“I take my work very seriously, and there is this stupid system in place that suggests that the director is the auteur and that the writer is just this secondary along for the ride,” “Synecdoche, New York” director and writer Charlie Kaufman told the New York Times recently. “I have a good idea, and I know this script better than anyone, so I am going to take on this movie. It could have been a failure, but that wasn’t really what I was thinking about.”
Blame it on the Cahiers Du Cinema, we guess, but Kaufman is right. We love the auteur theory too, but auteur means “author” and writers are generally not invited to set (though it depends on the director). Kaufman told the same thing to Slashfilm in their interview.
“[There’s more name value in directors], and that’s sort of been perpetuated by this auteur theory, which I find enormously bizarre considering that the word auteur means author. And, indeed, the only person who’s the complete inventor of the movie is the writer. The director’s interpreting material. Actors are interpreting material. Everybody’s interpreting the script. And I’m not saying that the writer is more important than the director or other people, but I’m saying the writer needs to be given his or her due in the process.”
Hear, hear.