Kael always read as if she was Professor Kingsfield of The Paper Chase, expecting her readers to know what she was talking about, and hating them to the point of assassination if we didn't. Hope that you'll give your thoughts about Kael sometime in the future.
*raises hand* While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, didn't you say earlier that Love Witch was also a good example of Auteur theory gone right? If so, than by that extension, wouldn't that make Mr. Wiseau not the last Auteur? Or is it because Ms. Billar didn't star in it that it doesn't apply to the same degree as Mr.Wiseau?
Getting to this late, but I think what Kyle means (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that Wiseau is not *literally* the last auteur, but is the *culmination* of the Auteur Theory taken to its logical conclusion. A talentless fool with complete control of his film, who subjects everyone else to his whims and vision-- even if everything that comes from it is dreck.
I was once at a Room screening where we got to ask questions to Tommy and I asked him "Describe your use of Mise en Scène as an auteur in the film medium" and everyone booed me off.
So... how far back in etymology do we have to go before something counts as a French word?
Like, fiancée is bad bc it has an accent(?) but future (which also comes from French) is fine because it was adopted long enough ago that the pronunciation changed?
If it's not currently a French word then Tommy doesn't have a problem with it. The book claims he lived in France but grew to hate it because he was badly mistreated there. And his last name is derived from the French word for bird, "oiseau".
Although in a certain sense, he got the American dream. A foreigner because of his unmovable passions became an icon.
Redefining how I view my favorite film directors with your repetition in style point. Im shook
Auteur implies the director has a body of work as you stated but Tommy has only directed one film. There isn't a consistency to his form only a single instance, he's not an auteur.
He's made others: The Neighbors and The House That Drips Blood On Alex. They are very full of awkwardness and "oh hai"s.
@@Tuckerscreator According to it's credits Tommy didn't really do anything on THTDBOA other than act in it.
Tommy literally uses Kubrick and Hitchcock's poor treatment of staff as a defence when he is abusing his stars onset.
Whatabout-ery? How very 2017 discourse of him!
Did Kubrick even treat his staff poorly? He drove Shelly Duval mad but I never heard much else.
Rhino 'n Chips You can add Doug Walker in that list now. Lol
The implication that Neil Been isn’t the greatest filmmaker of our time is deeply upsetting and frankly insulting to the art.
One of the most toxic ideas that I see a lot going along with auteur theory is often how it's used to justify bad behaviour and disrespect. The idea that true artists always abuse people, that true artists always treat other people like dirt, that true artists are arrogant, self-absorbed, and cruel. This idea is toxic because not only does it justify abuse and cruelty by hiding it behind a veil of artistry and genius and not only because it teaches people that, if you act arrogant, self-absorbed, and treat other people like dirt, then you are a great auteur, but that it also creates an atmosphere where other geniuses, geniuses who are not arrogant, self-absorbed, and don't treat people like dirt are unable to survive. For every genius who revolutionizes the media while being a complete and utter jerk, there are at least five who could do what that person does and better who aren't complete jerks that will never get their work taken seriously. And, of course, those geniuses are often people of colour, LGBT, women and non-binary, neuroatypical, etc. In the end, what really makes genius jerks flourish isn't their talent, but their cruelty, their lack of concern for other people, and their willingness to step on other people, and that toxic idea of the genius jerk only creates an environment where that's the only way to get to the top. I think if there's one thing that I've seen in modern cinema, especially in 2017 and coming in 2018, it's that it has shown that, when given the chance to show what they can do, all those people who never would have gotten a second look by the industry can revolutionize their medias and their fields and change entire genres and tell stories that no one has seen before and becoming hugely successful for it, but they have to be given a chance and a fair chance at that.
I think that I'm one of those people who wants nothing more than to create beautiful things and tell stories which change the world, but someone who can't survive in a cruel, dog-eat-dog world, but hopefully I'll be given my chance someday soon. If nothing else, this year and the coming year make me hopefully. Hopefully, one day, people will see my work in bookstores and up on the big screen, that's all I've ever dreamed of.
This a million times. Along with that horrible quote, "pain is temporary, film is forever" being used to justify putting people in dangerous positions.
It's tough - you have to hustle. You have to endure what others won't... but that's not reason to treat people like crap.
I never knew these great directors who would be crappy human beings based on the fact about how they treat their actors like garbage, just to get their positions right!
