Auteur Quotes

Film's thought of as a director's medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It's that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they've had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve. ~ Billy Wilder

Sometimes you see auteur TV shows and movies, and those are great. ~ Akiva Goldsman

In a certain respect, in a movie, you inevitably have a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs because that's the only practical way to get it done. When you make a record, you can still be an auteur, because you can make a whole record without anyone's help if you want. ~ D.A. Wallach

We once believed we were auteurs but we weren't. We had no idea, really. Film is over. It's sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films! ~ Lloyd Kaufman

I know how to work with people. I've worked with the same people for 10 years. I'm not that kind of auteur. I hear ideas. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Hollywood did not just make horror movie monsters, it was its own horror movie monster, smashing me under its foot. I had failed and the Auteur would make The Hamlet as he intended, with my countrymen serving merely as raw material for an epic about white men saving good yellow people from bad yellow people. I pitied the French for their naïveté in believing they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood was much more efficient, imagining the countries it wanted to exploit. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

I'm very strongly in favor of the auteur theory. ~ George Hickenlooper

I think the bigger the movie is, the harder it is to maintain the idea of an auteur. You're servicing something beyond just your own vision. Whenever there's a lot of money on the line, it is your responsibility to make sure that you're doing your best to have people not lose their money and to actually win by betting on it. ~ Jon Favreau

They say that a director always makes the same film. I try to make, as François Truffaut said, the next film in opposition to the one that came before. I'm not sure if I succeed. To put it another way, I agree with the auteur theory, but I don't consider myself an auteur. I'm more of an artisan, a craftsman. ~ Alain Resnais

I liked the Hollywood stuff. But I also liked the fact that in both, you know, I guess in the, like, the auteur, the art film auteur at that time was Lina Wertmuller. So, you go see "Swept Away" or you go see a movie she did "Blood Feud" with Sophia Loren and Giancarlo Giannini. And I remember "Wifemistress" was a big movie at that time, really liked it, Laura Antonelli. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Design isn't about getting your way, it's not about being a great genius or auteur who is followed by everyone else on the team, and it's not even about doing a great job of communicating your vision to the rest of the team. Design isn't about you; it is about the project. Working as a game designer is about collaborating with the rest of the team, compromising, and above all listening. ~ Jeremy Gibson

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing. ~ Bernardo Bertolucci

I always argued against the auteur theory; films are a collaborative art form. I've had some fantastically good people help me make the movies. ~ Alan Parker

There's no such thing as "an auteurist filmmaker." Every film directors is an auteur. We only make films that we do because we cannot put on clothes that don't fit us. ~ Lee Yoon-ki

When you have an author and an auteur, it's a difficult and challenging relationship. ~ Sam Taylor-Johnson

At the age that I was when I stopped reading comics, and with a set of talents that would seem to mark a future comic-book auteur, my son has had only a passing enthusiasm for the medium. ~ Steve Erickson

Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone's game. No other pop auteur can touch her right now for emotional excess or musical reach - her punk is so punk, her disco is so disco. The red sequins on her guitar match the ones on her microphone, her shoes and 80 percent of the crowd. ~ Rob Sheffield

I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary. ~ Cary Fukunaga

There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy. But I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff. ~ T. J. Miller

Un auteur ga te tout quand il veut trop bien faire. An author spoils everything when he wants too much to do good. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world. ~ Robert Hughes

I don't really believe in the auteur theory. ~ Park Chan-wook

I think the art film, or the auteur-driven film - and not only foreign, but domestic films following that path - can get a small share of the box office. And I think that small share may open up a little bit. ~ Roger Corman

I don't quite know what an auteur is. ~ Peter Jackson

There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors ~ Francois Truffaut

I never feel weird about being the main character in the nontransferable, nonexistent movie of my life. That's totally fine. What makes me nervous is a growing suspicion that this movie is fucked up and devoid of meaning. The auteur is a nihilist. ~ Chuck Klosterman