As for the issue of auteurism, I’m sure we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one. But I’m frankly stunned when people, even now, still believe that auteurists (and I’d consider myself one) view movies as the work of a single person only. Auteurism elevates the director as the *primary* influence on a movie, but no good auteurist critic would ever discount the contributions of all those other people who contribute to a film. The director is just (usually) the single person on a movie set best positioned to control every aspect of a film’s production, and the director is often the one who makes the lion’s share of the decisions and aesthetic choices regarding a film. Film is a collaborative art, but in my opinion auteurism is the best lens through which to understand the art of film as a whole. The director is the person who manages and, well, *directs* all those other people on the set, so how could he or she *not* be the one with the most forceful presence in the final product?

Also, auteurism is a very valuable way of looking at careers as a whole. To understand a director’s career in its totality is, I think, to understand each of the films within it more deeply and completely. There are thematic and aesthetic continuities when looking at a director’s assembled body of work that, in most cases, with all exceptions duly noted, you’re not going to see when looking at an actor’s work as a whole, or a cinematographer’s, or an editor’s. That’s my own take on it, anyway.

I enjoyed the series you did on Paul Verhoeven and would actually recommend that to anybody. But I disagree with those folk who still believe that movies are the work of a single author, which is what auteur theory or the word “auteur” casually implies to me.

Movies are the collaborative effort of a terrific number of craftsmen — writers, actors, DPs, casting directors, producers, sometimes even studio executives — who don’t get nearly enough credit in my view, not from academics, many of whom still want to believe that one person “authors” a movie all by themselves.

Being passionate about movies is one thing, but director worship is a type of ignorance. At its most stubborn, it denigrates the contributions of other artists and obscures how movies actually get made.

Obviously, this is just my opinion. I respect anyone who can write consistently thoughtful content and publish it, like you. I’m just not always going to agree with it and I’m not always going to endorse it.

For that matter, what do you have against the word “auteur?”