@The Logomaker
You forgot to mention Wes Anderson and Edgar Wright! The ones who have treated their actors well
Wouldn't making Tommy Wiseau an auteur also mean that Ed Wood is also an auteur?
Would it mean that Anna Biller is also can autuer? (in the caste of Anna Biller, I'd say yes and I'd love her to direct a reboot of the TV series _Tales Of The Unexpected_ but only if they keep the original iconic British theme tune and at least a recreation of the British title sequence)
All I can think of is that his hatred of the French language reveals him coming from a Francophone country where his work was *REALLY* rejected and that caused him to come to America. He probably has some work in French that predates The Room that might actually be better than The Room, but we may never know as all that work is most likely lost.
Geeze Kyle don't hold back. Tell us what you *really* think about Auteurs.
Just seeing a picture of Wes Anderson makes me happy, I love that man, he is crazy talented.
Thank you for the Pauline Kael lecture link. That is freaking glorious.
Excellent video as always but I could not help rewinding that Mulholland Dr. bit. That shit had me CACKLING.
This is exactly why video games don't need a celebrity culture. John Romero ran himself into the ground in the 90s, Hideo Kojima was a big name, but I think it's clear that much of his style did not pass the test of time, and David Cage just can't write human beings. Like film, games are a collaborative effort, and with 3D animators getting treated "like cattle" (see LA Noire), we don't need any more reinforcement for throwing people under a bus. We need our nutcases coming up with ideas (John Romero's main strong point), but we should be feeding imaginations, not egos.
This might be why Time-Traveling Alien In Person Suit John Carmack prefers to stay behind the scenes, so to speak
While your points are excellent, I will say, there really should be a broader conception amongst film circles on who the major shaping "voice" of a piece is. Like, say, in terms of effects artists I would call Screaming Mad George and Paul Blaisdell auteurs. Ditto for William Golding as the main auteur on the Princess Bride, because so much of that piece's majesty is in his script.
Tho, of course, lending credence to the industry-sexism-related issues of auteur theory, you wouldn't believe the time I had trying to find five distinctive female directors for an installment of a piece I'm planning on doing for kaiju based on the styles of certain film directors (BTW, the ones I settled on were Katheryn Bigelow, Julie Taymor, Lotte Reiniger, Sally Cruikshank and Rachel Talalay)
Caroline Leaf?
...Okay, I think I got a sixth entry for that now, thank you. That's the great thing about animation, the individual creators' style can come out a lot stronger. As one can see also, heck, also amongst artists of color like Milton Knight of Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog and Twisted Tales of Felix The Cat fame, and in the Bambi backgrounds of Tyrus Wong...
Thank you for the introduction to Pauline Kael, long may she reign.
New Kyle? About The Room? Well there goes my homework.
The story of Tommy Wiseau comes off kinda as a tragedy when put like this. A man standing tragically and buffoonishly in the ruins of his failure without being able to understand why he has failed, since, as far as he knows, he has done everything he needed to do to guarantee success.
The label "auteur" was never intended to indicate quality any more than "author" was meant to indicate great writing skill or "artist" is inherently meant to indicate particularly good painting skill. The term "vulgar auteurism" was a ridiculous misunderstanding of the term and its brief popularity on "film twitter" proves nothing outside of how low the bar has been lowered on film writing in the 21st Century. The fact that Tommy Wiseau took himself too seriously does not make him an auteur. Had he established his inept style over multiple movies that might have made him one, but that still would have proven nothing about the term as it was never meant as an indication of quality.
The thing is you have only to surf about this comment page to see a lot of people who conflate "auteur" and genius. As always, the meaning of words, when it flows out of its original use is uncontrollable.
I was reminded of this video when watching Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, which many people have compared to The Room.
My biggest gripe with auteur theory and similar theories in criticism is how it makes the jump from being descriptive to being normative too quickly. It's one thing to say "There is such a thing as an auteur." It's quite another, as Pauline Kael clearly described, to then also say "And auteurs stand for quality."
Also, if you think Wiseau is the last auteur you haven't seen my main man Neil Breen yet. Because oh baby, ohhhh baby!
"Gud directors make pretty"
"Gr8 directors r 2deep4u" was my favorite.
Jesus that fiancé bit caught me off guard and split my sides into orbit.
