In the late 1950s and early ’60s, some high-minded French critics dreamt up a new way to excuse their enjoyment of Hollywood melodrama and comedies: the auteur theory, which, in its most basic form, suggests that every film has the unmistakable mark of its director. It is true that a director’s canon can encompass certain stylistic and narrative tendencies, but the real danger of auteur criticism is that, by definition, it is exclusive to the director and encourages viewing a film as a singular product rather than a collaborative effort.
This past weekend I attempted to direct a film with a real budget and a real camera and real people. A world of things were enumerated to me over this experience, and I can’t manage a cogent explanation of them. The general thesis here is that the auteur theory is bullshit.
Not enough can be written about disasters. The feeling of being in a real-life disaster is strange and otherworldly, like that momentary feeling of uncertainty before a car accident, except stretched out for hours. Our disaster wasn’t severe, but it still hurt: an 11-hour roundtrip odyssey to a farm to shoot a roadside scene. Funny how the things we couldn’t control – 30 mph winds, freezing temperatures, occasional freezing rain and hail, all par for mid-April in Chicago – were fine; it was our lead actor, hopelessly lost for hours in central Illinois, that kept us up ’til sunrise.
This episode comes off like a sob story in retellings, and it is, but it also highlights the central myth of filmmaking. Writers have writers’ block, rock bands have internal conflict, and film sets have unmitigated disaster (cue Hearts of Darkness, Lost in La Mancha and virtually any other objective making-of documentary). George Lucas once said that every one of his movies is 1/10th as good as he thought it’d be; using this formula, student filmmakers might as well burn their scripts before shooting. Most films try, on some level, to recreate reality, and within that seemingly simple challenge, there are obstacles like continuity, extras, controlled locations, weather, delinquent actors, incompetent custodians, stolen cars, manual transmissions and money, money, money.
I don’t know how hard it is to make a movie in Hollywood, but from my limited experience on college film sets, its probably goddamn impossible. With regard to the actual quality of the film, it means nothing. I remember the first film I worked on at Northwestern; I was shocked to learn that most of the crew hadn’t bothered to read the script to the film they were making. How can somebody dedicate their time to something they don’t care about?
Filmmaking, while it may deal with the art, the depth of the image, the quality of the acting, the structure of the story and the historical implications, the ironic subtexts and the genre-referencing and the carefully composed soundtracks, is really about a finished product. Dozens, even hundreds of people work on a film because they want to see it come to fruition. No film is left unfinished, like so many novels; it is completed, for better or worse. This explains the cinema’s unique well of god-awful product.
A film production – a student film, especially – renders film criticism obsolete. At a few moments, while trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do – with time running out at our locations, our lighting acting up, and countless other problems – I considered, just briefly, whether or not what I was trying to make would actually be good.
Auteurism assigns the director too much responsibility: He may dream up the film, but he has no real control over it. Sure, I’d written a script I cared about and considered every shot with acute attention to detail; I’d been impeccable with my locations and lucked out with a great cast. But when it came to the here and now on set, it was no longer about the movie – it was about the people. This is an overlooked joy of the movies: the camaraderie, collaboration, and congeniality of a film set. It supercedes criticism because, in some regard, it is real. There’s no way to criticize that experience.
The other thing I must say is that NU film students are batshit insane. I’ve spent most of my time here in front of a computer screen or in a movie theater or drinking; my peers devote weekends to helping others without pay or complaint. They are, on the whole, completely unpretentious – the pretentious ones keep their hands clean, staying away from the action – who are as in love with making movies as the others are with thinking about movies. They’re doers, not thinkers – as blue collar as NU gets.
Hey, Pre-Meds: stop bitching about your midterm and spend a weekend on a movie. Preferably mine, when we finish shooting next week.4
Communication senior Kyle Smith is the PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