Thank you so much for gifting the ignorants amongst us (me, for example) with Pauline Kael. I listened to the whole thing and looked up some of her reviews. While some of her points are debatable, she's just perfect. The pinched, old-fashioned announcer voice delivering one burn after the other in a reasonable 'just saying' tone is amazing. She's the Violet Crawley of critics and I feel like writing an entire novel about her, now.
Auteur theory always seemed ridiculous to me purely on the level that it downplays the contributions of the HUNDREDS of other people who work on a film prepro, during production, and post
Sam Sagins So if Wes Anderson wasn't there Moonrise Kingdom would pretty much be the same movie?
Hundreds of people work on Citizen Kane. What's your point? They created it without Orson Welles.
Oddeyeful Do you agree with this clip in regards to most jobs where there is someone in charge? ruclips.net/video/FNEDJPeoHZo/видео.html
I wonder if calling The Room a death knell for auteur theory is too...erm... vulgar? To think of a director as exclusively an auteur is certainly a bad idea in a collaborative medium, but it's not like auteurism has yielded explicitly bad results. Tracy's "Vulgar Auteurism" is an attack on the limitations of relying upon individuals to always communicate a story in its proper essence through film. In particular, Tracy calls out Mann's Public Enemies for treating its subject (Dillinger) as the same, tight-laced protagonist just as any other of Mann's heroes, when that is exactly opposed to Dillinger's grandstanding nature. The stamp of the auteur thus undermines the integrity of the film as a whole. Wiseau also clearly uses his own authority to make absolute garbage.
Contrast the above with, say, Stanley Kubrick. While he certainly has an identifiable directorial stamp, the style of Barry Lyndon, Dr. Strangelove, and 2001: A Space Odyssey each exemplify their subject matter very well. Meanwhile, Kubrick was known to have direct control of each and every frame, taking time to rewrite scripts mid-shoot and taking as many takes as he felt were necessary: definitely the mark of a self-conscious auteur. Kubrick also, I believe, breaks from your example of abusing his role to aggrandize and realize his sexual fantasies. Dr. Strangelove openly mocks men's preoccupation with sex to the point that it outright destroys the world. A movie like Eyes Wide Shut, on the other hand, if indeed that is a realization of Kubrick's own fantasies, it hardly paints him as "funny, charming, vibrant, and loved," but rather acts as an exploration of the dark underbelly of sexual fantasy and its abuses by those with power and wealth (enough to host the movie's simply charming orgy).
Maybe Wiseau is simply the most hilariously egregious (probably not the worst) example of abusing and neglecting the responsibilities of being in control, especially on a creative project involving the input of so many craftspeople, actors, and actresses.
Thank you for putting into words what I could not. I kept thinking "But what about Kubrick?" throughout the entire video, and you specifically nail down my exact thoughts.
It also should be noted that Kael hated Kubrick's work, so I wonder if that plays a part as to why Kyle ignores the single biggest name in auteur theory in his auteur video. For my single self, I'm reluctant to put movie critics on too high of a pedestal. In the end, Kael spent most of her career simply getting paid to write her opinion. Not exactly the same as serious critique of the art form.
Thanks for pointing out Kael's dislike of Kubrick! I went out and read a few of her reviews of Kubrick's work as soon as you mentioned it. They certainly put my claim that his movies "exemplify their subject matter" up for grabs (or, honestly, sent them straight to Hell), as Kael explicitly argues that they simply do not. Kubrick opts instead for a cold, slow, and ultimately Kubrickian aesthetic. That said, Kubrick's style is still one that I really appreciate. I would sooner fault Stephen King's novel than I would the movie that it was adapted into (and King himself did not much appreciate the movie, which matters not at all to me). I would say the same of A Clockwork Orange, a book that Anthony Burgess himself didn't much care for in his own oeuvre, though he also disliked what changes Kubrick made (specifically that Alex returns to his old self).
I'm shifting goal posts here, but I do enjoy and prefer the liberties that Kubrick takes with his sources than were he passively adhering to them; these liberties were exactly what I and Tracy were faulting Michael Mann for in my original post. So, let me retcon my way out of this hole. Mann's biopic of Dillinger seems more beholden to its historical source. Dillinger was verifiably different than Mann's portrayal of him in Public Enemies. Compound that with the the fact that glorifying a gangster is not exactly something I can get behind. Kubrick's take on the Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, on the other hand, uses its setting effectively AND for an anti-war message that's more palatable to my tastes.
tl;dr- I like Kubrick anyway, #notallauteurs
To be honest it is kinda hard to 100% defend Kubrick's actions after he drove Shelley Duval to tears on the set of The Shining. Is driving someone to THAT level really the best way to create "great art"?
I thought by this point, nothing new or original could possibly be said about T. Wiseau and The Room.Boy oh boy, was I ever wrong.
That mulholland drive bit made me laugh harder than I have in years.
I guess it makes sense - I feel like I ready an interview somewhere where TW said he was trying to write a Tennessee Williams-esque piece.
10:16 just knocked this Thursday up a notch
That section discussing bodies of work thing was fucking savage, and I love it.
One thing I wonder, is how many auteurs actually called themselves auteurs? Or subscribed to the theory? I mean, of course the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers promoted auteur theory, but did Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kurosawa etc etc consider themselves auteurs? The one time I heard a director talk about auteur theory, it was George Lucas during the making of The Phantom Menace and... yeah we all know how that turned out. How much of auteurism is something we ascribe to directors ourselves? Other forms of art, like painting or writing, often involve very few people and are usually attributed to one person. Maybe our brains can't understand that what we're looking at is not the creation of a single person, but a large collective.
I don't know did Kurosawa ever use the word auteur, but besides directing, he also co-wrote/wrote most of his movies and edited most of them and didn't like studio interference. When he directed the scene in Dreams featuring Martin Scorsese playing Vincent Van Gogh, at first he let him act any way he wanted, then he pulled him back and told exactly, line by line how to act.
Oh my Lord when you used the clip from Greenaway's 8 1/2 Women I screamed. Perfect!
I wished somebody made this man talk about:
Alphaville + Tetsuo: The Iron Man + Christmas in Mars
and how they use similar artistic choices to approach the same themes; like using their architecture to represent a future.
Lol, you actually made good use of the soundtrack. Great video!
One thing that hasn't really been brought up: auteurs are measured by their body of work. Tommy Wiseau only has one film to his name.
"oh hi Mark"
This is incredible such an interesting new perspective that’s never occurred to me. Awesome video
Oh my god - I'd never read Circles and Squares. I feel like trying to describe my feelings about it would do both it and them a disservice. But it's everything a popular critical essay should be. Thanks, Kyle, for directing me to it.
Question: what's the difference between this video where you celebrate the death of auturism in film and all of the other videos where you go into extensive backstories about and deeply analyze the styles, aesthetics and tastes of the directors of movies you like?
I suppose the difference is that I consider directing a job, not a title. Directors are people, not gods. And we should stop treating them as such.
No argument here.
So in your past episodes, when you gush over a directors work, it's less "How are we lucky enough to have this person??" and more "Wow, they are REALLY freaking good at their job!" Is that right?
About auteur theory: Is Kubrick an auteur? He displays constant growth and change and variety and yet it is somewhat clear in every one of his films that it is a Kubrick film. Same with Paul Thomas Anderson, they both display change and growth, but I would (maybe I'm completely wrong) consider them auteurs
This just might be my new favorite of Kyle's videos. And I am totally here for tearing down auteur theory.
U know, it’s very rare that I subscribe based on just one video. But this is truly superb
I notice a conspicuous minimum of Kubrick in all this Auteur theory bashing, which is funny because I feel like Kubrick represents the zenith of what auteurism has the potential to be. And what it has meant to me personally. I would compare a director with a distinctive style similar to something like a Van Gough painting. Instantly recognizable and identifiable with the particular artist. I get your argument against the dangers of self indulgent tomfoolery, but I think you ignore the very real artistic achievement that comes from being able to set yourself apart with a look and aesthetic. I've always hated the million forgettable movies that grace the screen every year. Even something as ridiculous as The Room, which I wouldn't call good art btw, has a personality to it. People remember The Room.
Also, I'm disappointed in your apparent acclaim for Pauline Kael. Kael was and is a self-indulgent hack of the worst kind. I find that I agree with Renata Adler when she said the Kael's writings on cinema were "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless."
If we can call Hannibal or Montgomery great generals, then auteur theory is valid. Auteurs have the power to command their army to produce the outcome they want. It has no bearing on whether the final outcome is successful. There are good auteurs and bad auteurs, just as there are good generals and bad generals.
Love your essays so much.
Thanks for another great video, Kyle! Happy holidays!
I don’t think a director having a style is a bad thing. Wes Anderson and, dare I say, Baz Lurhman are some of my favorite directors that stick to a style. When you watch one of their movies though they’re never just the last one. Directing is like writing with a paintbrush, or a lense. Some writers write books with the same style but the story’s new so it doesn’t really matter because the way it was written wasn’t the point. I can say, while directing works with the story, it’s the same.
I think people like Anderson write personal stories about people, so his directing tends to stay very close and intimate. He’s also perfected a color palette, so he likes to use it, albeit in different ways each time and sticking to different colors. Baz...that could take a whole twenty minutes so let’s just leave his pretty lunacy alone at he moment.
The point is that having a style doesn’t mean your inferior to someone without one and visa versa. There is no one way you have to be, make your vision with the strokes you envision, even if you’ve used those stokes before.
Wait a minute, what about Anna Biller? I don't think I saw her in the directors' pictures.....And I distinctly remember that Kyle said she was "one of the best cases ever made for the auteur theory"......
Check out Brody's Front Row vids on the New Yorker
Well, yeah, but what comes next? Does the theory just have to evolve? Does our culture have to evolve? Does this fix itself by just having more voices in the room? What's the solution? I don't want it to be death of the author, I'm out of a job if it's death of the author. Name recognition can build a career. It can be the fulcrum upon which the success of a property is weighed. In the same way it's good practice to sign your paintings and your books and your video essays, it has to be good practice to sign your movies. Maybe I'm wrong about this and my frustration is the same egoism that drove Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks and Klan guy to go start UA, but, you know, it is stupid not to have your name on the poster. I want to go into television one day. I want to make movies. I'm studying to do that and I'm good at it. I want my shot. I want to get nominated for an award. I think that I can. I don't think auteurism should die, it just needs to evolve. It needs to become more cohesive. It needs to focus on collaborative practice and developing your own ideas. If we can't hold our artists to the same standards of self-improvement that we expect from the rest of our culture and that we futilely strive for as mere mortals, than what the fuck are we doing! Maybe this is an entirely new school of thought I'm proposing, but there's a reason we get excited about the NEXT Fincher project. Maybe the change we need to be is to see ourselves in the middle of history. Imagining what film can be. Once we've done that, it turns the artistic process into a journey of self discovery. The questions in interviews shouldn't be about the past, it should be about what's around the corner. Maybe this is utopian, and I'm rambley and unfocused and full of shit but I don't think Wiseau SHOULD be the last auteur. If Griffith's on your list, there's nowhere to go but up!
Do you think this applies to things like My Immortal too?
That's kind of a tricky question. Auteur theory might be a bit more applicable to art forms like paintings, sculpture, books and (sometimes) music, but when it comes to collaborative art forms like film, claiming that the director is the singular voice robs credit from everyone else who made the movie what it is (actors, cinematographers, editors, set designers, costume designers, special effects artists, composers etc.).
Graham Kristensen they're talking about the fanfiction, not the song.
I know.
As a fanfic writer myself, I can unequivocally state that, yes, fanfic is ALWAYS the fanficcer's fault.
very fascinating take. I would argue that the appeal and the beauty of auteurship is not that they reveal any truths about the world or about film itself, its that they, through the extreme personal nature of their work, unintentionally or intentionally reveal things about human nature. When we watch tarantino we see how a vulgar frat guy convinced of his own artistry views his ideal world. his literal or metaphorical fantasies. The audience often doesnt share that fantasy and thats where the potential for a deep dive into the psyche of a type of person we cannot relate to is. We can see the world thrpough the eyes of another person, in wes andersons case through the mind of a child. He is not a child obviously, but his ideal world is seen through that lens. That in turn allows us to explore that identity through the auteur. After all its not just frat boys who love the gory action of kill bill. The reason it is elevated above other action films is because of its use of style to allow us to view the world through an unfamiliar lens.
the style of an auteur is their psychological art. They play mind games with us to force us to see the world like they do. We feel the mystery in a hitchcock film because he has convinced us that a world where things like that can happen.
That "Ars" censor bar might be the funniest thing I've ever seen.
I always learn something new from your videos.
Thank you for your hard work.
Is someone make a list of directors shown in the vid please? I recognized quite a bit, but not all of them
While I follow your hypothesis, though I don't agree with it, I really did like your break down of the auteur. I mean you had an idea and went through with it to a concise point. I have no idea why Google suggested this video for me, but I am glad I watch it. Good job on the video. It is great to hear hot takes like this. I would have liked you to go a bit more into the financial and producer side of it and why the idea of the auteur has been in decline, or as you said Tommy may be the last, and I would recommend a Entertainment Weekly piece that tackles this same idea with massive corporations churning out these mega-blockbusters and reducing what the director intends. That's why I take every small indie movie that makes it big and has a superb sense of style as a small victory against these conglomerates. It would also be interesting if you looked into how films like La La Land use the same outdated ideals, like the room, and place mediocre actors and a basic musical theme to entertain Hollywood elites in search of glory and being respected in Hollywood as the old school Auteur would be. One last thing! The works of Carol Reed is so underappreciated when it comes to his filmography!
Honestly listening to Pauline Kael rip apart auteur theory and anti art was the best hour I’ve spent today.
Really, isn't literally anyone with a significant body of work in which they're creatively invested considered an 'auteur'? Isn't repetition - with improvement and variation, ideally - an inherent part of artistic development? It's harder to see in this medium, but it's there. You have to build on past failure. Do it again, try it differently, and find the best way. I can't imagine many artists start with a clean slate going into every project.
tl;dr: Auteur theory seems to me just a very complicated way of saying filmmakers are artists, written by people who aren't artists and don't understand that journey.
"(Hitchcock) said that actors are cattle. That would make child actors veal." -- Mara Wilson
Beginning: I think Kyle doesn't like Auteurs...
Ending: Jesus Christ, that hate boner is gigantic!
Seriously though, a good Auteur _can_ brake through common clichés by disregarding what is "marketable" and doing his own thing, thus creating a new style.
On the other hand we see lots of Directors who get high on snorting their own farts, and we can't even blame them because everyone keeps telling them how _unique_ their style is. In this regard Kyle's critique of Auteur Theory is _more_ than valid.
I do think there are some issues with the auteur theory, as someone already said the general public and particularly the academia buys it in order to create a personal relationship between director and film akin to that of author and novel, but film being a collaborative art can't be seen as the work of one single person. That being said, there are technic, aesthetic, thematic and generic trends that can be found in some directors' body of work, what would qualify them as an auteur. I agree that "repetition without development is decline", and that certainly applies to directors like Tarantino and Wes Anderson (I do like them both), but there are other directors like Kubrick, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Fellini, Scorsese, etc. that do show development in their ideas and techniques even while repeating certain tropes. I believe that the main characteristic of an auteur is that his work is idiosyncratic, but that doesn't make him necessarily a better director than a more versatile one. I think that's the issue in this debate: auteurs tend to be glorified and mystified, especially here on RUclips, and their trademarks are taken like synonyms for quality, ignoring the fact that there just as many bad auteurs (like Wiseau, Michael Bay or Shymalan) as there are good genre directors (Spielberg, Scott, Cameron). So to sum up, I believe Kael is being rather harsh on the auteur theory itself, instead of recognizing that the problem lies with the academia for automatically elevating the status of any film or director that subscribes to this theory as high art.
You and Lindsey really need to do a crossover, just like in da gud ol' daiz
MayanExpression He and Lindsay did do a crossover together exploring the Tom Green oeuvre through the (ahem) magnificence of their “Freddy Got Fingered” crossover review. I believe Lindsay has that one on her site. It’s the best and a comedy skit to boot.
EDIT: ....ah, but reading on, you already acknowledged that, still it was great, no?
yeah I still love that review, but seeing how both their channels have had a radical shift in style and content compared to the TGWTG era, it would be interesting to see what they would do this time
They have? I don't know, aside from production value I don't see a radical shift between now and the Blip.tv days as far as Kyle is concerned. Maybe fewer visual gags?
watch the French & Saunders' spoof of Fellini, especially the 8 1/2 part, it's hilarious
Also check out The Dove, late-60's Ingmar Bergman spoof featuring Madeline Kahn
Another great one. Thanks!
Wait, hang on, I don’t quite follow. You wish he’d embraced the fact that he’s a creepy looking foreign guy instead of pursuing his dream of playing a hero? I mean, I’m all for learning to work with your own disadvantages, but that sounds dangerously like telling someone to stick with stereotypes and never strive to be someone’s hero.